Every pallet in your warehouse has a receipt date. And from that day, a bill starts running: storage costs month after month, tied-up capital, and for some products a ticking best-before clock on top. The inventory ageing report from byrdAI answers a question that is asked surprisingly rarely: how long has my stock actually been sitting here?
What is special about that question: it warns earlier than any other. A product can still be selling perfectly well and yet accumulate too much old stock. Keep an eye on stock age and you spot problems before they surface in the slow-mover report or as overstock.
The problem: you cannot see age in the stock
In the dashboard, all units look the same. 500 units in stock, all good. The fact that 300 of them have been sitting there for over a year and only the last 200 are rotating fresh shows up in no stock figure on earth. For that you need the age view.
Old stock quietly eats margin. Goods that sit for 18 months have accumulated 18 months of storage costs before they make a single euro of revenue. For low-priced products, the storage costs eventually exceed the contribution margin, unnoticed.
Quality and shelf life age with it. Packaging yellows, trends turn, best-before dates draw closer. The older the stock, the smaller the window to still sell it normally.
How to build the inventory ageing report with byrdAI
Once connected, this is all it takes in Claude or ChatGPT:
"Create an inventory ageing report, grouped by age band."
byrdAI evaluates your stock by goods-receipt date and groups it into age bands: 0 to 30 days, 31 to 90, 91 to 180 and older than 180 days. With the ready-made dashboard prompt from the byrdAI page, that becomes a live dashboard with the age distribution, the oldest stock in detail, and a view of which warehouse old stock is concentrated in.
Which decisions to draw from it
The 180-day band is your worklist. Anything sitting for more than six months needs a decision: actively sell off, bundle or deliberately keep (with a reason, such as seasonal goods). No decision is also a decision, just the most expensive one.
The single oldest item first. The report shows you the oldest lot in the warehouse with age, quantity and location. That one item is almost always the best starting point: visible, concrete, immediately addressable.
Compare warehouse locations. If old stock is concentrated in one location, the goods may be in the wrong market. Sometimes the solution is not a discount but a relocation to where the demand sits.
Double-check best-before products. For batch-tracked goods, put the remaining shelf life next to the stock age straight away: the batch report shows whether old stock is also under time pressure.
From report to routine: early warning systems for your stock
The monthly age check.
"On the first of the month, send me the age distribution of my stock and the 10 oldest items, with the change versus the previous month." If the 180-day band is growing, you know immediately and not first at stocktake.
The old-stock trigger.
"Let me know when an item crosses the 180-day mark, with product, quantity, warehouse and tied-up stock value." Every new case lands with you individually, while it is still small.
The relocation analysis.
"Show me old stock per warehouse and compare it with the destination countries of my orders over the last 90 days." One question, two byrd data sources, and a well-founded decision on whether goods should change location.
The stocktake preparation.
Before the next count: "Create a list of all items over 180 days with storage-location hints for the counting team." Old items are the most common candidates for discrepancies, so the team gets them prioritised.
See at a glance how old your inventory really is.
As a byrd customer, you connect byrdAI to Claude or ChatGPT in around 5 minutes and copy the (freely adjusted) ageing prompt from our byrdAI page or below this section. Not a byrd customer yet? byrdAI comes only with byrd fulfilment, as the first European 3PL with an MCP server. Talk to us.
Example prompt for the inventory ageing report (adjust it however you like).
Frequently asked questions about inventory management with byrdAI
How is the stock age calculated?
From the goods-receipt date in the byrd warehouse, per item. The report groups into the bands 0 to 30, 31 to 90, 91 to 180 and over 180 days; items without a recorded receipt date are reported separately.
What is the difference from the slow-mover report?
The slow-mover report looks at sales activity (does a product sell or not). Inventory ageing looks at how long stock has been sitting, even for products that are selling. That is why ageing warns earlier: it finds the problems that are not problems yet.
Does the report help me with storage costs?
Directly. Old stock occupies storage locations you pay for monthly. Systematically reducing the 180-day band cuts occupied space and therefore running costs, on top of the capital freed up.
What does byrdAI cost?
During the beta, byrdAI is included free in your account for byrd customers.