For several decades, cannabis businesses operated under the idea that record-keeping simply left a paper trail leading all the way to the jailhouse. The industry thrived on handshakes, honor, and cash transactions. This worked just fine for a long time, but those days are largely over thanks to adult-use legalization and the compliance requirements that come with it. Compliance requirements are unwavering and complex, and the difference between staying open and being shut down is whether or not cannabis operators take them seriously. Regulation touches every aspect of the industry from seed to sale, making it critical to find a comprehensive software platform to do the heavy lifting. The top solution is BLAZE. Let’s find out why.
How the Supply Chain Works
To understand compliance we’ll start with the supply chain. The purpose of seed to sale compliance tracking is to ensure that each time a product enters the supply chain it’s regulated and monitored until it leaves the chain, with nothing getting in the way of the process. Each state chooses a core compliance reporting system (also known as track and trace) into which all data must be reported.
Compliance requirements are different for each cannabis operator — retailer, cultivator, distributor, delivery service — but everything is connected by the same thing: inventory. So when a product is created by a cultivator, let’s say a one-eighth ounce bag of flowers, a unique identifying code is assigned to that product and follows it all the way through to the distributor, the retailer and ultimately the customer.
BLAZE offers separate modules tailored to each side of the cannabis industry so their unique needs can be met.
What Seed to Sale Compliance Looks Like
BLAZE’s software platform can tell track and trace systems everything they need to know to create manifests.
For retailers, interactions with the system typically start with shipments from distributors. When a product comes into the store, the operator must tell Metrc when it was received and how much arrived. Another interaction might involve adjusting inventory if something breaks or spoils, or if there is only shake and stems at the bottom of a jar of buds. Even though the retailer has no intention of selling this product, it must report to Metrc how much was discarded and why/when. And the last type of interaction is, of course, a sale. Once a product is sold to a customer, the state must know. This whole process is automated in BLAZE.
Delivery regulations aren’t exactly the same as retail. Oregon is a great example of where there are different requirements. Requirements that are time-consuming unless you are using BLAZE. With our Android and iOS driver app BLAZE knows when the driver is on the road and when the transaction is complete. The manifest and all the compliance work is done — vehicle type, license, driver information, vehicle and driver insurance policy, the planned route for each delivery, the content of the order, and estimated departure. All of this is managed in BLAZE and is designed to interact flawlessly with the state Metrc system to make this process efficient and compliant.
Going Beyond The Store
Distributors and cultivators have other things to worry about like packaging, invoicing, and collecting taxes (the latter is unique to California). BLAZE’s software handles package creation to make eights or pre-rolls. BLAZE was created to make these onerous processes as seamless as possible by making things happen in real-time with a few simple clicks of a button. Manage your testing and labeling all in one place with BLAZE. On the compliance side, BLAZE manages the manifests that are required for compliance reporting to Metrc that must include the route the transporter takes and details about the driver and what they’re transporting.
The Choice is Clear
BLAZE was designed by people in the cannabis industry to do things that existing software platforms couldn’t do and to make life easier in this complex compliance-driven industry. Why have multiple systems? You can manage your inventory, operations, customer base, and compliance all in one place with BLAZE. Take a Tour today!
