As of 13 August 2026, AI can create a stock clearance plan.

What to actually do

1. Hand it to a person

   The route this page recommends

   A person who owns the outcome does this end to end, worth it when the failure is dear.

2. Use a tool built for this

   Second choice

3. Do it yourself

   The distant third

   A chat interface, chat-fluent skill, and roughly 30 minutes until you can act on the result.

   How to actually do it

   1. 1. Open your current inventory export and sales report, then copy the SKU, quantity, unit cost, current price, recent sales, stock age and condition into the stock data section of the prompt.
   2. 2. Gather your clearance deadline, minimum margin or price, VAT treatment, channel restrictions, expiry information and any supplier or brand rules, and add them to the business context.
   3. 3. Paste the completed prompt into ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini and ask it to produce the clearance table, calculations, risks and action plan in one response.
   4. 4. Export the proposed prices and margin calculations into a spreadsheet, then compare every quantity, cost, VAT treatment and formula with the inventory and finance records.
   5. 5. Check each proposed route against your current website, marketplace, supplier, brand and customer-promotion rules, removing any action that those rules do not permit.
   6. 6. Ask a colleague responsible for sales or finance to challenge the demand assumptions, margin thresholds, deadline and operational capacity, then record the agreed changes.
   7. 7. Update the plan with approved prices, owners and dates, publish only the agreed listings or promotions, and schedule a stock and margin check after the first clearance review.

   Prompt

   Create a stock clearance plan for a UK business using only the information below. Do not invent figures, demand, customer behaviour, legal requirements or supplier terms. Identify missing information instead of guessing.
   
   Business context:
   - Business type: [business type]
   - Sales channels: [website, shop, marketplace or other channels]
   - Clearance objective: [free warehouse space, recover cash, clear seasonal stock or other objective]
   - Deadline: [date or number of weeks]
   - Minimum acceptable gross margin or minimum selling price: [figure or not set]
   - Pricing and discount rules: [rules]
   - VAT treatment and whether prices are shown inclusive or exclusive of VAT: [details]
   
   Stock data, one line per product or SKU:
   [SKU, product name, quantity available, unit cost excluding VAT, current selling price, recent sales rate, stock age, expiry or best-before date if relevant, condition, channel restrictions, and any other known constraint]
   
   Produce:
   1. A prioritised clearance table for each SKU, including recommended action, proposed price or price range only where the supplied constraints support it, channel, timing and reason.
   2. Separate routes for full-price sale, modest discount, bundle, outlet or wholesale sale, and donation or disposal where relevant. Do not recommend a route that conflicts with the supplied information.
   3. The calculations for revenue, cost and gross margin, showing the formula and flagging any missing figures.
   4. A week-by-week action plan with owners, stock checks, price changes, listing changes and escalation points.
   5. Risks, including margin loss, customer fairness, stock condition, channel restrictions and disposal issues.
   6. A short list of decisions I must make before using the plan.
   
   Keep the plan practical for a UK operations team. Put assumptions and unknowns in a separate section. Do not present the plan as approved until I have checked every figure and constraint against the source records.

   Open it prefilled in ChatGPT or Claude, or copy it into Gemini, which takes no prefill link.