Revenue Recording and POS Discipline
Record gross sales, discounts, refunds and excise tax separately. Netting them together hides the leakage that determines retail profitability and complicates every subsequent reconciliation.
Tie deposits to the sales journal daily, not to the bank statement monthly. The distinction matters when someone eventually asks whether all revenue was reported.
Receiving and Landed Cost
Because a retailer's COGS is limited to the cost of acquiring product, landed unit cost accuracy is the entire federal position. Match every receipt to an invoice and a manifest, and record the unit cost at the point of receipt.
Vendor credits, rebates and returns must adjust unit cost rather than being posted as miscellaneous income.
- Three-way match at receiving: manifest, invoice, physical count
- Inbound freight and acquisition costs included in unit cost
- Credits and returns adjusted against inventory cost, not income
- Consistent SKU mapping between POS and accounting
Cash Room Procedures
Assign custody explicitly. Count at every transfer with two people and signatures. Reconcile drawer counts to shift reports. Maintain a vault log that ties to the ledger balance daily.
Track over/short by shift and employee. Patterns appear quickly and are far cheaper to address early.
Tax Handling at Retail
Excise tax collected is a liability, not revenue. Sales tax is calculated on a base that includes the excise amount. Local cannabis business tax is typically computed on gross receipts under city-specific rules.
Verify the POS configuration against actual district rates, and retest after any system update.
Retail Performance Analysis
Report gross margin by category and brand, basket size and transaction count by daypart, discount leakage, labor as a percentage of gross profit, and inventory turns by SKU class.
These are the numbers that determine shelf allocation, staffing levels and promotional strategy — all decisions with amplified consequences under 280E.
