Five questions to ask your POS data this month
Margin leaks, dead stock and quiet churn hide in plain sight. Start with these five queries.
1. Which SKUs are selling below cost?
Price changes, supplier cost increases and manual discounts drift out of sync more often than owners expect. A simple margin-by-SKU query, run monthly, catches products quietly losing money on every sale.
2. What hasn't sold in 60 days?
Dead stock ties up cash and shelf space. Flagging anything with zero movement in two months gives you a clear list to discount, bundle or stop reordering.
3. Which customers have gone quiet?
Compare each repeat customer's usual order interval against their most recent purchase. Anyone overdue by more than double their normal gap is a churn risk worth a personal follow-up, not a mass promotion.
4. Which hour of the day underperforms?
Sales-by-hour data usually reveals one or two dead periods where staffing, promotions or opening hours don't match actual demand.
5. What do your best customers buy together?
A basket-analysis pass across your top 20% of customers by spend often surfaces a bundling opportunity that's been sitting in the data the whole time.