Stock-Out and Inventory Reporting for D2C Brands in Data Studio

• What the page should answer
• The data I combine
• The calculations
• Layout that works
• Common traps

Harsh Khubchandani, independent Data Studio (formerly Looker Studio) consultant, New Delhi. Website: datastudioconsultant.com

Direct-to-consumer brands usually watch revenue and ad spend closely, then find out about a stock-out from a customer complaint. An inventory page in Data Studio fixes that if it is built around the decisions the operations team actually makes.

§What the page should answer

1. Which SKUs will run out in the next 14 days at the current sales rate?
2. Which SKUs are tying up cash because they barely sell?
3. Where are we still spending on ads for products we cannot ship?

§The data I combine

• Daily stock on hand by SKU, exported from the store or warehouse system into Google Sheets or BigQuery.
• Units sold per day by SKU from the store’s order export.
• Ad spend by product where campaigns or product groups map cleanly to SKUs.

§The calculations

• Average daily units over the last 28 days (shorter windows swing too much).
• Days of cover = stock on hand / average daily units. A simple, honest number the whole team understands.
• Status as a calculated field: “Reorder now” under 14 days of cover, “Watch” from 14 to 30, “Healthy” above 30, and “Slow mover” when cover is above 120 days.

§Layout that works

• A scorecard row: SKUs in “Reorder now”, value of slow-moving stock, ad spend on low-stock SKUs this week.
• A table sorted by days of cover, with conditional formatting on the status column.
• A small chart of units sold for the selected SKU, so a buyer can see if a spike is real or a one-day promotion.

§Common traps

• Bundles and variants: decide whether a bundle sale reduces the stock of each component, and build that mapping once in the data, not in charts.
• Returns: subtract them, or days of cover will look worse than it is.
• Time zones: the store and the warehouse export may cut the day at different times.

I build these pages directly in the client’s own Google account, and I reconcile stock totals with the warehouse system before handover. If you want one, start with a free 30-minute review at https://datastudioconsultant.com/.