futurise.Worksheet · v1 · 2026

Short-date leak map

What the date on your stock is actually costing you.

Six questions, and the arithmetic that turns them into one number. If you hold anything with a date on it, this tells you what that date is costing you.

About 10 minutes with whoever knows inventory. Fill it in on screen, or print it and write on it.

Read this first

No benchmarks, no industry averages, no invented percentages. We do not have a credible public number for your segment and will not make one up.

Every figure below is yours. The map is only the arithmetic.

00 — Before you start

Three things open on the desk

Guess if you have to — just mark which ones you guessed.

01
Current on-hand by lot, with expiry dates. However it lives — system, spreadsheet, the sheet taped to the rack.
02
The last twelve months of write-offs, below-cost markdowns and vendor returns, for anything that went because of date.
03
A rough landed cost per unit for the dated stock — what it cost you to have it on the floor, not what you sell it for.

01 — The six questions

Your numbers, not ours

Answer in whole units. Wildly different costs? Run it once per family.

What does one unit of dated stock cost you?

Average landed cost. Cost, not sell price.

Cost per unit

How many units did the date take from you in the last twelve months?

Written off, dumped, sold below cost, or returned to the vendor on date.

Units, last 12 months

How many units on hand right now sit inside 90 days of expiry?

What is on the floor today. If nobody can answer without walking the racks, that is itself a finding.

Units inside 90 days

What discount would move that stock this week?

The discount that actually clears short-date stock with your accounts.

Discount% off cost

When someone commits a quantity to a customer, how long does it take to learn which lot it comes from and when it expires?

From “can you do 40 of those” to knowing the date on what you just promised. Enter 0 if it is on the same screen.

Minutes to find outCommitments per day

In the last 90 days, how many times did you promise stock and then find the lot was short-dated, expired, or already spoken for?

The ones that reached the customer. Ask the desk — the system rarely records it.

Times, last 90 days

02 — The arithmetic

Five lines

Nothing modelled or adjusted — multiplication on what you just entered.

What the date already took, last twelve monthsQ2 units × Q1 cost

—

What is standing on the floor today, inside 90 daysQ3 units × Q1 cost

—

What you keep if you move it now, at your own discountLine 2 × (100% − Q4)

—

What the discount costs you — the price of finding out lateLine 2 − Line 3. If it expires instead, you lose all of Line 2.

—

Hours a year spent finding out what you already ownQ5 minutes × commitments/day × 250 days ÷ 60

—

Broken promises a year, at the current rateQ6 ÷ 90 × 365

—

Already gone

—

Taken out of the business in twelve months. History — already paid.

At risk today

—

Standing on the floor inside 90 days. Still yours to decide about.

We deliberately do not add these two together — one is realised loss, the other is exposure. Summing them gives a bigger number and a worse decision.

03 — How to read it

Four things the numbers tell you

“At risk today” larger than “already gone”

The leak is in front of you, not behind you.

“Already gone” large, “at risk today” small

Someone is catching it by hand. That works until they are on holiday.

Line 5 over about forty hours

A working week a year spent finding out what you already own.

Line 6 above zero

The leak has reached your customers. Put your own cost on one.

04 — Where it actually leaks

Not in the warehouse. At the moment of the promise.

Stock ages quietly and nothing goes wrong. The loss is booked the moment somebody commits a quantity without seeing the date on the lot they just committed.

One rule closes it: the desk cannot firm a commitment without lot and expiry in view.

The oldest date is offered first, by default — so the short-dated lot is the one that goes out, without anybody having to remember.
A short-dated lot can still be committed. Deliberately, by a named person, knowing the date. The gate is not a block; it is a decision made visible.
The write-off stops being a discovery and becomes a decision — one somebody made, on a date, for a reason you can read back.

Not a report — those arrive after the commitment. Not an alert — those arrive to somebody who is not deciding. A gate, at the moment of the decision.

05 — What we can and cannot show you

Straight answer

We have built lot-and-expiry systems that run in production every day. They belong to clients under NDA — we cannot show you their screens, name them, or quote their numbers. If a vendor shows you someone else’s live inventory, ask what they will show the next person about you.

What we can do: walk you through the mechanism on invented data, in a screen-share — then build yours.

06 — If you want the gate built

One slice, fixed price, two to four weeks

One warehouse path, or one or two SKU families. Read-only against what you already run. A fixed price in writing before we start. Your data stays yours.

In

One read-only path in from what you already keep — export, sheet, or an API you already hold the keys to
A live lot and expiry view for that slice
The commit gate on the desk
A screen-share walkthrough with the people who will use it
Thirty days of care after launch
We train your office ourselves — that is the part that decides whether this survives

Out — said up front

Writing back into your ERP
Replacing anything you already run
Multi-site
EDI, accounting, full regulatory reporting
Every SKU, every warehouse, unlimited integrations
Any claim that this makes you compliant — it makes records organised, traceable and inspection-ready, which is a different sentence