MarginKoala

What does an out-of-stock period cost me?

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A stockout does not automatically lose every order forever. Enter the share of normal demand you expect is genuinely lost and the contribution each fulfilled order would otherwise create.
$

Amount the order leaves after variable costs. Enter a negative number if fulfilling the order is loss-making before fixed overhead.

days
%

Your scenario. 100% means none of the demand is delayed, backordered or substituted; 0% means all demand is recovered elsewhere or later.

Koala's Calculated Result
Contribution effect of the owner-entered lost-demand scenario.

Add normal daily demand, contribution per fulfilled order, stockout duration and your lost-demand assumption.

MarginKoalaKoala's Professional Opinion

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Frequently asked questions

What is a stockout cost?

Stockout cost is the profit you lose when a SKU is unavailable — daily orders × lost margin per order × stockout days. The headline number for any single out-of-stock incident; the read for the lost revenue, not just the lost units.

Stockout Cost

What's the difference between lost sales and lost profit?

MarginKoala does not assume a customer-response effect. Use the calculated economics as a boundary, then test demand, conversion, redemption, retention or basket-size assumptions with observed business data or an explicit scenario.

Stockout Cost

Should I read out-of-stock as a one-time event?

Yes — split it into the stockout period, the recovery period, and the per-day drag. A 3-day stockout at 50 lost orders/day is half a 6-day stockout at 25 — read in per-day lost-profit, not in absolute lost sales.

Stockout Cost

What's a reasonable per-stockout cost?

There is no universal numeric target for this decision. Compare the result with the business’s own economics, history, constraints and explicit target, or with a verified benchmark that matches the same metric definition and market context.

Stockout Cost

Educational use, not financial advice. Numbers are estimates for planning; consult a qualified professional before acting on them.