The Hidden Costs of Accidental Sale Items in your shop

Often forgotten is that failing to remove discounts silently drains your profits every day. Your point-of-sale system continues applying expired discounts, and each transaction chips away at your margins. Let's try to plug them permanently.

The Hidden Cost of Retail Pricing Errors

Studies show that, on average, 3-4% of items scanned at registers ring up at incorrect prices. This error rate has real financial consequences.

For every $500,000 in annual sales, these mistakes can cost you a lot in profit. Even a few significant mistaken markdowns per day compound quickly over time.

Beyond financial losses, these pricing errors can create legal compliance issues with consumer protection regulations.

I had a customer who, after checking, discovered that 37 expired promotions were still active in his system. These items sold at an average discount of 22% below their intended prices.

Many retailers depend on makeshift processes to update prices once promotions conclude. This method inevitably results in human error, particularly in stores with thousands of items and numerous concurrent promotions. A systematic strategy is essential to identify these pricing discrepancies before they affect the bottom line.

Implementing Effective POS System Audits

To avoid missing out on profits due to incorrect pricing, retailers should:

1. Set expiration dates on all sales and promotions. This guarantees that your point-of-sale system halts discounts promptly when a sale ends.
2. Do an audit to identify pricing discrepancies.

Step-by-Step Guide to Finding Expired Promotions

Here's a quick way to identify items that may still be incorrectly marked as on sale in your POS system:

How to Identify Expired Promotions in Your System

1. Access your stock system
2. Navigate to the Sales Promotion section
3. Generate a report for a specific date range

Step-by-Step Process to Generate an Expired Promotion Report

1. In your stock system, select "Sales Promotion"
2. Click on "Reports" (usually marked with a green button)
3. Enter the date range you want to investigate (e.g., last month)
4. Run the report to see all items affected by promotions during that period

A Few Mistakes Can Cost Thousands

Studies show that, on average, 3-4% of items scanned at registers are wrong. Every $500,000 annual sales translates to $15,000-20,000 in possible lost sales. A handful of significant mistaken markdowns per day can easily total thousands of dollars in losses over a year. It can also cause legal problems.

Solutions to Stop Erroneous Sales

Set expiration dates on all sales and promotions. This ensures your point-of-sale system stops discounts promptly once a sale ends. However, as sale labels may remain on shelves and products after promotions expire, this can cause problems with labels showing incorrectly an expired discounted price.

Staying vigilant to end sales on time and audit pricing often can help retailers stop losing profits to erroneous discounts. Just a little prevention goes a long way to bolstering margins.

Here is a quick way of finding many of these items. You can do this.

Go to the stock system.

Select Sales Promotion here.

Which pops up a screen like this.

Which pops up a screen like this.

Select reports (marked with Green)

Now, put the dates marked with a black arrow. In this case, I selected January, and out pops a report of all affected items in this period. Now, you can investigate.

Taking Action on Identified Items
Review the report for any promotions that should have ended
Check these items in your POS system to ensure prices have been updated
Correct any discrepancies immediately

By following this process regularly, you can catch and correct pricing errors before they significantly impact your bottom line.

Protect Your Profits: Next Steps

It will only take you a minute to run this expired promotion report.

Then verify and correct identified pricing errors.

If you have time, please let me know if you got any savings from this simple process.

Remember

Every expired promotion you catch recovers real dollars that would otherwise be lost. Start your first audit today and see immediate results.

These strategies will safeguard your margins, maintain pricing compliance, and boost customer trust. Don't let expired promotions quietly chip away at your profits—seize control of your pricing today.

Staying on top of removing old sales and auditing pricing is often the best way to stop losing profits from products ringing up wrong after promotions end. A little vigilance goes a long way.