--- title: "What Is Sell-Through Rate?" url: https://www.uncap.com/glossary/sell-through-rate author: "Denis Dyli" published: 2026-10-14 updated: 2026-10-28 summary: "Sell-through rate is the percentage of stock on hand that sold during a period, usually a month. In wholesale it measures how much of a product a retailer sells after its supplier ships it. Shopify calculates it as units sold divided by units sold plus units still in inventory at the end of the period." --- # What Is Sell-Through Rate? > Sell-through rate is the percentage of stock on hand that sold during a period, usually a month. In wholesale it measures how much of a product a retailer sells after its supplier ships it. Shopify calculates it as units sold divided by units sold plus units still in inventory at the end of the period. **Sell-through rate**: Sell-through rate is the percentage of stock on hand that sold during a period, usually a month. In wholesale it measures how much of a product a retailer sells after its supplier ships it. Shopify calculates it as units sold divided by units sold plus units still in inventory at the end of the period. ## How it works Sell-through compares what sold with the stock that was there to sell. Shopify's version: Sell-through rate = units sold / (units sold + units still in inventory) - Units sold are counted over the whole period. - Units still in inventory are counted on the last day of the period. - The denominator represents the stock on hand, and it accounts for restocks and new inventory received during the period. Shopify also reports a simpler cousin, percent of inventory sold, which divides units sold by the quantity at the start of the period. Stock received during the period is not in that denominator, so percent sold can run above 100%, and Shopify notes that values over 100% are possible. The sell-through formula cannot pass 100%, because Shopify counts a negative ending quantity as 0. At 100%, nothing was left in inventory at the end of the period. A low rate means most of the stock is still there. ## Sell-through in a wholesale channel In a supply chain, sell-through looks at what happens after the supplier ships: the percentage of a product a retailer sells once its supplier has shipped it. To measure it, the supplier needs its partners' sales data. In EDI, the X12 852 Product Activity Data transaction set can be used to advise a trading partner of inventory, sales and other product activity information. Its receiver keeps inventory or product movement records for its trading partners to calculate replenishment from data provided by the distributor, warehouse or retailer. ## Example Illustrative numbers only. A distributor carries one SKU of LED fixtures. It starts the month with 300 units, receives 200 more mid-month and sells 350, so it ends with 300 + 200 - 350 = 150 units. - Sell-through rate = 350 / (350 + 150) = 350 / 500 = 70%. - Percent of inventory sold, against the starting 300 units = 350 / 300 = about 117%, because of the mid-month restock. Now the supplier's view. Say it shipped those 500 units over the last two months. The distributor's product activity data shows 350 sold, so the supplier's sell-through on what it shipped is 350 / 500 = 70%. ## On Shopify Shopify's Products by sell-through rate report shows what percentage of your inventory you sold in the selected period, per variant, using the formula above. A few rules from Shopify's documentation: - Data runs about two days behind, and the report uses the most recent 30-day period available. - Negative inventory quantities are ignored, products whose inventory isn't tracked count as 0 units sold, and a negative ending quantity counts as 0. - A variant appears only if it sold at least once before or during the period. - Quantity sold doesn't reflect inventory adjustments such as returns, manual adjustments or transfer receipts. - Starting October 1, 2026, inventory reports measure stock by on hand quantity instead of available quantity. On hand includes committed and unavailable units, so reported quantities can be higher than before, while data before that date still shows available quantity. The ABC product analysis report sits alongside it, grading each variant by its share of revenue over the last 28 days. Shopify also lists adjustments from inventory apps among its inventory adjustments. So if counter, rep or EDI orders are entered in an ERP and reach Shopify only as stock changes from a sync, Shopify's quantity sold won't include them. ## How Uncap helps Uncap's guide to [available to promise vs on hand](/post/available-to-promise-vs-on-hand) explains why B2B numbers drift: Shopify's own available quantity only subtracts orders Shopify knows about and is blind to counter sales, rep orders, EDI orders and production allocations sitting in the ERP. The fix it describes is to sync the ERP's ATP rather than its on-hand count, per location. ## Related terms - Consignment inventory - Reorder point - Safety stock - Available to promise (ATP) - SKU (stock keeping unit) - EDI 846 ## Sources - Inventory reports, Shopify Help Center - Sell-through, Wikipedia - X12 Transaction Sets ## Frequently asked questions ### How do you calculate the sell-through rate? Divide units sold in the period by units sold plus units still in inventory at the end of it, then express it as a percentage. 350 sold with 150 left is 350 / 500 = 70%. ### What is meant by sell-through? Sell-through is the percentage of a product that a retailer sells after its supplier has shipped it, usually measured over a month.