What is sell-through rate?

Sell-through rate is the percentage of the stock you had available that you sold during a period.

How to calculate it

The usual formula is:

Sell-through rate = units sold ÷ (units sold + units left at the end) × 100

Units sold plus units left is the stock you had to sell, whether it was on hand at the start or arrived during the period. Some people use "units received" as the bottom of the fraction instead. Pick one version and stick with it so periods compare fairly.

Core WooCommerce doesn't calculate sell-through rate. You can get the pieces yourself: units sold per product from Analytics › Products (the Items sold column) for your date range, and current stock from Analytics › Stock or the product's Inventory tab.

A worked example

Say you had 200 linen scarves to sell in October. You sold 150 and 50 are left.

• Sell-through: 150 ÷ (150 + 50) × 100 = 75%

A second scarf sold 20 of 200, a sell-through of 10%. Same starting stock, very different stories.

Why it matters

Sell-through shows whether stock is moving at the pace you bought it for. A high rate means you may run out and should reorder sooner. A low rate points to dead stock in the making, which ties up cash. It works well next to stock runway, which looks forward instead of back. The guide on calculating sell-through rate shows how to build it from an export, and finding dead stock covers what to do with slow sellers.