Find your slow-moving SKUs

The short answer

A slow mover is a SKU whose sales rate no longer justifies the cash it occupies. Rank every SKU by days of supply — units on hand divided by average daily sales — and the tail of that list is where your working capital is trapped. The decision for each is one of four: keep, mark down, bundle, or liquidate.

Days of supply beats units on hand for finding the problem

Units on hand tells you nothing on its own. Four hundred units is prudent for something selling twenty a day and is two years of stock for something selling one. Dividing by the sales rate turns every SKU onto a single comparable scale.

Weighting that ranking by unit cost then shows where the cash actually sits. A long tail of cheap slow movers is untidy; a handful of expensive ones is what is actually consuming your working capital.

Sunk cost is the reason these lists get ignored

Holding out for full price on a SKU that has not moved in six months is a decision to keep paying storage and carrying costs for the privilege of maybe recovering more later. The money spent buying it is gone either way, and the only live question is how much you can recover and how quickly.

This is why the output is a recommendation per line rather than a single number. Markdown, bundle, and liquidate recover different amounts at different speeds, and the right choice depends on how badly you need the cash and the shelf space.

Frequently asked questions

What counts as a slow-moving SKU?

One whose days of supply — units on hand divided by average daily sales — is far above your target for its category. The threshold is relative: what is slow for a staple can be perfectly normal for a seasonal line.

Should I mark down, bundle, or liquidate?

Markdown suits items with some remaining demand at a lower price. Bundling suits items that sell alongside something that still moves. Liquidation suits items with no realistic path back to full price where the shelf space and the cash matter more than the margin.

What data do I need to find slow movers?

Sales history and current on-hand quantity per SKU, exported together. The analyzer expects product_id, sku, name, sold_qty, sold_date, and qty_on_hand.