The Daily Routine
Post the sales journal from the point-of-sale system with discounts, refunds and voids broken out separately. Count and log cash at every custody transfer with two signatures attached. Reconcile each deposit against the sales record and document any variance the same day.
Receive inventory on the day it arrives, matching the transfer manifest, the vendor invoice and a physical count before product reaches the sales floor or the vault.
The Weekly Routine
Reconcile bank activity, review the accounts payable aging and schedule payments against the cash forecast, review accounts receivable and escalate anything past due, and run cycle counts on the scheduled SKU group.
A weekly cadence prevents the month-end scramble where small errors are discovered too late to trace back to their source.
- Bank reconciliation and updated cash position
- AP aging review with a scheduled payment run
- AR aging review with active collections follow-up
- Scheduled cycle counts with a written variance log
The Month-End Checklist
Complete the inventory rollforward and reconcile it to both physical counts and seed-to-sale records. Post accruals and prepaids. Tie payroll to filed TPT and withholding returns. Eliminate intercompany activity across affiliated entities. Review the trial balance line by line against the prior period.
Finish with a written variance narrative. If a number moved materially and no one can explain it, the close is not actually finished.
Documentation Standards
Every entry needs supporting documentation attached — an invoice, a manifest, a count sheet, a payroll register, or a signed memo — stored so it can be pulled up by period and vendor years later.
The real test: could a new hire, or an ADOR examiner, reconstruct your reasoning from the file alone, with no explanation from you?
Bookkeeping Mistakes That Recur in Cannabis
Common problems include coding inventoriable costs to expense accounts, booking deposits directly as revenue instead of tying them to the sales journal, netting discounts against gross sales, ignoring waste and product samples, and letting collected excise tax sit inside a revenue account instead of a liability.
Each of these distorts both the tax position and the operating picture, and each is easy to prevent once the structure is set up correctly.
