Compliance is one of the most complicated and constantly evolving aspects of the cannabis industry. Each state, city, and county, have their own restrictions and violations. Therefore, it’s easy to get lost in maintaining compliance and put your business at risk. The best way to prevent that from happening, is to be proactive about new compliance changes, updating business operations, and having the right cannabis POS. Let’s dive into the subject a little further.
Why Compliance is Crucial for Cannabis Dispensaries
The cannabis industry is relatively young in the business world. With that youth comes risk and uncertainty. Couple that with biases, fears, and misconceptions, and you have one of the most regulated industries. Due to this, states are very hesitant on what they allow with cannabis businesses. Things like growing, processing, and regulating are all heavily scrutinized.
Seed to sale track was put into place to ensure that cannabis businesses are following state laws. Tracking seed to sale provides government officials the ability to:
- Review and control plant growing limits
- Collect data on cannabis purchasing
- Ensure that illegal cannabis is not entering the market
- Recall unsafe cannabis plants
Compliance doesn’t only benefit regulators, it also helps cannabis businesses. These safeguards and regulations work to protect businesses from theft, security problems, lawsuits, and more. Another aspect of compliance that benefits dispensaries is checking for age verification and purchase limits. This ensures that only legal customers are receiving your products and that they are consuming responsibly. Avoiding these mistakes will secure the safety of your store, staff, customers, and brand.
Seed to Sale Compliance and Your Cannabis POS
Seed-to-sale tracking (or track-and-trace) is the process of tracking a cannabis plant from germination, to harvest, to the final product that is sold to the customer.
As a state votes on and elects to allow for cannabis sales, a seed to sale tracking system is introduced. Full responsibility is placed on growers and retailers to chart the plant’s entire lifecycle. This means having records from when cannabis is planted to when it is sold to consumers.
For cannabis operators, tracking and management of your inventory is crucially important and at times, very complicated. Cannabis plants are almost always broken up and sold into other products. This complicates the process of tracking where cannabis plants are and where they’re going. Regardless, you’re required to know which plants you bought and how much of it you’re selling.
If awarded a recreational license, you are given traceability credentials and are able to purchase tags to track products. Aside from recording seed-to-sale data for every product, you are required by your state to submit daily reports. This is often one of the biggest pain-points of cannabis operators. However, there are solutions.
The right cannabis POS software will make compliance a smoother, fast, and safer process. BLAZE POS is the answer. Our POS automated the seed to sale tracking process, saving you countless hours of manual entering. We reduce errors and improve daily operations in your store through our advanced API (Application Programming Interface) and BLAZE tech. Our systems also make age verification and purchase limits easier to implement and maintain, saving you from compliance mistakes. Learn more about how BLAZE POS can meet your compliance needs and book a demo with our team.
A Quick Guide to Metrc and BioTrack
Almost every state that allows cannabis sales requires a government contracted software system. The two most popular are Metrc and BioTrack. To stay compliant, stores are required to submit information on the products they’ve sold through the software.
Seed-to-sale tracking in Metrc
Metrc is unique because it only offers government-facing tracking programs, as opposed to solutions for retailers. Metrc is used by Alaska, California, Colorado, DC, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, and West Virginia.
Seed-to-sale tracking in BioTrack
BioTrack supports private and government sectors that serve medical and recreational states like Arizona, Connecticut, Illinois, Virginia, New Mexico, and more.
BLAZE is Fully Integrated with Metrc and BioTrack
A cannabis specific POS removes the need to manually enter into these systems and saves businesses countless hours. BLAZE is fully integrated with Metrc and BioTrack and automates the entry process. Our systems make compliance simple and our suite of other softwares and top-quality integrations improve every aspect of your operations. The BLAZE team is constantly updating and improving our software to ensure compliance, provide the newest tech, and make your business a success.
Conclusion
States have strict compliance rules and even stricter punishments for breaking them. If your store fails to maintain compliance, you can quickly find yourself fined or shut–down. Neither of which you want to happen. Compliance is paramount to making sure your business is running smoothly. Give yourself all of the tools you need to succeed and choose BLAZE POS to meet your compliance needs.
