The dusty inventory report shows you what products in your inventory are not selling quickly and might need to be remerchandized, put on clearance, or discontinued. This report can be configured to show you individual SKUs or product categories. To access this report, navigate to Reporting > Inventory reports and click on the Dusty inventory tab.

Benefits of the dusty inventory report

You can use this report to:

• Identify products to put on clearance, remerchandize, or discontinue.
• Determine which products are moving slower than expected.
• Prioritize which products to free up based on cost and retail values.

Understanding the report columns

The report presents information on current inventory stats to show how long items have been in stock, when they were last ordered, and when they were last sold. The columns in this report are:

• SKU name: The name and SKU of the product.
• Closing inventory: Your inventory at the end of your selected date range. If that is today then it equals your current stock on hand.
• Sell through rate: This tells you the rate you are selling your inventory. A high sell-through rate means items are flying off the shelves and might need to be replenished. A low sell-through rate means items are sitting around and tying up your cash.
• Last sale: Indicates the calendar date when the item was last sold.
• Inventory cost: This is an indicator of how much cash you have tied up in your inventory. (Average cost x Closing inventory = Inventory cost).
• Retail value: This tells you how much potential revenue your inventory could make. (Full retail price of Products x Closing inventory = Retail value)
• Last received: The last calendar date new stock of the item was received into your inventory from a purchase order or transfer. This doesn't include customer returns. 

You can configure the report by changing the metrics for Report type, Measure, and Date range to best suit your needs.

Using the dusty inventory report

These are some tasks you can accomplish with the dusty inventory report:

Investigate what’s not selling

Take a critical look at your inventory and investigate sell through rates and last sale dates for your products. If the sell through rate is low or the last sale date was months ago, you might consider ways to move this merchandize.

Determine how much potential revenue is tied up

Use the inventory cost and retail value columns to determine how much of your revenue is tied up in inventory. The inventory cost column shows you how much you've spent on inventory for a specific product, while the retail value column tells you how much potential revenue the products in your inventory could earn.

Identify where items are most likely to sell

If you have more than one location, you can click Format results and select By outlet to arrange the dusty inventory report columns to include location information. By formatting your results this way, you can see which of your locations the products might sell better. You can then move dusty stock to other locations where sales are more likely. 

What's next?