Which inventory reports tell you what to reorder and what is dead stock?

The four reports that matter

Most inventory dashboards are crowded. For a small seller, four reports answer nearly every buying question. Here is each one, what it tells you and how to work it out.

Report	Question it answers	Formula
Sell-through rate	Is this product moving?	Units sold in the period divided by (units sold plus units left at the end)
Days of cover	When will I run out?	Units on hand plus on order, divided by average daily sales
Aged stock	What has been sitting here?	Days since the stock was received or last sold
Stock value by channel	Where is my cash tied up?	Units held in each place times cost per unit

Sell-through rate

Sell-through tells you what share of your stock actually sold. Say you started the month with 100 units, received none and sold 60. You have 40 left. Sell-through is 60 divided by 100, or 60 percent.

A high rate usually means you can reorder, and it can also mean you are about to run out. A very low rate means too much stock or weak demand. Use a window that matches the product: 30 days for fast sellers, 90 for slow ones. What counts as healthy depends on your product type, so compare against your own past months, not a general number.

Days of cover

This is the single most useful buying number. If you hold 410 units and sell 12 a day, you have about 34 days of cover. Compare it with your supplier lead time. If the lead time is 21 days and cover is 34, you have about 13 days before you must order. If cover is 15 and lead time is 21, you are already late.

Report it per product, sorted from lowest to highest. The top of that list is your reorder list. Our inventory forecasting spreadsheet template has the full formulas, including reorder points.

Aged stock and dead stock

Aged stock shows how long units have been on your shelf. Dead stock is the part that has stopped selling. There is no single official line. I use "no sales in 90 days" for products that normally sell weekly, and 180 days for slow ones. Pick a rule, write it down, and apply it the same way each month.

A report of aged stock is useful because dead stock hides. It does not show up as a stockout. It just sits there taking up shelf space and cash. Once you spot it you can discount it, bundle it with a bestseller, return it to a supplier or write it off.

If you use Cin7, look through its reports for stock age or ageing. The names differ between its Core and Omni products, so check its help centre for the exact report before you plan around it.

Stock value by channel

Stock value is units times what you paid for them. Split it by place: your warehouse, Amazon's warehouses (FBA, Fulfilled by Amazon), a 3PL (a third-party logistics company that stores and ships for you) and any retail shelf. It shows where cash is tied up.

Finale lists reporting with asset valuation, sales income, cost of goods sold and landed cost (what an item costs after shipping and duty). That is the kind of report to look for if you want values by location. If you use Amazon, stock in its warehouses can go missing or get stranded, which is why value reports should include it; see our guide to catching FBA inventory problems with AI.

A worked example (made-up figures)

These numbers are invented to show how the reports read together.

SKU	On hand	Daily sales	Lead days	Days of cover	Last sale	Cost each	Value
TEE-BLK-M	180	9	20	20	Today	$6	$1,080
MUG-BLUE	410	12	21	34	Today	$3	$1,230
SCARF-RED	240	0	30	n/a	112 days ago	$8	$1,920

The black tee has 20 days of cover and a 20-day lead time. You should have ordered already. The mug has 13 days of room. The red scarf has not sold for 112 days, so it is dead stock under my 90-day rule, and it ties up $1,920, more than either of the other two.

Without the aged stock and value columns, you would have spent your time on the tee and the mug and never looked at the scarf.

How to get these reports

In a spreadsheet

Export orders from each channel, put them in one tab and use SUMIFS to total by SKU. Add last-sale date with MAXIFS. It works for a few hundred products. The weak spot is keeping it up to date.

In an inventory tool

If you only sell on Shopify, start with its own inventory reports. Shopify says they show a month-end snapshot of your inventory and the quantity and percentage of inventory sold per day. That covers part of this list for free, for that one store.

Inventory systems build these automatically. Prediko, a Shopify inventory app, lists analytics and reports on inventory KPIs. Sumtracker, a multichannel sync tool, includes barcode scanning and reports from $59 a month as of November 2026. Finale and Cin7 are full systems that start at $499 and $349 a month; Cin7 sells its AI forecasting as an add-on. Our inventory management system guide and forecasting software comparison go through them.

In a custom dashboard

If your sales sit in several places, a custom dashboard can pull them into one view and show only these four reports. See our guide on building a KPI dashboard for how to keep it simple.

A simple weekly routine

1. Open days of cover and sort lowest first. Order anything under lead time plus buffer.
2. Open aged stock and look at the top five by value. Decide to discount, bundle, return or hold each one.
3. Check stock value by channel. If one place holds a large share and sells little, move or sell it down.
4. Once a month, check sell-through by product group and note which grew or fell.

Twenty minutes is enough. The aim is a short list of decisions, not a report library.

Common mistakes

• Counting stock twice. Units in transit between locations can appear in both.
• Using revenue instead of units. A price change can make sales look healthy while units fall.
• One window for everything. A 30-day window flags slow products as dead. Use 90 days for them.
• Ignoring bundles. A three-pack uses three single units, so single-unit reports look wrong.

How I'd approach this

Start with days of cover and aged stock. Those two answer the daily question of what to buy and the monthly question of what to clear. Add sell-through and stock value once those are routine.

Look at the reports on a fixed day each week. A report you open only when you are worried does not help.

If you find yourself exporting from three places every Monday, that is the signal. Either pick a tool that connects your channels, or have the four reports built once on top of your own data so they update by themselves.