How to Quit Dead Stock and Free Up Cash

How to Quit Dead Stock and Free Up Cash

You could have thousands of dollars of stock sitting on your shelves taking up space. If stock is not selling, it’s costing you. Once you have identified stock that is not selling you can begin to quit this stock, by putting the stock on clearance and continually reducing pricing until it’s sold out. Even if this means selling it below cost, it will save you money in the long run.
Idea
You can work out how much your shop space is worth by dividing the rent by how many square meters of space you have
Info
To effectively use this advice, you need accurate quantity-on-hand figures. Poor stock management will lead to inaccurate results. Learn about stocktaking HERE

Video Guides

HERE is our Training Video on setting up the report for Dead stock
We also have Training Videos on the Ranked Sales Report and Insights Dashboard

Finding Dead Stock

There are two methods to find Dead Stock in Retailer:
  1. Insights Dashboard
  2. Ranked Sales Report
The Insights Dashboard is the recommended method as you are able to filter out Stock Items recently added or arrived that have not sold.

Insights Dashboard

The Insights Dashboard can be accessed in the Retailer main screen, in the menu at the top, under Reports -> Insights Dashboard.
It consists of a few different tabs, but the main one to look at is 'What's not Selling'.

For Date Range, select the time period an item has not sold in to be considered Dead Stock
Listing Bottom can be used to show only X unsold stock items, ranked by Last Sold Date
Rank By changes the order of the stock items in the list by Last Sold Date, Total Cost or Quantity on Hand. You can also click any column header to sort or filter by that column
Click the 3 dots button … to apply a filter by Department, Supplier and exclude Recently Added Stock.
To filter out items recently arrived, hover the mouse over the 'Last Arrived' column header and click the funnel icon. Click Custom. Change 'Equals' to 'Is Less Than' and select a date using the drop down box.
The chart at the bottom visually indicates the historical sales of each product, in case you need further information (maybe an item sells well in certain periods of the year only).
The total value of these stock items gives a quick picture of how much stock isn't moving in the system.
From here, you can even click 'Send to' in the top right, to send the list of items to Stock Manager (where you might move the stock into another department/category) or to a CSV spreadsheet file, or print it out.

Ranked Sales Report

Use the ranked sales report with the following settings to work out what isn't selling and put that stock on clearance.
  1. On the top menu bar of Retailer, click on Reports > Sales Reports > Ranked Sales Report.
  2. Set your Start Date and End Date.
    A 6-month period will normally give you a good representation of sales.
  3. Tick the following options: Include All Stock Items, Only Include Stock with a Quantity on Hand great than 0 and Only Include Stock that has not been Sold.
  4. Make sure the report orientation is in Landscape
  5. Click Print or Preview
    1. Here you can see when the last time an item was sold (if at all) and the last time it was arrived.
      Note: New items that have only recently been arrived (and have not been sold yet) will still appear on the report. Only focus on stock items that haven’t sold in 4 to 5 months.
    2. The bottom of the report will give you a total cost value of stock on-hand. Consider this figure the value of dead stock in your store. The goal is to reduce this value as much as possible.
  6. Print out the report and use it as a reference.

Ways to Clear Dead Stock

Set up a clearance table or bin somewhere in store and put products there with a clearance price. Advertise the area as Clearance Stock, Prices as Marked etc.
Keep discounting the product until it sells. Set a goal to get rid of the stock within two weeks and if stock is still there after one week, discount it further.

You can then start filling that empty space with stock that is selling well. Use the Ranked Sales Report to show you top selling items and begin to build up those lines.
InfoClick HERE for more information on the Ranked Sales Report

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