Inventory Turnover Primer: Calculations, Rates and Analyses

inventory turnover meaning

Discover how you can leverage this to improve your inventory management in Shopify. Explore innovative merchandising strategies to boost e-commerce sales and create an engaging shopping experience for customers. For information pertaining to the registration status of 11 Financial, please contact the state securities regulators for those states in which 11 Financial maintains a registration filing.

inventory turnover meaning

Learn effective strategies to quickly sell slow-moving inventory on Shopify, from optimizing product listings to using discounts and promotions smartly. Let’s compare them and see if this system is a good option for your store. It may be due to more efficient processes, or it may be due to more demand for the products it offers. However, very generally speaking, the movement of this ratio from 2022 to 2024 in Walmart’s case appears to be positive. It plays a key role in enabling managers to truly appreciate the efficiency (or lack thereof) of their organization’s stock management practices.

  1. Most businesses operating in a specific industry typically try to stay as close as possible to the industry average.
  2. Inventory turnover measures whether a business has excessive inventory as compared to how well it is selling.
  3. Cost of goods sold is an expense incurred from directly creating a product, including the raw materials and labor costs applied to it.
  4. Since sales generate revenues, you want to have an inventory turnover ratio that suggests that you are moving products in a timely manner.
  5. Some retailers choose to use software such as open-to-buy that calculates KPIs like inventory turnover.

Define Inventory Turnover Rate in Simple Terms

Inventory turnover is a ratio used to express how many times a company has sold or replaced its inventory in a specified period. Business owners use this information to help determine pricing details, marketing efforts and purchasing decisions. To calculate inventory turnover, simply divide your cost of goods sold (COGS) by your average inventory value.

Companies gauge their operational efficiency based upon whether their inventory turnover is at par with, or surpasses, the average benchmark set per industry standards. Inventory turnover can be compared to historical turnover ratios, planned ratios, and industry averages to assess competitiveness and intra-industry performance. You can draw some conclusions from our examples that will xero pricing reviews features help your business plan. Knowing how often you need to replenish inventory, you can plan orders or manufacturing lead times accordingly. Possible reasons could be that you have a product that people don’t want. Or, you can simply buy too much stock that is well beyond the demand for the product.

Lead Times and Supplier Relationships

The inventory turnover ratio can help businesses make better decisions on pricing, manufacturing, marketing, and purchasing. It is one of several common efficiency ratios that companies can use to measure how effectively they use their assets. Inventory Turnover Ratio plays a pivotal role in understanding how efficiently a company manages its inventory. It measures the frequency at which a company sells and replaces its inventory within a specific period.

On the other hand, a low inventory turnover ratio in relation to a particular item indicates its slow movement. As such, inventory turnover refers to the movement of materials into and out of an organization. Cost of goods sold is an expense incurred from directly creating a product, including the raw materials and labor costs applied to it. A high inventory turnover generally means that goods are sold faster and a low turnover rate indicates weak sales and excess inventories, which may be challenging for a business. 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.

Fails to Consider Seasonal Demand Patterns

As mentioned, the inventory turnover ratio measures the number of times a company’s inventory is sold and replaced over a certain period. A higher inventory ratio is usually better, although there may also be downsides to a high turnover. Before interpreting the inventory turnover ratio and making an opinion about a firm’s operational efficiency, it is important to investigate how the firm assigns cost to its inventory. For example, companies using FIFO cost flow assumption may have a lower ITR number in days of inflation because the latest inventory purchased at higher prices remain in stock under FIFO method. A high ratio indicates that the firm is dealing in fast moving inventories and a low ratio, on the other hand, indicates slow moving or obsolete inventories lying in stock. Moreover, excessive quantities in stock always pose a risk of loss due to factors like damage, theft, spoilage, shrinkage and stock obsolescence.

What Inventory Turnover Measures

Inventory turnover is calculated by dividing a company’s cost of sales, or cost of goods sold (COGS), by the average value of its inventory over two recent consecutive periods. Analysts use COGS instead of sales in the formula for inventory turnover because inventory is typically valued at cost, whereas the sales figure includes the company’s debtors control account markup. Some companies may use sales instead of COGS in the calculation, which would tend to inflate the resulting ratio. The income statement of Duro Items Inc. shows a net sales of $660,000 and balance sheet shows an inventory amounting to $44,000. However, a higher ratio than competitors or historical data might indicate more efficient inventory management.

This could be due to a problem with the goods being sold, insufficient marketing, or overproduction. Average Inventory is the mean value of the inventory during a specific period, typically calculated by adding the beginning and ending inventory for a period and dividing by two. Inventory turnover shows the liquidity of a company, or how quickly it can sell its inventory without it losing value and pay off short-term debts. Stock is the least liquid asset, so calculating how quickly it can sell demonstrates the company’s financial health.