Walk into any busy retail shop, café, or small warehouse, and you’ll see a quiet but important ritual taking place: stock rotation. It’s not flashy. It doesn’t get the same attention as marketing or sales. But it’s one of the most cost-saving habits a business can practice.

Stock rotation is the simple act of ensuring that older inventory is sold before newer stock (FI-FO). 

In food businesses, this means moving yesterday’s milk to the front of the fridge so it sells before today’s delivery. In hardware stores, it might mean rotating paint cans or batteries so they don’t expire on the shelf.

This daily task does more than just keep shelves tidy. Done well, FI-FO:

•  Prevents losses – You avoid expired or obsolete stock from eating into your profit.
•  Improves cash flow – By selling older stock first, you keep money from sitting on shelves too long.
• Boosts customer experience – Nobody likes buying expired items or dusty, forgotten products.

Surprisingly, many businesses fail at this because it’s repetitive and often delegated to junior staff. But skipping stock rotation leads to waste, write-offs, and even customer complaints.

A smart way to make it easier is to build it into your daily routine. For example, rotate stock while unpacking new deliveries or during slow hours. Some businesses even use digital tools to flag items nearing expiry.

If you want to take it a step further, a POS system like BizKit POS can help track stock movement, suggest reordering points, and keep your inventory data accurate, so stock rotation becomes less of a guessing game and more of a strategy.

So next time you or your team are restocking shelves, remember: that small habit could be saving your business thousands every year.