How to Calculate and Increase Your Inventory Turnover Ratio

A business’s inventory turnover ratio reveals the speed at which its entire inventory is sold and replenished. Manufacturing encompasses a wide range of industries, and the products manufactured range from cupcakes to jet engines. The ideal inventory turnover ratio for the manufacturing industry highly depends on the specific company’s products and processes. That being said, a good target inventory turnover ratio for manufacturers is often between 5 to 10 times per year. The inventory turnover ratio is the number of times a company has sold and replenished its inventory over a specific amount of time. The formula can also be used to calculate the number of days it will take to sell the inventory on hand.

When you know how fast items turn over, you can make sure to order popular items well in advance and in sufficient quantities to meet customer demand. This prevents stockouts, which results in fewer backorders and more happy customers. If you’re not tracking inventory turnover, it’s tempting to keep reordering the same SKUs in the same amounts over and over again. Higher stock turns are favorable because they imply product marketability and reduced holding costs, such as rent, utilities, insurance, theft, and other costs of maintaining goods in inventory. Achieving a best-in-class STR requires a number of carefully developed strategies and tactics implemented concurrently over a significant period of time.

Tactics To Improve Inventory Turnover

In general, moving inventory as quickly as possible is the most efficient path for low-margin companies. The goal of inventory optimization is to have the right amount of inventory on hand to meet customer demand. Too much inventory ties up valuable resources segmentation and can lead to stockouts, while too little inventory can result in lost sales. Inventory turnover is one of the KPIs(Key performance indicator) in terms of inventory management that indicates how quickly businesses sell through its inventory.

Using this information, the company decides to adjust their strategy next quarter. It’s important to maintain inventory levels by calculating how much the company sells and avoid dead stock which cogs your entire cash flow. Keeping a close pulse on your inventory turnover rate — one of many health metrics for an ecommerce business — can help you better understand areas of improvement. Here are just some of the important use cases for calculating your inventory turnover ratio. It is important to understand the concept of stock turnover ratio as it assesses the efficiency of a company in managing its merchandise.

Inventory Turnover Ratio Calculation Example

It is advisable to compare the stock turnover ratio for companies in the same industry and preferably of comparable sizes to draw meaningful insights. This information can help a company decide whether to raise prices, increase its orders, diversify suppliers, feature a product prominently in its marketing or buy additional related inventory. Ultimately, the inventory turnover ratio measures how well the company generates sales from its stock.

Constantly managing inventory effectively and efficiently is vital to the success ecommerce brands. Across your manufacturing, freight, and fulfillment partners can feel like a 24/7 job, balancing supply, demand, capital, space, lead times, and transit times. Inventory ratio is one of the most versatile metrics a business can track.

Powerful software to increase your inventory turnover

Beyond just selling products, your employees can make your store a memorable brand that customers want to keep coming back to. On the other hand, a company that makes heavy equipment, such as airplanes, will have a much lower turnover rate. It takes a long time to manufacture and sell an airplane, but once the sale closes, it often brings in millions of dollars for the company. If you have a good forecast on which products customers will want and when they want them, you can remove the burden of keeping too much stock and enjoy a higher stock turnover rate. As you can see, you can make specific business decisions to move the products more efficiently. You can put them on sale, order more contemporary products and lower the inventory you carry so that you aren’t waiting on sales and have your cash flow hampered.

• Having a low inventory turnover ratio means a business purchasing over than it needs or sales lower than it would be and the result is holding excess inventory.
• Using historical data to compare current years to past years could also provide helpful context.
• The turnover ratio is derived from a mathematical calculation, where the cost of goods sold is divided by the average inventory for the same period.
• It’s ok if not all your items are best-sellers, as some will always sell faster than others.

In other words, compare your apples to other apples—not oranges or mangos. Days sales of inventory (or days of inventory) calculates the average time it takes your business to turn inventory into sales. You can calculate DSI by taking your average inventory and dividing it by the cost of goods sold. Then multiply that number by 365, and you’ll know how many days it takes to sell your inventory.

Stock turnover ratio (STR)

This is largely the same equation, but it includes a company’s markup. That means it can lead to a different result than equations that use the cost of goods sold. A basic Magento POS can work as a cash register to create orders, add discounts and taxes, print receipts, and manage sales. But a complete Magento POS system can assist you with more advanced tasks, such as inventory control, supplier management, loyalty programs, etc. A complete omnichannel POS for Magento retailers

Sell online or in your physical stores seamlessly with real-time data synchronization. The most obvious way to increase your inventory turnover is by adopting a make-to-order workflow.