Slow-moving stock on Shopify: the reports, the gaps, and what to stop advertising

To find slow-moving stock on Shopify, go to Analytics, then Reports, filter the category to Inventory, and open Products by sell-through rate and Inventory remaining per product. Then check what those reports leave out. A variant that has never sold does not appear in the sell-through report at all, and in a shop with many sizes that is often the worst stock you have.

This guide walks through the reports, the gaps in them, a change Shopify made on 1 October 2026, and a worked example from a body-jewellery shop where one product can carry a dozen variants. It ends with the marketing side: what to stop advertising, and what to push.

The Shopify reports that show slow stock

All of these sit under Analytics, then Reports, with the Category filter set to Inventory (Shopify Help Center, inventory reports):

• Products by sell-through rate: units sold divided by (units sold plus units still in stock) for the period you choose. A low rate means stock is sitting.
• Inventory remaining per product: ending quantity divided by the average sold per day, giving an estimate of days left before each variant runs out.
• ABC product analysis: grades each variant by its share of revenue over the last 28 days. Grade A covers the top sellers that make up 80% of revenue, grade B the next 15% and grade C the last 5%. Cost does not count towards the grade.
• Inventory sold daily by product: average units sold per day for each variant.
• Month-end inventory value: the cost of stock on hand, for variants with a cost per item recorded.

The slow stock the reports miss

Shopify's help page says variants only display in the sell-through report if they have sold at least once before or during the selected period. A variant you stocked and never sold is not in that report at all. In the days remaining report, a variant with no sales in the period shows N/A, because there is no sales rate to divide by.

So the stock that is costing you most can be the stock you never see. To catch it, open the Month-end inventory snapshot, which lists the quantity of each variant in stock at the end of each month, and compare it with the sell-through report for the same period. Any variant with stock in the snapshot and no row in sell-through has never sold.

The days remaining figure has a second limit for slow sellers. Shopify bases the daily average on recent sales, the last 28 days according to its help page. A variant that sold three units two months ago and none since will show N/A, which reads like missing data when it is really a warning. For anything that sells less than once a week, work out days of cover yourself over 90 days.

The 1 October 2026 change

Shopify's help page says that starting 1 October 2026, inventory reports measure stock by On hand quantity instead of Available quantity. On hand includes committed and unavailable units, so reported quantities can be higher than before. Data before 1 October 2026 still shows Available quantity.

If you compare September with October, part of any rise in stock may be this change and not slower sales. Recheck any thresholds you set on the old figures, and compare like with like until you have a few months of On hand data.

A worked example: one labret, three lengths

A body-jewellery shop sells a titanium labret in one gauge and three lengths, each a separate variant costing £2.10 a unit. Over the last 90 days:

• 8mm sold 42 and has 30 left. That is 0.47 a day, about 64 days of cover and a sell-through rate of 58%.
• 6mm sold 3 and has 40 left, with no sales in the last month. Over 90 days that is 0.03 a day and about 1,200 days of cover, with a sell-through rate of 7%. Shopify's days remaining shows N/A.
• 10mm has never sold and has 25 left. It does not appear in the sell-through report.

At cost, the 6mm and 10mm hold £136.50 between them, against £63 in the 8mm that actually sells. Across a catalogue with hundreds of variants, that pattern adds up to real money on a shelf. The fix for the product is to reorder 8mm only and stop reordering the other two.

Decide per variant: reorder, hold, push or clear

Use thresholds that suit your lead times. As a starting point for a small shop restocking from one supplier:

• Reorder: under 30 days of cover and a healthy sell-through rate.
• Hold: 30 to 120 days of cover. Do nothing yet, and look again next month.
• Push: 120 to 365 days of cover. Promote it on purpose, with a plan and an end date.
• Clear: over a year of cover, or never sold after three months. Bundle it, mark it down, or sell it to a trade buyer, and stop reordering it.

Stop paying to advertise the wrong stock

Slow stock is a marketing question as much as a buying one. If your ads or product feeds promote a whole collection, check how much of that spend lands on C-grade variants with a year of cover. Ad money that sends people to a page where the popular sizes are sold out and only the slow sizes remain would usually do more behind your A-grade sellers.

For variants you have decided to push, use the channels that cost least per send. Email past buyers of the matching style in other sizes, add the slow variant to a bundle with a best seller, or feature it in a post with a clear reason to buy now. Then check sell-through again a month later and move the variant to clear if nothing changed.

Our guide to a marketing dashboard for small business puts stock in the daily read for this reason: a best seller with a week of cover left needs action before an ad set does.

See stock and marketing in one morning brief

BriefSieve was built for tattoo and body-jewellery operators. Its Products section shows best sellers, slow movers and stock signals across your catalogue, next to Ads, Email, Sales and Amazon in the same dashboard. Every morning its AI Guru writes a plain-English brief of what changed and what to do next. Code computes each figure, and the Guru explains them, cites the sync each came from and is never allowed to do the arithmetic.

Plans start at £29 a month excluding VAT, and the app runs at mypa.services under the name VirtualPA. Start the 15-day BriefSieve trial, which covers two integrations and needs no card, connect Shopify first, and see your slow movers in tomorrow's brief.