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Seasonal Review & Suppression

Why a product with no recent sales is deliberately not flagged as dead stock, how seasonality is scored, and when suppression lifts on its own.

Last updated: September 22, 2026

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Some products stop selling every year at the same time and start again on schedule. Flagging those as dead stock and discounting them in their off-season means selling next season's inventory at a markdown you never needed to take. Seasonal suppression exists to stop that — and it is the most common reason a product you consider obviously dead does not appear on your Dead Stock list.

Estimated time: 4 minutes

What you'll accomplish

  • Understand why a dormant product can be correctly excluded from dead stock
  • Know how a product earns a seasonal profile, and the data it takes
  • Know when suppression lifts automatically, and how to override it
  • Recognise the difference between seasonal suppression and a detection bug

Requirements

  • Plan: Pro or Enterprise (seasonal detection).
  • Found at Dead Stock → Seasonal Review, with configuration under Analytics → Seasonal.

How a product becomes seasonal

Seasonality is scored from sales history, not guessed from the product type. Four weighted components make up the score:

Component Weight What it measures
Variance 40% How far monthly sales swing from the annual average
Consistency 30% Whether the same months repeat the pattern year over year
Data quality 20% How much real history backs the pattern
Peak intensity 10% How sharp the peak is when it arrives

Recent years count for more: the current year is weighted in full, the previous year at 0.7, and two years back at 0.5. A pattern that held three years ago but has since broken fades out of the score rather than propping it up forever.

Two floors keep noise out. A product needs at least 12 months of history and at least 10 total sales before it can be scored at all — below either, it is treated as non-seasonal and flows through normal detection.

The resulting score sorts products into three bands:

  • Strongly seasonal — score 60 or above
  • Moderately seasonal — score 40 to 59
  • Not seasonal — below 40, no suppression applied

A month counts as a peak when it runs at 1.5× the product's own baseline, and as a trough at 0.5× or below.

What suppression actually does

When a scored-seasonal product enters its known trough, its dead-stock alert is suppressed: it stays out of your Dead Stock list and out of discount suggestions for that window. The inventory is still there and still counted everywhere else — suppression withholds the recommendation to clear, not the data.

This is the honest answer to "your app missed this one." If a product is sitting quiet in the exact months it is quiet every year, not flagging it is the system working, not failing.

When suppression lifts

Suppression is time-bounded in both directions, so nothing stays hidden indefinitely:

  • Before the peak — suppression lifts 7 days ahead of the expected peak window, so the product is back in view while you can still act on it.
  • Into the peak — if a product is 30 days into its peak season and still not selling, it is re-alerted. A seasonal product that misses its own season is a genuinely worse problem than an ordinary dead SKU, and this is the grace period that catches it.

You also get advance warning rather than a surprise. Approaching-peak notifications fire at 30, 14 and 7 days before the peak, provided at least 5 products are affected — the threshold exists so a single SKU does not generate a fleet of notifications.

Year-over-year anomalies

Seasonal profiles are compared against the same window last year. A deviation past 30% is flagged as an anomaly. This is the signal worth acting on: a peak that arrives 30% weaker than last year is a demand change, not a calendar change, and it will not fix itself when the season turns.

Verify it is working

  • Open Dead Stock → Seasonal Review — suppressed products are listed with the profile and window that suppressed them.
  • Open Analytics → Seasonal → Profiles to see the computed score and classification per product.
  • If a product you expect to be seasonal shows no profile, check its history length first: under 12 months or under 10 lifetime sales means it cannot be scored yet.

Troubleshooting

A product is suppressed and I disagree

Suppression never blocks you. Discount it, add it to a clearance page, or include it in an automation rule exactly as you would any other product — the suppression only withholds the automatic recommendation.

Nothing is suppressed at all

Most likely no product in your catalogue has cleared the 40-point threshold with 12 months of history. On a young store or a catalogue that turns over quickly, an empty Seasonal Review is the expected result.

The season is wrong for my market

Default seasons are calendar quarters (Q1 Winter through Q4 Fall/Holiday). If your business runs on a different calendar — southern hemisphere, an academic year, a sport season — set it under Analytics → Seasonal → Configuration so scoring measures against your year rather than the default one.

FAQ

Does suppression hide the product from my inventory numbers?

No. Frozen capital, aging buckets and every report still include it. Only the dead-stock alert and its discount recommendation are withheld.

Can a product be suppressed forever?

No. Suppression is bounded by the product's own peak window, lifts 7 days before the peak, and re-alerts 30 days into a peak that fails to convert.

Why did a seasonal product suddenly appear on my Dead Stock list mid-season?

That is the 30-day peak grace period expiring. The product entered the season it should sell in and did not sell — which is the case worth surfacing.