It may be hard to believe, but a simple tweak to your warehouse has the potential to lower tax costs, insurance premiums, capital, and depreciation. Once you drill down, multiple metrics exist to optimize your inventory practices and reduce carrying costs. Let’s look at how it all comes together with an inventory carrying cost example calculation. For growing online businesses, outsourcing your warehousing and fulfillment can be cheaper than managing everything in-house.

With inventory carrying costs generally accounting for 15-30% of a business’s total inventory value, carrying cost is an important metric to keep an eye on. Inventory carrying costs, often called holding costs, are the expenses a business incurs to store and maintain its inventory over a specific period. These costs encompass a wide range of expenses that go beyond just the initial purchase price of the inventory items. Understanding and managing the costs of holding inventory is essential for optimizing your business’s profitability and overall financial health. Inventory carrying costs have a lot to do with your profitability as a product-based small business. If your company maintains excess inventory, it will drain the business’s cash flow, making it difficult for you to meet running costs or break even.

• In addition to the assigned costs in each of these four categories, holding inventory also comes with an undefined opportunity cost.
• Inventory service expenses include software and hardware to monitor inventory, insurance, and any local taxes.
• Since brand new clothing was not a necessity at the time and the business did not have an online storefront, sales stagnated, and inventory remained unmoving.

Another issue with the situation is the expenses incurred by renting a warehouse, which may be too large for 1,000 t-shirts. On one hand, this data might be readily available and easier to work with. On the other, it might not produce numbers that are relevant to your business. This idea is explained in more detail by specialists Bernard J. LaLonde and Douglas M. Lambert through the example of cosmetics. Capital Cost – This is the money that is invested in your inventory, including interest. Constant innovations with changing times are the key to overcome hurdles in any business.

Now factoring in the cost of goods, we can calculate the inventory carrying costs as follows. Inventory carrying cost is the total cost of all expenses related to storing or holding any unsold goods. Typical inventory carrying costs include warehousing, labor, insurance, and rent, 23 of the best accounting events to attend in 2020 as well as depreciating non-physical costs caused by damaged, expired, or out-of-date products. When you know inventory carrying costs, you are at a lower risk of running into cash flow related issues. You must know the cash flow to ensure you are aware of the working capital.

Therefore, the cost of maintaining inventory varies greatly depending on the business. A frequently acknowledged optimal yearly inventory carrying cost, according to a 2018 APICS research, is 15–25 per cent. However, depending on the sector and the organization, annual inventory carrying costs might range from 18 per cent to 75 per cent. Capital expenditures include money spent on things and any interest and fees incurred if the goods were purchased with a loan.

Inventory Carrying Costs Examples

Once you’ve calculated the carrying costs of inventory, it’s essential to analyze the results. Identify areas where costs are high and consider strategies to reduce them. This might involve optimizing your storage space, implementing tighter inventory control measures, or renegotiating lease agreements for storage facilities. The key thing to avoid is inventory carrying costs that approach — or worst, exceed! Your inventory carrying cost as a percentage of your total inventory value is an important figure. It tells you what percentage of your total inventory expense was used in storing, transporting, and handling inventory items.

High carrying costs could mean cost savings, on-time supplies, and increased customer satisfaction, especially for retail businesses like supermarkets and stores. Finished goods are all the packed items that are ready to hit the market. You should think of them as short-term assets to be liquidated as soon as possible. The more time unsold products spend in your warehouse, the higher your inventory costs.

Inventory holding costs may account for up to a quarter of total inventory expenditures. For example, it may have cash flow issues if a company cannot quantify the cost of maintaining goods on hand, such as through an inventory or stock control system. Carrying costs, also known as holding costs and inventory carrying costs, are the costs a business pays for holding inventory in stock. Even the cost of capital that helps to generate income for the business is a carrying cost. Inventory carrying cost, or holding costs, is an accounting term that identifies all business expenses related to holding and storing unsold goods. The total carrying costs include the related costs of warehousing, salaries, transportation and handling, taxes, and insurance as well as depreciation, shrinkage, and opportunity costs.

Inventory Carrying Costs: What It Is & How to Calculate It

For example, the main ingredient for your manufacturing process may be sheets of metal. But you may also need to stock the stickers that you use on the finished metal product. Raw materials can be purchased from a vendor or produced by the manufacturer itself. For example, a dairy farm may produce the milk that they use to make ice cream. The first crucial step in this process is to obtain an accurate count of the inventory. Connect with us for a demo, and we’ll demonstrate how to unlock your inventory’s full potential.

Ways Businesses Fail to Lower Carrying Costs in 2023

Your inventory will not fall below your safety stock levels if you choose an optimal reorder point. It helps you save money on storage by notifying you when you need to get extra goods from your vendors. You will prevent shortage expenses, which is the danger of losing a client order owing to low inventory levels if you use a reorder point. You’ll know when it’s time to order additional shipments if you know what your reorder point is. Some inventory management software can generate data for trend analysis—another reason to invest in them. This expense is often taken for granted—many business owners can be hyper-focused on sales and revenue growth.

Minimize Inventory On Hand

Inventory carrying costs allow you to determine the value of each item. Because you know the price of storing inventory and how much you collect when you sell it, this statistic may help you estimate the profitability of each item. Knowing how lucrative your inventory is can help you choose how much inventory to maintain and whether to keep additional stock. It also allows you to consider ways to increase earnings, allowing you to boost profits. The holding sum must be minimized because it’s part of the reason why the carrying cost is so high. There’s little to be done with the manufacturing cost, but if more products from the inventory were sold, then the capital cost would be lower.

For example, if you sell inventory within 180 days of buying it as compared to having it sit for only 90 days, your carrying costs may double. By increasing inventory turnover, a company can decrease its holding costs and sell items at their highest value. As inventory increases and sales ramp up, a company may not pay much attention to reorganizing its warehouse operations. But with warehouses serving as the hub of all inventory, taking the time to improve its layout and workflow can provide a great opportunity to reduce costs and increase overall efficiency.

Understanding how much holding stock costs helps accounting teams stay on top of figures. Businesses can then buy the optimum amount, knowing exactly how much they’re spending and what the risks are. Appropriate organization of the warehouse space can dramatically decrease holding costs. For example, you can consider inserting shelves to optimize vertical space usage or use more containers. Ecommerce merchants can now leverage ShipBob’s WMS (the same one that powers ShipBob’s global fulfillment network) to streamline in-house inventory management and fulfillment. ShipBob helps you calculate the inventory needed to fulfill future customer orders with a data-driven approach.

Excess inventory can increase your capital costs, tying up money that could have been allocated to other growth-driving activities. Calculating inventory carrying costs reveals the various expenses and can inform strategies to streamline your inventory, optimize stock levels, and minimize financial strain. For example, a company that sells sporting goods might carry many items in inventory, such as sports equipment, apparel, footwear, and fitness trackers.

Conclusion: How Your Business Can Benefit From Lower Inventory Holding Costs With InventoryLogIQ in 2023

Where you store your inventory matters too because items take up valuable space in the warehouse and you will need to pay for that space. The method of storage also matters because bigger storage boxes and bins take up more space thereby increasing the overall storage costs. If you have a warehouse then rethink how you store your products so they are easy to retrieve and snugly fit without wasting space. When you have optimal stock levels on hand, you can reallocate funds for other purposes of the business. To learn more about how a third-party logistics provider can help with everything from reducing carrying costs to improving inventory forecasting, get in touch with ShipBob today.

Based on how successfully your sales went in a prior period (e.g. monthly), you may guarantee that you will keep more precise stock levels in the future. You may also set up automated notifications to notify you when your stock reaches a specific level, letting you know when it’s time to restock. Ordering a large number of items each month will reduce your order frequency and cost, but it will raise the amount of inventory you have on hand and your carrying expenses.

The cost of capital represents the interest or return on investment that could have been earned if the money tied up in inventory were invested elsewhere. Instead of recording your inventory on paper or a spreadsheet, choose a warehouse management system. For example, inventory tracking on FreshBooks means you can view, edit and review stockpiles right in your account.