Days Inventory Outstanding (DIO): Formula, Example & Benchmarks [2026]

Days Inventory Outstanding (DIO) is the single cleanest answer to one of the hardest questions in ecommerce: how long is my cash trapped in stock before it turns back into revenue? It is a finance metric, not an operations one — your accountant, your bank, and your investors all read it — but the levers that move it sit firmly inside the warehouse and the listing platform. For a multichannel seller juggling Shopee FBS, Lazada FBL, Amazon FBA and a Shopify 3PL, DIO is also the single most underused metric for spotting which channel is quietly bleeding working capital.