Many of you currently have items on sale that are going out of sale. The problem can be that although you take the sale down, some items you may have missed in the point-of-sale system are still being marked as being on sale even though the sale is over. As such, you could accidentally sell items at the wrong price.

Running promotions and sales events can be a great way to boost revenue and clear old inventory. Failing to end discounts promptly can lead to significant losses for stores. Here's an overview of how accidental sales can quietly eat into your margins.

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

To avoid leaving money on the table from incorrect prices, retailers should:

- **Set expiration dates on all sales and promotions.** This ensures your point-of-sale system stops discounts promptly once a sale ends, but as sale labels may remain on shelves and products after promotions expire. This can cause problems with label 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.

What you can do is this.

Go to the stock system.

Select Sales Promotion here.

Which pops up a screen like this.

Select reports (marked with Green)

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

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.