The days when your throw your money in one box and inventory records in another are long gone. Beware the Tax man. Simply put, if you don’t keep accurate, verifiable track of inventory vs income plus pay very close attention to whatever the law of the day is you’re on the path to IRS hell.
Cannabis laws change so frequently it’s ridiculous. All it takes is one tiny mistake and you can kiss your profits for the year goodbye because you’ll be needing the cash to pay all those fines the IRS will levy against you for violating any of their codes or regulations. Is it fair? Hell no, but if you let technology help there is a way to operate a thriving store and keep the tax man off your back.
POS Technology Is Your Best Weapon
The future of cannabis commerce is basically settled, the war on drugs is over, and cannabis wins. However, the other side apparently has a few sore losers on it and you can bet they will be watching everything you do, waiting for any mistake so they can pounce. The solution to that is simple, let “point of sale” tech work for you. You may think you don’t need it, but you really do if you want to stay in business peacefully or at all.
Seed-To-Sale, POS Technology Guards Your Compliancy
Without extremely detailed, meticulous records to back your every claim it’s like painting a target on your store that says, “come get me.” Details get in the way, after all, when you’re helping a customer with no clue what they want, and the line is getting longer, who has time for record keeping? POS does, it puts the most current, data-intensive technology to work for you to make sure you stay compliant.
If you want to be a Cannabusiness success story rather than another victory for the IRS records are your back-up. You can’t do without them because your word in court won’t be good enough, that judge is going to want visible, not verbal evidence. Allow tech to do the worrying and you’ll have all the proof you need, when you need it. Then all that’s left is keeping those customers happy and the line moving. Train yourself and any employees you may have to remember these two simple rules.
- Paper or hard disk copies work but back them up with online copies. Physical records can be tampered with, but anything stored in cloud records is only accessible to you.
- Back up your records regularly and you’ll never know what it feels like to deal with missing data when you need it. Doing this weekly is a good idea, daily is even better when info is still fresh in the mind.
Conclusion
Grow operations, dispensaries, even delivery drivers, all need to take record keeping very seriously or tax time is going to be a nightmare you may not wake up from. Keeping the IRS happy is your # 1 priority, but think about it, knowing exactly where you stand at any given time and being able to prove it isn’t a bad thing. Sooner or later state and federal cannabis laws will learn to get along but until they do, taking some of those profits and investing in POS is like bs insurance, and the crowning glory of it all would be claiming the expense of this software as a legal business tax deduction! Take that Uncle Sam.