Worked scenario
The slow shelf is where the expiry losses live
Expiry loss concentrates almost entirely in lines that move slowly — which are also the lines nobody counts, because counting them feels pointless.
3 min read
Nobody loses money on expiry in fast-moving staples. Rice does not sit long enough. The loss is on the third shelf: a sauce bought because a customer asked once, a shampoo variant nobody repeats on, a seasonal line that outlived the season.
Why it goes unmanaged
Because the effort of tracking dates is spread across everything while the benefit is concentrated in a few lines. Asked to date-track the whole shop, an owner reasonably declines. The task looks larger than the problem.
The tractable version is narrower: capture dates only for the categories that actually expire in a commercially relevant window, and only look at what is within sixty days.
The list that gets used
Not a full expiry report. A short one, ordered by value at risk, that answers a single question: what should be pushed, discounted or returned this fortnight.
Ten lines someone will act on beats four hundred nobody opens.
What it changes upstream
The more useful effect is on purchasing. Once slow movers are identifiable by rate of sale rather than by memory, the reorder decision stops being uniform. The shop keeps carrying the line for the customer who asks — it just stops buying six.
What changes
- Batch and expiry captured at receiving for the categories where it matters
- A short list of what expires in the next sixty days, ordered by value
- Slow movers identified before they become write-offs rather than after
- Reorder quantity informed by actual rate of sale on that specific line
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