Find dead stock and free up the cash it's tying up

Dead stock is inventory sitting in listings that is not moving, and every day it sits there is cash you cannot use for anything else. The Dead Stock page finds the listings most likely to be a problem, that is, unsold for a long stretch, priced below what they cost you, or barely covering their fees, and shows you how much capital is tied up so you can decide what to reprice, bundle, or clear.

What counts as dead stock

DashVue flags a listing as dead stock using a combination of signals, not just one rule:

• Unsold past 60 days. The listing has been live for more than 60 days with no sale.
• Priced below cost. The current listing price is lower than what the item cost you, meaning a sale at that price would lose money before fees are even counted.
• Thin margin. The listing is technically priced above cost, but the margin left after eBay and payment fees is small enough that it is barely worth holding stock for.

Any one of these can land a listing on the page. A listing that has been live 90 days and is also priced below cost is a much higher priority to deal with than one that just crossed the 60-day mark at a healthy margin.

Reading the capital tied up figure

Alongside each flagged listing, DashVue shows how much capital it represents, calculated from the item’s cost of goods sold (COGS) and how many units are sitting in that listing. Add these up across all your flagged listings and you get a total figure for how much cash is currently parked in stock that is not selling.

Working through the list

1. Open Dead Stock and sort by days unsold or by capital tied up, whichever matters more to you right now.
2. Check each flagged listing against its cost and current price. A listing priced below cost needs a price change before anything else, regardless of how long it has been live.
3. For listings that are simply slow but priced fine, decide whether a price cut, a bundle, or a straight markdown is the right move.
4. Jump to the repricer directly from a flagged listing to adjust the price without leaving the page.
5. Re-check the list after a repricing pass. Listings that sell or get corrected drop off; anything still there after another stretch of time is worth a harder look.

Limits worth knowing

Dead Stock totals cover your oldest 2,000 listings. If your account has more live listings than that, the ones outside this window are not included in the totals or the flagged list, so a very large catalogue may have dead stock that is not surfaced here.

See the related articles below for more on setting cost of goods sold and using the repricer.