Inventory Turnover Ratio: What It Is, How It Works, and Formula

Thrive’s Thermostock product optimizes these low-volume SKUs, preventing the accumulation of 90% of typical dead stock. Effective supply chain management is another crucial factor affecting inventory turnover. A well-managed supply chain can help wholesalers streamline their procurement processes, reduce lead times, and minimize inventory carrying costs. Wholesalers should regularly evaluate their product offerings and discontinue poor-performing SKUs.

  • Wholesalers can take corrective action by adjusting inventory levels, offering promotions or discounts, or disposing of excess inventory.
  • Calculating and tracking your business’s inventory turnover ratio can help you avoid overstocking inventory while making sure you have enough to meet demand.
  • By managing inventory, orders, warehouses, accounting, fulfillment, shipping, and purchasing this way, retailers are all set to avoid those problematic manual errors or disjointed systems.
  • If nothing else, it enables you to figure out your retail prices accurately to ensure optimum profits.
  • A healthy inventory turnover rate can indicate that the operational process is efficient, while low rates may signal problems with production or sales that can affect profits.
  • A lower number here will suggest you have too much inventory or you’re not selling for a high enough margin.

Secondly, consider using an automated inventory management system. This will allow you to track sales and stock levels in real-time and make adjustments accordingly. It also eliminates the risk of human error when managing your inventory. Improving your inventory turnover ratio can help you to streamline your supply chain and maximize profits. Obtain the COGS value from the company’s financial statements, specifically from the income statement.

Understanding this ratio can help wholesalers identify areas that require improvement, such as inventory management, demand forecasting, and marketing strategies. A low inventory turnover ratio can indicate inefficiency in managing inventory, resulting in increased holding costs, decreased profitability, and reduced cash flow. In some cases, it can also indicate that a business is overstocking and carrying too much inventory, which can tie up capital that could be invested in other areas of the business. In this example, Company A’s higher inventory turnover ratio indicates that it sells and replenishes its inventory eight times within a given period (typically a year). This suggests that Company A effectively manages its inventory, swiftly converting it into sales.

Characteristics and Financial Ratios of the Wholesale Retail Industry

Your inventory turnover ratio is 5, which means you turned over your inventory and replaced it five times in the past month. Having strong visibility into inventory turnover is helpful for a handful of reasons. Inventory turnover ratios can inform how you forecast sales for your business and reveal cracks in your inventory management processes.

This difference can be calculated using the Gross Margin Return on Investment (GMROI) ratio. You’ll have more cash in the bank, be able to spot and take advantage of more growth opportunities and pay off debts faster too, decreasing interest and making things look all the rosier. Afterall, the longer that stock sits in your warehouse, the longer you have to wait until you see your original investment again. Throughout this blog, we’ll tell you everything you need to know about inventory turnover. And crucially, the highest profits you can muster, from the smallest amount of stock.

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He believes supply chain finance is a crucial component of any successful business. His goal is to empower readers with the knowledge and tools they need to achieve these goals. When he’s not writing or consulting, he enjoys traveling and trying new foods. It’s important to understand what types of inventory you carry, as well as how much and when items are selling.

Inventory turnover ratio is an efficiency ratio that measures how well a company can manage its inventory. It is important to achieve a high ratio, as higher turnover rates reduce storage and other holding costs. It is vital to compare the ratios between companies operating in the same industry and not for companies operating in different industries.

If you increase your sales, the higher your stock turn ratio will be. If you arrive at a low ratio, it indicates you’ve got an efficient inventory management process. Conversely then, a higher ratio suggests you’re holding too much inventory and that it’s eating up your margins.. We’ll talk about how you can use your inventory turnover to assess efficiency.

Obsolete inventory ratio:

So, instead of leaving order volumes down to pure guesswork, retailers can seek to optimize their inventory turnover rates. Inventory turnover, or the inventory turnover ratio, is the number of times a business sells and replaces its stock of goods during a given period. It considers the cost of goods sold, relative to its average inventory for a year or in any a set period of time. Depending on your business, that inventory might be final products like pottery or linens, or raw materials like lumber or wool. Either way, you don’t receive revenue until you turn over, or sell, those goods. Your inventory turnover ratio can impact the amount of profit you have flowing through your business and determine whether you’re able to meet the demand for your products.

Five Reasons Why Tracking Your Inventory Turnover Ratio Is Important

Calculating your inventory turnover ratio is a crucial step in understanding the efficiency of your supply chain. This ratio helps you determine how quickly you are selling and replacing goods within a specific period, usually a year. By keeping track of the inventory turnover ratio, businesses can make informed decisions about their purchasing practices, pricing strategies, and overall operations. For instance, if you have a high inventory turnover rate in a particular product category, it could indicate strong demand for those items. Therefore, you may want to increase your procurement quantities or adjust prices accordingly. On the other hand, low Inventory Turnover Ratios suggest inefficiencies in managing stock levels or slow-moving products.

How can I determine my inventory turnover rate?

The most common of which is that the inventory turnover ratio is calculating the average turnover of ALL your parts. While your inventory turnover ratio can offer a number of insights into your ability to sell parts quickly and to fulfill customer’s orders, it does have some qualifiers. You inventory turnover ratio shows how many time your parts are sold or replaced over time.

Finally, wholesalers should strive to maintain consistency in their product offerings and ensure that they meet the changing demands of their customers. Could we make the same gross profit on an even smaller investment? The annual gross profit of $2,500 is now generated with an investment of about $2,500. Most inventory management programs can generate an inventory turnover report for each item in your system, allowing you to analyze your inventory quickly and efficiently. The remaining 60% of the inventory would have an inventory ratio of 2.67 (($4 million x 60%) / ($1 million x 90%)) and are turning, on average, every 136.7 days. That is significantly higher than the average 91.25 days, showing that slow moving parts can be hidden by the average.

Performance Benchmarking

Additionally, wholesalers can use digital supply chain planning tools to identify and manage slow-moving inventory and develop effective marketing strategies to increase demand for these products. Having a high inventory turnover can indicate that you better understand your customers’ preferences and demand for your figuring out your form w products. This information can help you make better decisions when it comes to purchasing and stocking inventory. By analyzing your sales data, you can identify which products are selling well and which ones are not. This can help you decide which products to stock, how much inventory to hold, and when to reorder.