"Dead stock" isn't one thing — it's a gradient. Some inventory has been sitting for 45 days (still sellable); some for a year (cost-of-storage now exceeds the value). This tool buckets your SKUs by days since last sale, attaches a dollar figure to each bucket, and ranks what to act on first.
Most "dead stock" tools just tell you whether a SKU is dead (e.g., no sales in 90 days). That's useful for triage but doesn't help you write the board memo. This tool:
An SKU with no sale in 45 days is very different from one with no sale in 14 months. The first might just be seasonal; the second has cost-of-storage > gross profit if you ever do sell it. Default rules of thumb:
For perishable inventory, shift every bucket down by half. For fashion/seasonal, double the 90+ bucket threshold.
| SKU | Qty on hand | Unit cost ($) | Days since last sale |
|---|---|---|---|
The bar chart-style summary tells you where the dollars are. Most healthy businesses have a tall bar at 0-30 days and a tiny tail at 180+. If your 90+ bucket is large, the issue isn't your last quarter's forecasting — it's accumulated slow-moving inventory that should have been acted on earlier.
The action priority list ranks every SKU by $ tied up × days idle, so a high-value SKU with 200 days idle ranks above a low-value one with 60 days idle. Use that as your to-do list.
A: Yes. Slow-moving safety stock is still capital tied up; treat it the same. If your safety stock is genuinely required (see Safety Stock), exclude that quantity from the analysis.
A: Items with zero days since last sale haven't proven themselves. They go in the 0-30 bucket and your eyes should track them, but they aren't "dead" yet.