7 Retail Metrics Every Owner Should Watch Daily

Dashboards are cheap; the ability to read them is not. These are the numbers that matter more than total revenue.

1. Gross margin by product

Revenue is vanity, margin is sanity. A 30% revenue increase on a 5%-margin SKU earns less than 10% growth on a 30%-margin SKU.

2. Basket size (average items per sale)

Trending up? Your merchandising is working. Trending down? Your staff has stopped up-selling.

3. Conversion rate (receipts ÷ footfall)

Requires a door counter but it's the single most honest metric about store performance.

4. Stockout rate

Every hour a top SKU is out of stock is revenue you'll never recover. Target: <3%.

5. Shrinkage rate

Target: <2% of COGS. Anything higher is a people problem, not a software problem.

6. Days of stock on hand

By SKU. Anything above 45 days of slow-movers is cash sleeping on a shelf.

7. Cash-to-mobile ratio

How much cash you're still taking. Declining cash share is usually a good sign — cash shrinks, mobile money doesn't.

A good POS lets you pin these to a home dashboard. A great POS alerts you when any of them move outside guardrails.