Act on cost rises and slow stock

Two checks protect your margin and your cash: a warning when a delivery costs more than before, and a list of the stock that has not sold for weeks. Both are calculated by fixed rules from your own figures.

Before you start

• A manager sets the thresholds. Reading the lists needs the right Inventory, receiving, stock-take or the reports right; applying a price needs Edit products or a manager.

Steps: set your thresholds

1. Open Settings → Selling.
2. In Warn when a cost rises by (%), type the rise that should warn you (10 by default; 0 = never).
3. In Margin floor (%; 0 = off), type the lowest margin you accept.
4. In Slow stock after (days without a sale), type the days (45 by default, from 7 to 365).
5. Choose Slow stock in the summary mail: Weekly, Daily or Off.
6. Save.

Steps: handle squeezed margins

1. When you receive a delivery, a line whose cost rose shows the old and new cost, the margin now and before, and a suggested price that keeps your margin.
2. Select Apply with the suggested price, or leave it to keep your price.
3. Open Inventory → Margins squeezed later to see every product a delivery pushed under your margin floor, with the price that brings it back.

Steps: deal with slow stock

1. Open Inventory → Slow and dead stock.
2. Read Value tied up: the money the slow stock holds at cost.
3. For each product, read its stock, value, last sale and What to do: discount it (the price leaves room), bundle it (three or more on hand), return to supplier (it came from a known supplier within 90 days) or stop reordering (it is still on an open purchase order).
4. Change the days with the presets at the top, or download the list as Excel or CSV.

Good to know

• Margins are worked out on the price without VAT, because VAT is never profit. The suggested price is rounded up to your country's price step.
• A line leaves Margins squeezed as soon as its margin is back over the floor, whether you applied the suggestion or changed the price yourself.
• A product that arrived within the slow days is not slow yet.
• "Days since the last sale" comes from your invoices and delivered orders. When the last sale is older than the history Kluvan reads, the line says "no sale in the last N days" instead of guessing a date.
• The owner alerts carry Margin squeezed once per product and delivery, and slow stock once a week per branch.
• With two or more branches, the slow list suggests where to move the stock: see Transfer stock between branches.