One of the most usual indicators to measure the performance of any inventory policy is the mean physical stock. In general, when estimating the mean physical stock in periodic review inventory systems, approximate approaches are often utilized by practitioners and researchers. The mean physical stock is generally calculated by a simple approximation. Still these simple methods are frequently used to analyze various single stockpoint and multi-echelon inventory systems. However, such a simple approximation can be very inaccurate. This is particularly true for low service levels. Even though exact methods to calculate the mean physical stock have been derived, they are available for specific cases only and computationally not very efficient, and therefore less useful in practice. In literature, approximate approaches, such as the simple, the linear, and Simpson approximations, were derived for the periodic review inventory systems that allow backorders. This paper modifies the approximate approaches for the lost sales case and evaluates the modified approximate approaches. Through computational experiments, average (and maximum) percentage deviations of mean physical stock between the exact method and the modified approximations are compared in the periodic review inventory system with lost sales. The same comparison between the modified and the original approximations are also conducted, in order to examine the performance of modified approximations. The results show that all modified approximations perform well for high service levels, but also that the performance may deteriorate fast with decreasing service level. The modified Simpson approximation is clearly better. In addition, the comparison between the modified and the original approximations in the periodic review inventory system with lost sales shows that the modified approximation outperforms the original approximation.