How much cash is
your inventory
trapping?

Your brand can be profitable on the P&L and still run out of cash, because the cash is trapped in inventory. The Inventory Cash-Flow Calculator shows how much cash your stock ties up, your cash conversion cycle in days, and how much runway your next reorder will eat. Under 30 days is strong, 30 to 75 is normal, and over 75 is a flag. It runs in about sixty seconds with no signup.

I built it because the most blindsided I have seen good operators is over cash, not profit. The brand is growing, the margins look fine, and then a reorder lands and the bank account is suddenly empty. Nobody was watching the cash conversion cycle, because the P&L does not show it. This calculator puts the number the P&L hides right in front of you.

Profitable, and
still out of cash.

The P&L tells you whether you made money. It says nothing about when the money arrives, and in a physical-product business the timing is everything. You pay your supplier today, wait weeks for the goods to land, more weeks for them to sell, then wait again to collect. Every day in that gap is cash you fronted and have not gotten back. Grow faster and the gap gets wider, because you are funding ever-bigger orders out of money that has not returned yet. Wayflyer's working-capital guide is blunt about where that ends: rapid sales growth can bankrupt a company (Wayflyer, 2024).

I have lived this inside WIN Brands, where a great sales month could create a cash problem instead of solving one, because it triggered a bigger reorder. The calculator exists so the cash cycle stops being the thing you discover at the worst possible moment.

The cash cycle,
in days.

The calculator computes your cash conversion cycle, the number of days between paying for inventory and collecting from the customer. It stacks three pieces: how long stock sits before it sells, how quickly you collect, and how long your suppliers let you wait to pay. Then it translates that cycle into the dollars of cash you have frozen, and shows how much a reorder of a given size eats from your runway.

Where your cycle
should land.

The number creeps. A brand at a comfortable 40 days places a bigger seasonal buy, lead times stretch, and suddenly it is at 80 without a single decision that felt risky. Watching the cycle monthly is the cheap insurance against the crunch.

Benchmarks often call a 60 to 120 day cycle typical for DTC, with under 60 considered strong (Eightx, What Is Cash Conversion Cycle, 2026). I hold brands to a tighter line than that, because the lockup is real money: $500,000 of inventory at a 90-day cycle is half a million dollars frozen for three months, and a brand scaling from $1M to $3M has to finance roughly three times the inventory before the cash catches up.

The cycle tells you
when, not just how much.

A long cycle is not automatically bad; it is a constraint to manage. If the calculator shows 80 days, you now know two things: how much cash any growth plan needs up front, and which lever frees the most. For most brands the highest-impact move is supplier terms, because paying later shortens the cycle without touching how fast you sell. For others it is killing the slow SKUs that sit and rot the average.

The reorder runway is the part operators tell me they wish they had seen sooner. Before you place the buy, the calculator shows what it does to your cash position. That turns a reorder from a gut call into a financed decision, and it is exactly the discipline that separates the brands that clear the $5M wall from the ones the wall stops.

What it will not
do for you.

It models the cycle from the inputs you give it, so seasonality and lumpy buying can make a single snapshot misleading. A brand with a huge Q4 should run it across the year, not on a quiet month. It also will not negotiate your supplier terms or sell your dead stock; it tells you which lever matters most, not how to pull it. And it assumes your inventory numbers are current, which for a lot of brands is the first problem to fix.

What it does is make the invisible visible. Cash flow is where good brands die quietly, and a number you can watch beats a crisis you discover.

Where it sits in
the toolkit.

Inventory cash flow is the layer the P&L cannot see, so it pairs with the profitability calculator to give you both the profit picture and the cash picture. For the operating playbook behind the number, read inventory management for DTC. And because the cycle is the classic $5M-wall killer, the $5M inflection breakdown is the strategic context for why it stalls brands exactly there.

Not sure cash is your binding constraint? The growth scorecard will tell you whether to start here or upstream.

Common
questions
answered.

What's a healthy cash conversion cycle for a DTC brand?

Under 30 days is strong: cash comes back fast enough to fund the next order without leaning on credit. 30 to 75 days is normal for most DTC brands. Over 75 days is a risk flag, because growth starts getting gated by reorders and a strong sales month can still leave you cash-poor.

Why does inventory cause cash crunches?

Because you pay for inventory before customers pay you, and the gap is real money. You buy goods, wait through lead time and shelf time, then wait again to collect, all while the next order is due. A profitable brand can be cash-negative the entire time. The deeper mechanics are in inventory management for DTC.

How do I free up cash tied in inventory?

Three levers: turn faster (sell through before reordering), negotiate longer supplier terms so you pay later, and avoid overbuying slow SKUs. Each one shortens the cycle. The calculator shows which lever moves your number most, since the same 15 days saved is worth far more to a tight cycle than a loose one.

Should I use Shopify Capital to fund inventory?

It can bridge a healthy cycle, but it cannot fix a broken one. Financing a 90-day cash conversion cycle just rents you the same problem at a cost. Use credit to smooth timing when the underlying turns are good, not to paper over inventory that is not selling. Fix the cycle first, then decide if you even need the capital.

What is days inventory outstanding?

It is the average number of days your stock sits before it sells, one of the three components of the cash conversion cycle alongside how fast you collect and how long you take to pay suppliers. Lower days inventory outstanding means cash spends less time frozen on a shelf. The calculator computes it from your inventory and cost of goods.

Profit is an opinion until the cash arrives. Knowing your cash conversion cycle, and what your next reorder does to it, is the difference between scaling on purpose and getting blindsided. Take the sixty seconds: see what your inventory is trapping.