Free tool
Dead stock cost calculator
Unsold inventory doesn't sit there for free. It costs you every month it stays on the shelf. Put your numbers in below to see what your dead stock is actually costing, and what you'd get back by clearing it. Nothing is stored or sent anywhere — the maths runs in your browser.
Your numbers
What your on-hand stock cost you, averaged over the year.
If you don't know, 20–30% is typical for an established catalog.
Opportunity cost of cash tied up in stock. Typically 8–15%/yr.
Warehouse rent, utilities, 3PL fees, shelving. Typically 2–5%/yr.
Insurance, taxes, inventory systems. Typically 1–3%/yr.
Shrinkage, damage, obsolescence, markdowns. Often the biggest, 6–15%/yr.
Cents on the dollar you'd realistically get in a clearance. 40–60% is common.
What it's costing you
- Cash trapped in dead stock
- $20,000
- Cost of holding it — per month
- $467
- Cost of holding it — per year
- $5,600
- Your total holding cost rate
- 28.0% / yr
- Holding cost on all inventory
- $22,400 / yr
- Cash recovered if you clear it
- $10,000
- First-year benefit of clearing
- $15,600
At 28.0% a year, this stock consumes its own value in roughly 3.6 years. After that you've spent more keeping it than it was ever worth.
Find your actual dead SKUs
This calculator works on an estimate. Inventory Surplus applies the rule across your real Shopify catalog and tells you which SKUs are dead, what they're worth, and what to do with each one. Free for up to 100 SKUs.
Install on ShopifyNo credit card required.
How the maths works
Holding cost is the sum of four components, each expressed as a percentage of average inventory value per year: capital, storage, service and risk. Add them together and you get your annual holding cost rate — for most DTC brands, somewhere between 20% and 30%. Multiply that rate by the value of the stock that isn't selling, and you have the number that matters: what your dead stock costs you to keep.
The defaults above (10% capital, 4% storage, 2% service, 12% risk) are the worked example from our guide to calculating inventory holding cost. Replace them with your own figures if you have them.
Questions
- What is inventory holding cost?
- Inventory holding cost (also called carrying cost) is everything you spend to keep stock on a shelf: the opportunity cost of the cash tied up in it, storage, insurance and systems, plus the risk of shrinkage, damage and obsolescence. It is quoted as a percentage of average inventory value per year. Most direct-to-consumer brands land between 20% and 30%.
- What counts as dead stock?
- A common working rule is a SKU with fewer than two sales in the last 60 days where on-hand inventory exceeds 90 days of forward demand at the current sales rate. The exact threshold matters less than applying one consistently across the whole catalog.
- Is this dead stock calculator free?
- Yes. It runs entirely in your browser, requires no signup, and nothing you type is sent anywhere or stored.
- How do I find which of my SKUs are dead stock?
- You can export your Shopify product and order history and compute sales velocity per SKU in a spreadsheet, or install Inventory Surplus, which applies the rule across your catalog automatically and is free for up to 100 SKUs.