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Card class: Card

At a glance

Top 20 SKUs by inventory value on hand. The concentration view: which products own most of the working capital.
What it countsItem.QuantityOnHand × AverageCost per SKU, sorted desc, top 20.
Tax treatmentn/a.
CurrencyOneWorld: reporting currency.
Subsidiary scopeRespects dashboard filter.
Time windowRT
Alert triggerNone at headline; pair with Dead Stock for risk view
Rolesowner, finance, operations

Calculation

Calculated automatically from your NetSuite data. See the At a glance summary above for what the metric tracks and the worked example below for a typical reading.

Worked example

A US wholesale apparel distributor on NetSuite. Snapshot 14 Apr 26.
RankSKUDescriptionUnits OHAvg costInventory value
1BR-A-001Brand A Premium Tee Black M24,800$11.20$277,760
2BR-A-014Brand A Premium Polo Navy L18,400$14.50$266,800
3BR-B-022Brand B Mid-Tier Hoodie Grey12,600$19.80$249,480
4BR-A-002Brand A Premium Tee Black L22,100$11.20$247,520
5BR-D-008Brand D Kids Tee Bundle38,000$5.80$220,400
6-20(mid-tier)variousvariousvarious$2,140,000
Top 20 total$3,402,000
Five things to notice:
  1. Top 20 SKUs = 3.4Mof3.4M of 28.6M total (12% concentration). Healthy distribution; not over-concentrated.
  2. Top 5 are all Brand A or Brand B core products. These are the must-have SKUs; never let stock outs happen.
  3. Pair with sales velocity. A top-by-value SKU that’s slow-moving is dead-stock candidate. Top-by-value + fast-moving = critical reorder priority.
  4. Brand D Kids Tee at $5.80/unit but 38,000 OH is high-volume low-cost. Concentration by units, not by dollar.
  5. Use the table to focus reorder discipline. The top 20 deserve daily attention; the long tail (>10,000 SKUs) deserves periodic.

Sibling cards merchants should reference together

CardWhy pair it with Top SKUs Value
Total Inventory ValueThe total.
Margin by SKUProfitability of these SKUs.
Inventory AgingAge of these SKUs.
Low Stock AlertsDon’t run out of these.
Dead Stock ValueTop by value but slow-moving = bad.

Reconciling against the vendor’s own dashboard

Where to look in NetSuite:
Reports → Inventory → Inventory Valuation Detail sorted desc by value Lists → Items with value column
Why our number may legitimately differ:
ReasonDirectionWhy
Costing methodEitherAverage vs FIFO valuation differs slightly.
In-transit inclusionEitherCard includes; some saved searches exclude.
Subsidiary scopeEitherCard defaults to all subs.
Cross-connector reconciliation:
CardRelationshipWhy
shopify.top_productsSales-side parallelTop products by sales (commerce side); compare to top by inventory value (NetSuite side). Mismatch = inventory misalignment.

Known limitations / merchant FAQs

Top by value vs top by sales velocity, which is the right view? Both. Value = where capital is parked. Sales velocity = where it’s moving fastest. Misalignment is the warning: top-by-value but slow-velocity = dead-stock concentration. Concentration ratio, what’s healthy? For wholesale apparel: top 20 SKUs = 8-15% of inventory value across thousands of SKUs. >25% concentration suggests over-stocking on bestsellers (or under-cataloguing). Lot / serial-tracked items, how do they appear? At lot/serial level by default. Toggle to roll-up by parent item via dashboard. Multi-currency SKUs? Each subsidiary’s stock in base currency, summed at reporting FX. Per-row shows reporting currency. Single-subsidiary vs OneWorld? Identical. Can I see top by units instead of value? Yes, dashboard toggle. Different question (volume vs cash). SKUs with zero on-hand, do they appear? No. Zero × any cost = $0. They drop off the top-20 list naturally.

Tracked live in Vortex IQ Nerve Centre

Top SKUs by Inventory Value is one of hundreds of KPI pulses Vortex IQ tracks across NetSuite and 70+ other ecommerce connectors. Nerve Centre runs the detection layer; Vortex Mind investigates the cause when something moves; Ask Viq lets you interrogate any number in plain English. Start for free or book a demo to see this metric running on your own data.