Cannabis growers, makers and dispensaries

Seed-to-sale costs, cash counts and the 280E workpaper for licensed cannabis operators.

For licensed growers, makers, distributors and dispensaries, and the accounting firms that keep their books. Licenses, packages, tills, taxes and the 280E cost workpaper sit on one set of books.
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Today's exceptions

Example figures
Till 2 at close: Over by $14.00, sent for review
$14.00
Wholesale transfer: Waiting for the simulator's reply
$8,400
Harvest costed into packages: Ready
$31,250
280E workpaper, September: Ready for your preparer
$118,900
Example figures from a sample dispensary

Where cannabis books go wrong today.

  1. 280E rebuilt by hand every spring

    The costs that belong in inventory and the expenses 280E disallows are separated in a spreadsheet after the year closes.

  2. Cash that does not match the till

    Drawers, safes and deposits are counted on paper, and a short drawer is found days later.

  3. Packages that do not match the books

    Splits, adjustments, samples and waste change the inventory, and the ledger never hears about them.

  4. State reporting kept apart from accounting

    What was queued for the state and what was booked are two records nobody reconciles.

What Fintra does for cannabis

Fintra keeps a licensed operator's books on its own ledger, with the packages, cash and taxes that drive them. Harvests and production are costed into packages by your policy, each count is kept with who counted it, a count past your threshold and every safe and vault count go to a second person, and the 280E workpaper is built from the same posted entries.

  • Licenses, badges and rooms
  • Packages, harvests and lab batches
  • Tills, safes, vaults and deposits
  • Excise, sales tax and the 280E workpaper
  • Reports your accounting firm prepares and signs

Cost kept in inventory

Example figures
Cultivation labor, one harvest
$12,400
Lab testing, one batch
$1,350
Packaging, 1,200 units
$2,280
Example figures. Your costing policy decides which costs go into inventory.

How it fits what you keep.

Your point of sale, your bank, your payroll provider and the state system can stay. Fintra keeps the books, the packages, the cash counts and the 280E workpaper, and what another system holds comes in as a file that is checked before anything posts.

Stays in your point of sale, bank, payroll and the state system

Kept as they are

  • Point of sale, or the Fintra register
  • Bank accounts
  • Payroll provider
  • State track-and-trace system
  • Your tax preparer

Fintra does not connect to a point of sale or a state track-and-trace system: another register's sales export and your opening package counts come in as files, checked row by row before anything posts, and state reports are queued and checked against a simulator of the state system.

Fintra runs

Finance, Trust and People, plus the two cannabis jobs below

  • Licenses, badges and rooms
  • Plants, harvests and production
  • Packages, lab batches and recalls
  • Transfers, manifests and wholesale
  • Register, tills and deposits
  • Excise and sales tax
  • The COGS and 280E workpapers
  • The state reporting queue

Moving from another ledger? Fintra runs the books itself. A guided import turns your current ledger's export into a balanced opening entry, opening package counts carry your inventory across, and a day of sales from another register posts the way a sale rung up in Fintra does, cost of goods included.

Two jobs built for cannabis.

Each runs on the same ledger, approvals and evidence as the rest of Fintra.

Inventory, cost of goods and 280E

From the harvest to the tax workpaper

Harvests and production runs carry their labor, overhead and inputs into packages by your costing policy, valued by lot to the cent. The COGS workpaper rolls the stock accounts forward for the month and names every entry booked to cost of goods with no stock leaving. The 280E cost workpaper takes each expense account at the amount the ledger holds, classed as direct cost of goods, allocated indirect cost or not deductible, and split between medical and adult use where a treatment is on record. It cannot be marked prepared while any line is unclassified.

  • Package cost by lot, from harvest and production
  • COGS workpaper rolled forward from the stock accounts
  • 280E classes: direct, allocated indirect, not deductible
  • Prepared by one person, reviewed by a second

Tills, cash and deposits

The cash desk, counted and checked

A till opens on a counted float and is counted at close. A count out by more than your threshold goes to a second person, and the difference posts to cash over and short when the till closes. Safes, vaults and deposit bags are counted by one person and verified by another, and a pay-out or correction above what one person may move alone waits for a second person and moves nothing until it is approved. A deposit posts to deposits in transit when the bag leaves and clears when its bank line is matched.

  • Till counts, reviewed past your threshold
  • Safe, vault and bag counts verified by a second person
  • Cash movements above your limit wait for approval
  • Deposits cleared against the bank line

Cash on hand at close

Example figures
Tills and vault
$46,200
Counted at close
Deposit prepared
$40,000
A second person verifies the count
Left on site
$6,200
Example figures from a sample dispensary.

Everything else your business runs on

Accounting, budgeting, HR and security run on the same books, approvals and evidence as everything above, so nothing is copied between systems.

Accounting and the month-end close

Transactions are recorded, categorized and reconciled, and the close entries are drafted for a named person to approve. Double-entry, ASC 606 and multi-currency, with statements from the posted books.

See accounting and the close

Budgets, forecasts and budget vs. actuals

Budgets, scenario forecasts and driver models that read the posted books directly, so there is no export to keep in step.

See budgeting and forecasting

HR and people

Onboarding, time off, cases and an HR help desk that answers routine questions, with hiring and headcount plans kept against the finance budget.

See HR and people

Security with SentriAI

A bill payment a person records, a change to a vendor's bank details and a change to a person's role, whether a person or an AI agent asks for it, are each allowed, held for approval or blocked before they happen, with the reason written down. Every decision is sealed into a hash-chained record an auditor can recompute.

See how SentriAI checks actions

Payroll

Coming soon

Payroll on the same books as your accounting, budgets and HR is coming soon.

Read about payroll

The same books, approvals and controls, set up for cannabis

Finance

Cost of goods built from the harvest up.

Harvests and production runs carry their costs into packages by your costing policy, every sale relieves the cost of the lot it came from, and the COGS and 280E workpapers read the same posted entries. The P&L by licensed premises carries the 280E split beside it and ties to the company P&L to the cent.

See inventory accounting
  • Costing policies for harvests and runs
  • Package cost by lot, to the cent
  • Excise and sales tax on the books
  • P&L by premises with the 280E split

Trust

A second person on vault counts, large differences, refunds and large cash movements.

Counts past your threshold, safe and vault counts, refunds, voids and cash moved above one person's limit wait for someone other than the person who asked, and each decision is kept as evidence.

See how actions are checked
  • Till count review
  • Safe and vault verification
  • Refunds and voids approved by a second person
  • Evidence kept with each decision

People

Badges and licenses checked before people handle product.

Each person's badge and each license carries its status and dates, and an act on stock is refused when either is not current. Payroll stays with the provider you use today.

See people and HR
  • Badges with status and dates
  • License renewal tracking
  • One capability for each kind of act
  • Approvals kept with the evidence

Customer success

Supplier and customer exceptions.

Support and success work from the same accounts and invoices as the books. A billing question is answered from the customer’s own open invoices, and a request is assigned to the person who owns the follow-up.

  • Billing answers from the customer's own open invoices
  • Requests assigned to an owner
  • Service policies and response times
  • Customer satisfaction kept with each case

Your cannabis clients, worked from the firm's own console.

A firm reaches a client's books only with the client's consent, and works there as a reviewer: it reads what the controls found, runs a control, gives an exception an owner and prepares the reports. Approving the client's own requests stays with the client.

Three reports, two signatures each

The cannabis inventory tie-out (packages to the stock ledger to the general ledger), the excise and sales tax reconciliation and the 280E cost workpaper are prepared from the client's records. Each is signed by a preparer and a reviewer, a tax reviewer for the cost workpaper, kept as a version with its hash, and opens with the same sentence: no assurance is expressed.

A kept report says when it is out of date

Each figure in a kept report records the record it rests on. When a posting, a rule or a document changes under it, the report says so the next time it is opened, and the partner decides whether a new version is needed.

Figures that answer why

Each figure on a report, and the working figures on the cannabis screens (a sale's total, excise and sales tax, expected cash, a till difference, stock value), opens to how it was worked out and the entries behind it.

Files for the working papers

The valuation, COGS and 280E workpapers, stock on hand, a day of sales, profitability and the P&L by premises save as CSV, Excel or PDF, with the same figures and totals as the screen.

Every package on the books, from the plant to the receipt.

Plants, harvests, production runs, lab batches, packages, transfers, waste and recalls are recorded once, and each act on stock posts its cost in the same step.

Checked before it is written

Every act on stock first checks that the license it is done at is current and that the person doing it holds a current badge. A change to physical stock is decided by someone who holds the stock approval.

Lab results govern the batch

A batch carries its samples and results, the result that governs it decides whether its packages may be sold, and what happens to a failed batch is decided by someone who holds the compliance approval.

Transfers, destruction and recalls

Goods moving between your own licenses or to a buyer travel on a manifest you can print. A destruction follows the steps the rule in force names, with a witness, and a recall finds every package it reaches.

One record, end to end

Trace any plant, harvest, package, production run, sale or transfer forward and back, with every journal entry it posted beside it.

State rules read on the day, and state reports kept beside the books.

Limits, tax rates, receipt fields and deadlines are parameters of rule versions with their citations, read for the license's state on the business day, never constants in code.

Rules a person accepts

Rule packs for Ohio and California, with the federal rules, load as awaiting review, and nothing is enforced for a company until a named person there accepts the rule version. Your firm can record its review of a rule's wording.

Controls written to Ohio's rules

The cannabis controls cite Ohio's rules, the state the demonstration runs in. For a license in another state they answer not applicable rather than pass.

Purchase limits and taxes at the counter

The register checks a customer's purchase limit bucket by bucket, charges the excise from the rule and sales tax from the sales tax engine, and where no verified rule settles a treatment, the sale waits until a named person records the company's position.

Reports queued, checked against a simulator

Each act queues its state report in the same step. Fintra holds no state integrator keys, so it sends nothing to a regulator: the queue runs against a simulator of the state system that can acknowledge, reject or stay silent, and every acknowledgement on screen says it came from the simulator.

Fintra for cannabis today

Fintra keeps a licensed cannabis operator's books on its own ledger, with its own screens: licenses and badges, plants, harvests and production costed into packages, lab batches, transfers, waste and recalls, the register, tills, safes and deposits, excise and sales tax, and the COGS and 280E cost workpapers. An accounting firm works its cannabis clients from its own console and signs the inventory tie-out, the tax reconciliation and the cost workpaper there with two people. State track-and-trace reporting for Metrc and BioTrack runs against a simulator: a live connection needs keys a state issues to a validated integrator, which Fintra does not hold, so nothing it sends reaches a regulator, and every acknowledgement on screen says it came from the simulator. Fintra does not process card or bank payments: the register records how a sale was paid, and a deposit is in the bank when its bank line is matched. Fintra carries rule packs for Ohio, California and the federal rules, its cannabis controls are written to Ohio's, and a rule is enforced only after a named person at the company accepts it. The 280E workpaper prepares the figures; your tax preparer decides and signs the return.

Pages by role

One set of books runs the whole back office. These pages start from the job you do.

Bring one month of cash counts to a 15-minute demo.

We will open an Ohio demonstration client from the firm's console, run a till count, cost a harvest into packages, build the COGS and 280E workpapers and sign a report, and show you where the simulator stands in for the state system.

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