Cash Gap Calculator
Is inventory holding back your growth?
See how much cash your inventory cycle ties up. Stackless helps you find the products and payment delays worth investigating.
Cash tied up in your cycle
Cash tied up in your cycle: $125,735.
- Cash gap
- 150.9 days
- Extra cash for 20% growth
- $25.1K
- Effective inventory days
- 105.9 days
- Monthly landed cost
- $25,000
- Daily landed cost
- $833
Illustrative product-cost estimate. Selling window divided by sell-through estimates inventory days. Assumptions and method below. Shared links include your figures.
Start with four rough numbers
Optional: refine payment timing & growth
Payment timeline
View as table
| Phase | Starts (day) | Ends (day) | Duration |
|---|---|---|---|
| Supplier payment time | 0 | 30 | 30 days |
| Transit time | 0 | 45 | 45 days |
| Effective inventory days | 45 | 150.9 | 105.9 days |
| Customer payment time | 150.9 | 180.9 | 30 days |
| Cash gap | 30 | 180.9 | 150.9 days |
Cash tied up in your cycle
$125.7K
Find out what’s tying up your cash.
Stackless connects your sales, inventory, and accounting data so you can see which products are moving slowly, where payments are delayed, and how those changes affect your cash needs. Use your actual data to find where to act next.
Input guide & calculation details
Input guide
What to enter
Approximate figures are fine. Use the same selling window for days and sell-through.
- Monthly net sales
- Average monthly sales after discounts and returns, excluding sales tax. You can type 100k or 1.2m.
- Gross margin
- Percentage of net sales remaining after product, freight, and duties, before operating expenses. This is margin, not markup.
- Transit time
- Days from placing the order until the product is ready to sell. Include production, shipping, and receiving. Time waiting for a sale is covered by the selling window and sell-through.
- Selling window
- The period you use to measure sell-through, such as 90 days. The worksheet divides this window by the share of stock sold to estimate effective inventory days.
- Sell-through
- The percentage of units sold during your selling window. For example, enter 85% if 85 out of 100 units sell in 90 days. A 0% rate has no finite inventory-days estimate.
- Supplier payment time
- Days from placing the order until you pay the supplier, even if your terms start at the invoice date. Pay at order? Enter 0. Assumes one payment; deposits and staged payments are excluded.
- Customer payment time
- Average days from a sale until the cash reaches your bank. Use your actual card payout delay or customer collection time.
- Planned sales growth
- The increase in sales you want to explore, assuming the same margin and payment timing.
- Cash gap
- Transit time plus effective inventory days and customer payment time, minus supplier payment time. A positive gap is money you fund; a negative gap means customers pay before you do.
- Product funding
- Daily landed product cost multiplied by the cash gap. Negative results represent a supplier-funded cushion. It covers product costs only, not operating expenses or the full value of unpaid customer invoices.
Methodology
How the calculation works
- 1
Find your landed cost
Monthly landed cost of goods is monthly sales × (1 − gross margin). We divide it by 30 for a daily figure. - 2
Estimate effective inventory days
Divide the selling window by the share of units sold in that window. For example, 90 days ÷ 85% gives 105.9 effective inventory days. This is the source model’s proxy, not an observed average holding time. A 0% sell-through rate has no finite estimate. - 3
Find the cash gap
Add transit time, effective inventory days, and customer payment time. Subtract supplier payment time. Use a consistent starting date for transit and supplier terms. - 4
Estimate product funding
Multiply daily landed product cost by the cash gap. Positive values are cash tied up; negative values represent a supplier-funded cushion. This covers product costs, not the full value of unpaid customer invoices or the peak cash needed for a shipment. - 5
Plan for growth
Extra cash for growth is cash tied up × planned sales growth, with margins and timing unchanged. If the cash gap is negative, the result is an additional financing cushion rather than a funding need.
This is a simplified estimate in US dollars, based on steady sales and replenishment and a 30-day month. It assumes one supplier payment covering the landed product cost, measured from the order date. It excludes deposits, staged payments, unsold stock, operating expenses, tax, borrowing costs, and seasonal peaks. It is not a current cash balance, a full working-capital calculation, or financial or accounting advice. Calculations run in your browser; sharing a results link shares the inputs in that link.