Slow Moving Stock Report

A Slow Moving Stock Report allows you to identify inventory items that aren’t selling as quickly as you’d like and helps you make decisions to assist you with clearing the stock.

{note}You must have correct stock levels for the report to be correct.{/note}

Shopfront treats suggests and scores products based off space-value and treats all space evenly. It doesn’t take into account the sell price of products or the current inventory value.

Running the Report

The report can be found in the Miscellaneous Reports (Menu > Reporting > Miscellaneous Reports) section of Shopfront. Once within the area, select the Slow Moving Stock report and then adjust the filters as required then press Run.

{note}You must select an Outlet to run the report, it’s not currently possible to run the report across multiple Outlets.{/note}

After running the report a number of columns will be visible:

The score column is used to provide ordering to the report with higher values being stock that is slower and what you should look at clearing.

The formula for calculating the score is current inventory / average sales per day. If the product has never been sold we use the formula days since creation * current inventory.

If the score is below one, the product won’t be shown on the report.

Acting on the Report

Once you’ve got your report generated and you’re ready to act on it, you should take a number of steps to verify the data and make decisions about what you’re doing with products.

First, you should verify the product isn’t intentionally a slow item, these can be outliers on the slow moving stock report and are commonly items that have high inventory and sell values but sell only a few items a year (for example, Penfolds Grange).

Second, you should open the product view page for the product you’re seeing is slow and check the recent trend graph, if it’s selling slower recently or has flatlined, it might be a good product to remove.

Third, you now need to determine what action you’re going to take to clear the product or to improve its sales, typically this could be done by one of the following:

• Clearance discounts: This typically involves just marking the item for clearance and deciding on an amount to start discounting it by, once added to the register, just apply the discount.

• Relocate: Perhaps the stock isn’t in a position which is useful for selling it, moving it to a higher traffic area, moving it close to the counter for people to see when they’re checking out or adding a display with the stock may allow the product increase sales without needing to reduce the price.

  • If you’re relocating items, you should also take note of the items you’re moving back into the spot to see if they drop in sales or remain steady.

• Bundle: You might create some “quick packs” to sell the item in, typically using Basket Products, some examples could be a mixed-six wines or an outfit combination of a shirt and pants combo.

• Promote: You can also put the item on promotion and market it through your media channels plus in-store (such as on your customer display), we’d suggest speaking to the rep / manufacturer of the product to see if they’d be willing to assist with the development of marketing material.

• Transfer: If you’ve got multiple Outlets, you can check to see how the product is selling at another location and then transfer the stock there instead of attempting to change how it’s selling in your store.

No matter which option you select, you should trial it for a period of time (e.g. a couple of weeks) and check your reports to see if the product has increased in sales and make sure other products don’t drop by the same amount. It’s a fine balancing act, but with time you’ll get a feel for the right combinations.