Is Your MRO Inventory Obsolete? Life Cycle Engineering

It is essential to consider any possible seasonality for the business, as it will heavily impact our analysis. This article will show you how to identify and battle obsolete Inventory, also known as dead stock. With the right data, you can identify slow-moving items and make decisions on whether to discontinue certain items or run a promotion to sell slow-moving items faster before they completely lose their value. With ShipBob, you can split inventory across our international fulfillment network and easily track and manage inventory in real time all through ShipBob’s user-friendly merchant dashboard. And make informed decisions to avoid purchasing too much of an item that might become obsolete faster than it can be sold. Promotions are a proven way to move products that aren’t selling as quickly as expected.

• When storage rooms are cluttered with supplies, it also becomes difficult for your team to find the parts and products they need, wasting time and energy.
• At this stage, your inventory may still sell using strategies such as bundling, discounts, and remarketing.
• The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
• If no-one on your team is mathematical, it may be worth it to obtain analytical expertise outside of your company.
• Obsolete inventory is a problem that many businesses struggle to solve.
• Roger Johnsonhas more than 30 years of private and public company experience as CFO, VP of Finance, Controller, and Director of Finance and Administration.

As we can see from this example, the valuation of inventory as obsolete affects both balance sheet and income statement . Because inventory obsolescence represents an expense (e.g., cost of goods sold) that affects profits in the current accounting period, management might have an incentive to manipulate the allowance for https://www.bookstime.com/. This practice is not appropriate and auditors usually watch out for it. For instance, a company might recognize excessive inventory write-downs due to obsolescence in the accounting period when profits are higher than expected (i.e., debit cost of goods sold). Later on, when profits are lower than expected, the company might sell the written-down obsolete inventory at high profit margins in order to increase the reported profits (i.e., credit cost of goods sold). Examples of expense accounts include cost of goods sold, inventory obsolescence accounts, and loss on inventory write-down.

What Causes Obsolete Inventory?

In this case, they may perform inventory cycle counting for specific categories. As much as 20% to 30% of business’ inventory is obsolete at any given time, and they may write off most or all of those goods as a loss. That’s a big number, and could represent the breaking point for a struggling organization.

Along with inventory management, having visibility over your inventory at all times is key. Known as obsolete inventory, holding on to purchased inventory that is no longer sellable can significantly harm your bottom line. The following table of features for inventory control and inventory management systems can help you decide whether you need one of the systems or both. They need to understand how long after they place an order they will actually receive products, which could vary among vendors. Extended lead times, especially if they’re longer than expected, can be especially problematic because demand for a product could drop in the months that pass before an organization receives the goods. High rates of obsolete inventory can ultimately affect profitability and the long-term viability of a business.

Motorsport Closeout and Obsolete Piston Sets

obsolete inventory management is mostly about understanding your customers and making sure you’re matching their demands. This tool will show you whether you’re carrying excess stock and need to ramp up your sales efforts, or if you’re getting low on certain products and need to reorder. Letting obsolete inventory waste away in your warehouse won’t solve the problem, and neither will fantasizing about it disappearing in a stroke of pure luck.

Software can trigger alerts for purchasers when it’s time to reorder, but supply chain employees need to be on the lookout for a surge or drop in sales of a certain inventory item. In most industries, there are liquidators that buy leftover inventory at a steep discount and then resell it. This is a good option if you tried remarketing, discounting and bundling and it didn’t move enough product. While the price liquidators pay may be at or below cost, it’s still better than writing-off obsolete stock as a loss. Items that don’t sell well on their own may perform better as part of a package.

Donate Obsolete Inventory for Tax Deductions

Because obsolete inventory can lead to major cash flow problems, it can hurt a business’ ability to weather a rough patch. If a company with slim margins consistently finds itself with obsolete inventory and doesn’t address the problem, it could end up in a deep hole. Depreciation is an accounting method of allocating the cost of a tangible asset over its useful life to account for declines in value over time. An inventory write-off is an accounting term for the formal recognition of a portion of a company’s inventory that no longer has value.

• In the sample footnote, “lower of cost or market” means that the company reports the value of its inventory items either at the cost it paid to acquire them or at the current market value of the item, whichever is lower.
• Perhaps an item breaks easily or doesn’t work as advertised, due to either a design oversight or a mistake in the manufacturing process.
• In this case, they may perform inventory cycle counting for specific categories.
• If the inventory is used directly to care for the needy, ill, or infants additional deductions may be available.
• And while some inventory obsolescence is simply the cost of doing business, there’s plenty your company can do to reduce that risk.
• Obsolete inventory, also known as excess inventory or dead inventory, is the inventory that remains unused when the product life cycle ends.
• Smaller operations will sometimes list the obsolete items on bidding sites or, in the case of metals, money can be recovered from scrapping the items.

The total cost of this inventory can be as high as 25% when considering the cost of the storage, shrinkage, damage and the time value of money. If you want granular insight into your inventory levels, then you should use something like a cloud-based inventory management systemthat allows you to know how much inventory you have at all times. If your customers refuse to buy your obsolete inventory, no matter how much you market, discount, and bundle it, then you can always sell your excess stock to liquidation organizations. Bundling products that are slow-moving with products that are best sellers can be one way to get it moving out the door. For example, if your company sells cleaning products and your top seller is your all-purpose cleaner, but you find yourself with an abundance of scrubbing sponges—make a bundle out of them! Pairing your all-purpose cleaner with a three-pack of sponges not only moves your excess inventory out the door faster but also entices customers to purchase more cleaners since the bundle makes it a great deal.

“Months on Hand” is just over three months and usage/sales are increasing which gives a much different outlook. A typical calculation of Months on Hand or Days on Hand for Total Year Usage, indicates that both items are both at 4.4 months on hand . Another option is to find competitors who might have more use of the items and sell to them. However, this will usually also happen at a significantly discounted price. We are trying to realize in bulk so that we can salvage at least some of the value.