Free calculator
Inventory shrink calculator for c-stores and gas stations.
Category sales and shrink rates
Tobacco
Beverages
Snacks
General merch.
Exposure
Scenario from 1% to 2.5%
This band is an illustrative comparison within the tool, not an industry average or a measured customer result.
Illustrative assumptions for your estimate. Replace them with your own store records. Weighted rate = total shrink / total sales.
How this is computed.
Category-level weekly sales.
Tobacco, beverages, snacks, general merchandise. Pull from POS category reports.
Per-category shrink rate.
Enter a measured or assumed rate for each category. Defaults are editable examples, not established industry averages.
Weekly shrink per category.
Category sales × category shrink rate.
Weighted total shrink.
Sum of category shrinks. The single number to track week-over-week.
Annualized exposure.
Weekly total × 52.
Scenario bands.
The displayed bands describe the entered percentage within this tool. Compare your actual stores using consistent counts and valuation methods.
What the result tells you.
Illustratively, 2% of $30,000 in weekly category sales is $600 per week or $31,200 per year. A hypothetical reduction to 1% would change that by $15,600 per year. Validate the valuation method and actual losses before treating this as recoverable value.
Use this when…
- Sizing your shrink problem by category.
- Identifying which category to focus on first.
- Building the ROI case for inventory tracking software.
- Comparing portfolio shrink across stores.
Related.
Features
Buyer guides
From the blog
The lottery shrinkage playbook.
How to instrument scratcher accountability across barcode scanning, serial-gap detection, and shift attribution. The four-week sprint that closes the leak.
Invoice OCR vs. manual entry, in dollars.
A working calculation for the labor savings, error reduction, and price-leak capture when you stop typing vendor invoices and start scanning them.
FAQs.
How accurate are these shrink rates?
The defaults are illustrative inputs. Use your own counts, purchase costs and sales records to estimate a range. They are not established StationPro customer results.
Does tobacco include vapor / e-cigs?
You can include vapor products in this category or calculate them separately. Use category-specific records to avoid assuming they have the same shrink rate as cigarettes.
Should I include lottery in inventory shrink?
No, lottery is tracked separately (see the lottery shrink calculator). Lottery has a different shrink mechanic (serial-level, state-commission-reconciled) and shouldn't be aggregated with general merchandise.
See how StationPro automates inventory shrink calculator.
Review your assumptions and the underlying workflow. We agree on the data and access needed before working with your store records.