See your stock levels, reorder alerts, and dead inventory in one view — before a stockout costs you sales or dead stock ties up cash.
Your best-seller sells out on a Tuesday and you do not find out until a buyer messages asking why it is gone. Meanwhile 200 units of last season's color sit in a bin, quietly being cash you cannot spend. Those are the two ways inventory bites a small seller — the stockout you did not see coming and the dead pile you keep pretending will move. The Inventory Stock Level Tracker watches both at once: it monitors stock across every SKU, fires reorder alerts before you hit zero, flags products that have gone stale long enough to count as dead stock, and ranks your SKUs by revenue so you always know which ones earned your attention.
The sample data shown in the tool gives you a quick read on its utility: total inventory value of $12,400, average days of stock remaining at 21, and 2 active reorder alerts. That combination tells you the business is running, there is a meaningful asset tied up in inventory, and two SKUs need restocking before a problem develops. A single screen check, actionable in under a minute.
Stock level tracking without a spreadsheet you will never update
The most common reason small sellers lose sales to stockouts is not insufficient inventory — it is insufficient visibility. The stock is tracked in a spreadsheet that was accurate when it was built and has not been touched since. Or it lives in the seller's head as a general sense that things are running low.
The tracker gives each product a current stock count, a reorder point, and an average days-of-stock-remaining calculation based on your sales velocity. When a SKU's stock level drops below its reorder point, the alert fires. This is the specific window between the warning and the emergency — long enough to place an order and receive it before you are out, short enough that you are not carrying more inventory than you need.
Reorder Alerts: the tool's most operationally critical feature
Reorder alerts are triggered automatically when a product's current stock level falls below the reorder threshold you set. The threshold should be set to reflect your supplier lead time — if your supplier takes 10 days to fulfill and you sell 5 units per day, your reorder point should be no lower than 50 units. The tracker calculates your average days of stock remaining so you can verify your thresholds are set correctly.
The Reorder Alerts tab surfaces only the products that currently need attention — it is not a full inventory list. This design is deliberate: when you open the tab and see two alerts, you know exactly what needs to happen. When the tab is empty, your inventory is covered. There is no need to scan a 50-row spreadsheet to get that read.
A reorder alert that fires and gets acted on the same day is worth more than the most sophisticated inventory management system that gets checked monthly. The operational value of the tool scales directly with the frequency of your check-ins.
Dead Stock Flagging: identifying the cash tied up in slow movers
Dead stock is inventory that has not sold within a defined period — typically 60 to 90 days. It is not necessarily worthless, but it is costing you carrying costs, storage space, and most importantly, the capital that could be deployed in better-moving products. The Dead Stock tab surfaces these items automatically based on your sales velocity data.
The decision tree for dead stock is usually one of four options: discount to clear, bundle with a faster-moving product, return to the supplier if possible, or write it off as a cost. None of those decisions can be made efficiently if you do not know which products qualify as dead. The flagging surfaces the question; the decision is yours.
Many sellers who use the dead stock flag for the first time discover that 15-25% of their SKU count by units falls into the dead stock category. That inventory is tied up capital. Even a partial clearance of dead stock at a 30% discount often frees up more cash than a new product launch would generate.
Revenue Ranking: knowing which SKUs drive the business
The Revenue Ranking tab sorts your products by the revenue they have generated over the tracking period. This is not always the same as your highest-priced or highest-stocked items. Fast-moving products at moderate prices often outrank high-priced items that sell infrequently.
The ranking is most useful in combination with your stock levels. A top-ranked SKU with a low stock count and a reorder alert should get immediate attention — this is your revenue engine at risk of a stockout. A low-ranked SKU with high stock is a candidate for clearance. The relationship between the ranking and the stock level tells the full story.
Products tracked and average days left: reading the dashboard at a glance
The top-line metrics in the dashboard — total products tracked, total inventory value, average days of stock remaining — give you a business health read before you look at any individual SKU. Average days of stock remaining is particularly useful: a 14-day average means your business needs a restocking decision every two weeks on average. A 60-day average means you are running high inventory levels, which ties up capital but reduces the operational burden of frequent reorders.
The right average days target depends on your supplier lead times, your cash flow situation, and how stable your demand is. Sellers with long supplier lead times need higher buffers. Sellers with fast, predictable sales and quick-turnaround suppliers can run leaner. The tracker shows you your current average; your business model tells you your target. Start a free trial to save your reorder alerts and stock history across sessions — so you catch the next stockout before it costs you sales.
How to use it
- Add each product to the Inventory Tracker with its current stock count, your reorder point, and its average daily sales velocity.
- Check the Reorder Alerts tab at the start of each week — act on any alerts before your stock drops to zero.
- Review the Dead Stock tab monthly and make a clearance or return decision for any SKUs that qualify.
- Use the Revenue Ranking to prioritize which products deserve priority reorder attention and which ones are candidates for discontinuation.
- Update stock counts after each reorder receipt and after any inventory audits to keep the days-remaining calculation accurate.
Who it's for
- Etsy seller managing 30 handmade product variants — Has previously run out of three best-sellers twice in one quarter. Sets reorder alerts for the top 10 SKUs by revenue. No stockouts in the following 90 days. Total value of missed sales in the prior quarter: estimated $800.
- Print-on-demand seller tracking physical stock for packaging supplies — Uses the tracker for packaging materials, not final products. Sets reorder alerts for mailers, tissue paper, and stickers. Time spent thinking about whether supplies are running low drops from hours per month to a single weekly dashboard check.
- Small product business with a holiday season build-up — Uses the days-remaining calculation to plan Q4 orders. Sets reorder points 30% higher than usual for October through December. No holiday stockouts despite a 3x sales spike.
- Reseller with a 40-item catalog noticing slow movers — Opens the Dead Stock tab for the first time and finds 9 SKUs that have not sold in 75 days. Runs a clearance promotion on 6 of them and returns 3 to the supplier. Frees up $1,400 in working capital.
Key terms
- Reorder point
- The stock level at which a reorder should be triggered — calculated from daily sales velocity multiplied by supplier lead time, plus a safety buffer for demand variability.
- Dead stock
- Inventory that has not sold within a defined period. It represents tied-up capital that is not generating returns and may be declining in value due to shelf life, seasonality, or changing demand.
- Days of stock remaining
- Current stock quantity divided by average daily sales velocity. The number of days until the product runs out at the current pace of sales.
- SKU
- Stock Keeping Unit — a unique identifier for each distinct product variant you track in inventory. One product with three size variants would typically be three separate SKUs.
Frequently asked questions
How do I set my reorder point for each product?
Multiply your average daily sales by your supplier lead time in days, then add a safety buffer — typically 20-30% extra for demand variability. A product that sells 3 units per day with a 7-day supplier lead time needs a reorder point of at least 21, plus a buffer of 6-7 units, so 27-28 units is a reasonable starting threshold.
What qualifies a product as dead stock in this tracker?
The tracker flags any product that has not recorded a sale within the dead stock threshold period you set — typically 60 or 90 days. You can adjust this threshold to match your category. Seasonal products should use a longer window that accounts for their off-season. Fast-moving consumer goods might use a 30-day window.
Can I track multiple locations or storage spaces?
The current tracker is designed for a single inventory pool. If you have stock in multiple locations, you can either combine the counts into a single total per SKU or set up separate tracker instances for each location. Multi-location tracking with location-level reorder alerts is beyond the scope of this tool.
How often should I update my stock counts?
After every receiving event (restocking), after every significant sales event (a promotion or large order), and after any periodic physical count. For most small sellers, that means updates once or twice a week plus a monthly audit. The days-remaining calculation is only as accurate as your most recent update, so more frequent updates produce more reliable reorder timing.