Optimize Inventory for Black Friday Success with Genie: Which Metrics to Track

We have built the most powerful and intuitive inventory management platform for Shopify merchants. Going into Black Friday, Cyber Monday, many merchants ask us "What data should we be tracking for our products?"

Well, we think that there are only three things you really should be tracking into this next weekend. The first one is profitability, the second is sales, and the third is how quickly your inventory turns over and when you will be running out.

The reason why, is that they ultimately determine both your cash flow and profitability coming out of Black Friday, which means everything to your operations. The other part is customer acquisition which is obviously why you've spent a long time preparing.

Now, how do you go and track these things in Genie?

Profitability

Well, profitability, you can just pull out of Genie by looking at gross margins based on your unit costs in Shopify.

If you want/need to update those unit costs, you can easily use the purchase order form to get full calculations with everything like customs, insurance, discounts, etc, which gives you a landed cost per product. This number then can be updated in Shopify to give you a more accurate picture of margins.

Sales Volume

The second is sales volume and sales velocity. This is also a fairly easy metric to analyze in Genie as you can use our grading system to see at a glance what products are performing the best.

Alternatively, you could leverage your average daily sales or sales revenue which can be found on your inventory table. Both will give you a good idea of how many units you sell and how well they perform.

Now, unless you always keep a narrow view of your inventory, you may want to make some adjustments a couple days before Black Friday (or whenever you start your sales) so you can see a live view of performance.

To do this, navigate to your settings, and under the tab "Insights" you can adjust the calculation period for both average daily sales and grading to "7 days." This will ensure that you get a near-live look at what your best-sellers are.

Inventory Turnover

The third thing to look at is your inventory turnover. This can also be analyzed in two ways.

Option 1: Looking at your Estimated Stockout Date.

Option 2: Looking at Days to Order.

Ideally, you would use them in tandem with each other but you can also analyze them separately and get a good understanding of when you should be restocking. We recommend that you are always aware of where you are in a product's ordering window. This will help immensely with avoiding stockouts and ensure you are always one step ahead of demand.  

You never really want to be more than a couple of days overdue and you never really want to have more than a month's worth of days to order.

By tracking these key metrics, merchants can ensure successful promotions and operations during the busiest sales period of the year. We are also more than happy to help you with other reports in Genie, so if there's anything in particular you want to track, let us know — we're here to help you out.

If you have any questions feel free to reach out to our team or check out other guides in our help center.