Dead stock

How do I work out my dead stock from my exports?

You need two exports: your products with their stock and cost prices, and your sales lines for the last 90 days. Any product with stock and no sale in those 90 days is dead stock, and its units multiplied by its cost price is the cash tied up in it.

The six steps

1. Export every product with its stock on hand and its cost price. One row per size and colour: each variant is its own stock.
2. Export your sales lines for the last 90 days. From Shopify, your till or your warehouse system: whatever records what sold.
3. Find every SKU with stock on hand and no sale in those 90 days. A lookup on the SKU column does it.
4. Take out anything you added in the last 90 days. It isn’t dead, it’s new. Give it a season before you judge it.
5. Multiply units by cost price, not selling price. That’s the cash you paid out and haven’t got back.
6. Sort from the highest value down and decide on the top 20 first. Mark down, bundle, send back to the supplier or write off: one decision per row.

What the list looks like

So the answer is at least €933, not exactly €933: the 8 shirts cost something, and nobody has entered what.

Why cost price, not selling price?

Cost price is what you paid out and haven’t got back, so it’s the cash that’s actually stuck. Selling price counts profit you haven’t made, on stock that isn’t selling. The total looks bigger, but that extra money was never there.

What about products with no cost price?

Don’t let them count as €0. A spreadsheet reads an empty cell as 0, and your total comes out smaller than it is. Put them on their own list, with their units, and find their cost before you rely on the total. To find them, filter your product export for an empty cost price.

Verity treats them the same way: a missing value shows as “no value”, never as 0.

Only have rough numbers? The dead stock calculator gives an estimate from three of them. Or take the tour to see this worked out line by line on an example shop.