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Trapped Capital Explained

What the Trapped Capital number actually measures, where the monthly bleed estimate comes from, and how to read the coverage percentage.

Last updated: September 22, 2026

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Trapped Capital is StockSweep's term for cash tied up in idle inventory — money you already spent on stock that isn't selling, sitting on a shelf instead of being available to reinvest. It's not on any other page under this name, so this article is the only place it's defined.

Estimated time: 4 minutes

What you'll accomplish

  • Know exactly what counts as "trapped" (and what doesn't)
  • Understand where the monthly "bleed" estimate comes from and how to change its assumptions
  • Read the coverage percentage correctly — know when a number is partial
  • Know what's free vs. what requires Pro or Enterprise

Requirements

  • Free and Growth: see the total trapped-capital headline number only.
  • Pro and Enterprise: unlock the full breakdown — by aging band and by vendor — plus the Cash-Liberation Plan.
  • Found at Analytics → Trapped Capital.

What counts as trapped

Trapped capital is idle stock value, not your total inventory value. A product that sold last week is not trapped, however much of it you're holding — the calculation only counts stock that has gone a meaningful stretch without a sale (the exact idle threshold matches your account's aging-band setup). Stock with real inventory quantity and a known cost is included; stock with unknown cost is excluded from the dollar figure entirely rather than estimated, which is why the coverage percentage below matters.

Where the monthly bleed comes from

The headline pairs the trapped-capital dollar figure with an estimated monthly carrying cost — what holding that stock is costing you every month it sits, not just once. That estimate is your trapped capital multiplied by an annual carrying rate, which breaks into three components you can see and edit on the page:

  • Cost of capital — what that tied-up cash could be earning elsewhere
  • Storage — warehousing and handling
  • Risk — shrinkage, insurance, and obsolescence

The default rate (industry-standard, editable) is 25%/year across the three components. Changing any of the three updates the annual rate and every merchant starts on the same defaults until they save an override — there's nothing hidden here to recalculate on your own.

Seasonally-dormant stock (items you've marked or the system has identified as expected to sit until a season returns) is still counted in trapped capital — the dollar figure never hides money because it's "supposed to" be idle — but it's excluded from the bleed estimate, since holding it isn't really costing you anything unplanned.

Reading the coverage percentage

Not every SKU has a cost on file. The coverage percentage tells you what share of your trapped-capital calculation is backed by a real, known cost rather than being silently left out. Below a floor coverage level, the headline is explicitly labeled "Partial" — it is never extrapolated to cover the SKUs with unknown cost, because a guessed number here would be worse than an honest gap. If your coverage is low, adding cost data to more products is the single highest-leverage thing you can do to make this number trustworthy.

The Cash-Liberation Plan (Pro/Enterprise)

Below the headline, a 90-day plan lists the specific SKUs — ranked by trapped capital — that would free the most cash if cleared, with an estimated amount freed and an estimated monthly bleed stopped per SKU. This is a prioritization tool, not an instruction: nothing on this page discounts or clears anything for you.

FAQ

Why did my trapped-capital number drop overnight without me doing anything?

Most often a product's idle window ended (it sold), or its seasonal status changed and it moved out of the trapped calculation. The number is recomputed on a regular schedule, not live on every page load.

Is trapped capital the same as my total inventory value?

No — total inventory value includes everything, fast-moving stock included. Trapped capital is specifically the idle portion.

Can I change the carrying-rate components?

Yes, directly on the page — cost of capital, storage, and risk are each independently editable, and the annual rate recalculates from your inputs.