How to get a dead stock report on Lightspeed's Core plan

You went looking for the dusty inventory report and it isn't there. That's not a bug and it's not buried in a menu — Lightspeed's own documentation on basic and advanced reporting states that the inventory sell-through, dusty inventory, and recently-out-of-stock reports "are not available on the discontinued Pro and the current Core plans."

The good news: everything that report calculates can be rebuilt from two CSV exports and about twenty minutes of spreadsheet work. This guide walks through the whole thing, formulas included. If you'd rather not do the spreadsheet part, there's a shortcut at the end — but you don't need it to get your answer.

What the dusty inventory report actually shows

Per Lightspeed's doc on using the dusty inventory report, it lists slow-moving products with four key columns:

• Last sale date — when each product last sold
• Sell-through — how fast stock is converting to sales
• Inventory cost — what your on-hand stock cost you
• Retail value — what it could sell for at full price

The point of the report is a ranked list of products that are candidates for clearance, remerchandising, or discontinuation — sorted by how much of your cash they're sitting on. None of that math is exotic. It's a last-sale lookup and two multiplications.

Why Core doesn't have it

Lightspeed splits X-Series reporting into basic and advanced tiers by plan. The advanced inventory reports — dusty inventory among them — sit on the Plus plan, alongside Insights (demand forecasting, order recommendations, custom reporting).

On Lightspeed's published pricing (checked July 2026), Core runs US$149/month billed annually (about $179 billed monthly) and Plus runs $289/month billed annually (about $339 monthly). That's roughly $1,680 more per year to unlock the report tier — a real decision for a single-store shop. If you run multiple locations or want purchase-order automation, the upgrade can genuinely pay for itself; we cover when it does in our Lightspeed Insights alternatives comparison.

Two things Core does keep, and they matter here:

1. The basic inventory replenishment report — closing inventory, items sold, days cover, and manual reorder points. Useful for the reorder side of the problem.
2. CSV export on every plan. You can export reporting data and sales history as CSV or XLSX regardless of plan. Your data was never locked up — only the pre-built view of it.

The manual path: build it yourself

Step 1 — Export two files

You need your sales history (line-level sales going back at least 12 months) and your product list (SKU, on-hand quantity, supply price, retail price). Sales history exports from Sell > Sales history via Export list; note that each export covers up to your last 1,000 sales, so use date filters to pull it in chunks per Lightspeed's guide on exporting sales over a time period. The product list exports from the Products page — full walkthrough of every export, headers, and gotchas here.

Step 2 — Set up the workbook

Paste your sales chunks into one sheet named Sales (say date in column A, SKU in column B, quantity in column C). Put the product export on a sheet named Products (SKU in A, name in B, on-hand in C, supply price in D, retail price in E). Then add four columns to Products:

Last sale date (F2):

=MAXIFS(Sales!$A:$A, Sales!$B:$B, $A2)

Format column F as a date. A result of 0 (it displays as 1/0/1900) means the SKU never sold inside your export window — those rows are your most suspect stock, not an error.

Days since last sale (G2):

=IF(F2=0, 9999, TODAY()-F2)

Cash tied up at cost (H2):

=C2*D2

Status flag (I2):

=IF(C2=0, "no stock", IF(G2>=180, "dead", IF(G2>=90, "slow", "ok")))

Step 3 — Total the damage

• Dollars locked in dead stock: =SUMIFS(H:H, I:I, "dead")
• Dead SKU count: =COUNTIF(I:I, "dead")
• Retail value of dead stock (what it could recover): swap column D for E in the cash-tied-up formula.

If you also want the sell-through rate the gated report shows, add units sold per SKU with =SUMIFS(Sales!$C:$C, Sales!$B:$B, $A2) and compute sold ÷ (sold + on hand) for your chosen period. Under ~20% over 90 days is worth a hard look for most everyday categories.

Reading the results like an operator

The 90/180-day thresholds above are defaults, not laws. Adjust them:

• Seasonal goods get a pass until their season has actually come and gone once.
• New items (received in the last 60 days) haven't had a fair chance yet — filter them out.
• Special orders and consignment shouldn't be in the list at all.

Then work the list by dollars, not by row count. Ten dead SKUs at $400 each matter more than a hundred at $4. For each big-dollar line, you have four moves: markdown to clearance, bundle it with a mover, return it to the vendor if terms allow, or write it off and reclaim the shelf space. Doing nothing is also a decision — it just costs 20–30% of the stock's value per year in carrying cost, which is the quiet half of cash leakage.

Set a calendar reminder and re-run this monthly. Dead stock is a ratchet: it only accumulates unless something forces it back out.

The shortcut: a free ShelfReport scan

If the spreadsheet above is more upkeep than you want, ShelfReport does the same math for you. Upload the same two CSV exports and get your dead-stock list ranked by dollars tied up, plus reorder-risk and cash-leakage checks, in a couple of minutes. The free scan shows your top findings; the full report is $79 one-time — no subscription, no POS integration, nothing to install. Run a free scan →

Related guides

• Exporting your data from Lightspeed X-Series: every CSV that matters
• Lightspeed Insights alternatives for small stores (2026)
• Cash leakage: the number your POS never shows you

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ShelfReport is an independent tool and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Lightspeed Commerce. "Lightspeed" and "X-Series" are trademarks of Lightspeed Commerce Inc. Plan features and pricing were checked against Lightspeed's published documentation on July 1, 2026 — confirm current details with Lightspeed before making plan decisions.