No One Has 200-Hours to Clean-Up Metrc & Metrc-Integrated Technology Solutions
Brie conducting on-site audits at Esensia Gardens, Mendocino County, California
You’ve already made significant investments into lawfully operating a cannabis business in the regulated market. How do you feel about the number of regular audits necessary to maintain your operation?
Most people are frustrated and overwhelmed when they find out just how many data points need to be tracked and reconciled and the large amount of time it takes to do so.
From our years of data collection, we know that a 60 plant harvest adds an additional 90 minutes of labor cost per harvest.
Rose implementing Metrc at Moonmade Farms Humboldt County, California
This is due to weighing each plant individually, weighing stalks, capturing waste, and validating accuracy. All of this is time-consuming. If you are growing thousands of plants, this means an entire 40-hour workweek is dedicated to entering and maintaining Metrc accuracy.
Data Standardization is one of the most important things RMCC reinforces with clients and is a key factor in streamlining your audit procedures. Data standardization is the process of bringing data into a uniform format that allows analysts and others to research, analyze, and utilize the data. Not only do incorrect harvest batch names lead to infractions, but inconsistencies in naming conventions throughout your technology stack also make it much more difficult to reconcile your data. RMCC’s downloadable Data Standardization guide is available here for those that need support.
If you are worried that you don’t have the know-how or staff to identify and perform the correct audits to keep your operation in compliance, you are not alone.
Managing large data sets within your Metrc and technology stack isn’t why many cultivators entered the regulated market. Yet managing those datasets is integral to maintaining and growing a successful business. That is because your business is so much more than tracking products because of State requirements. It is about analyzing your operational efficiencies, finding mistakes before they compound, and identifying profitable and non-profitable practices so that you can build and scale your business. Your data is telling the story of your operations’ health. Managing and analyzing those data sets is what allows you to understand and evolve your story for the most successful outcome.
It can take upwards of 200 hours (or $5,000+ in labor costs) to clean a cultivation license in Metrc. That’s because if you’re conducting a first-time audit yourself, there are quite a few high-level steps involved:
BriAnne Ramsay, RMCC’s CEO and Founder has assisted operators around the country with investigations, audits, and litigation regarding multi-state operator licensing deals.
Listen to the episode of our podcast, TBD with RMCC, where BriAnne discusses a few audits that she was a part of and just how difficult they were to navigate for results. RMCC supports small farms and some of the most prominent players in the industry. We use our hands-on experience and collective knowledge to identify potential problems and help put a plan in place to correct them. Our clients receive the peace of mind that their operation is in order in the event of an inspection.
BriAnne Ramsay is now sharing her insights, techniques, and tools, to master Metrc cultivation and processing audits after operating in the regulated market for 8 years. Save labor costs and build or strengthen your auditing practices with the RMCC course “How to Master Metrc Cultivation & Processing Audits”. After completing this audit course, you’ll walk away with confidence in your ability to conquer large-scale, company-wide audits and you can rest easy knowing your operation has the safeguards and procedures in place to scale and grow when the time is right.
Identify the need for the audit with available data points.
Build an audit template tool with formulas and VLOOKUPs.
Identify and retrieve the data points from all applicable data tracking.
Analyze the data for the root cause and corrective adjustments needed.
Perform compliant adjustments.
Deliver the Communication plan to prevent the need for additional corrective adjustments or updates in procedures.
Report adjustments to your state agency if applicable.
Operating in the cultivation space means that identifying non-compliant harvest batches can be tricky.
Visit the RMCC youtube channel to view, “Identifying Non-Compliant Harvest Batches” for quick tips. Maybe it’s because, with so many plant phases to track, this leaves many opportunities for data entry errors that can compound, making identifying those flower assembly errors even more difficult.
Regular blind physical audits throughout the plant life cycle can help you identify errors before they compound.
If you’ve ever investigated and corrected assembly errors you know it can take a very long time depending on the efficiency of the audit process infrastructure. Poor data standardization, a lack of tools, templates, analytics, and standard auditing procedures all impact the time it takes to identify flower assembly errors. If you miss flower assembly errors and allow the errors to compound, it can be exhausting to investigate the root cause. In severe cases, one grow license can take you and your staff upwards of 200 hours to audit and clean. This equates to a minimum of $5,000 in labor!
BriAnne Ramsay, RMCC’s CEO and Founder has assisted operators around the country with investigations, audits, and litigation regarding multi-state operator licensing deals
Brie speaking to California operators about Metrc best practices with Distru.
Listen to the episode of our podcast, TBD with RMCC, where BriAnne discusses a few audits that she was a part of and just how difficult they were to navigate for results. RMCC supports small farms and some of the most prominent players in the industry. We use our hands-on experience and collective knowledge to identify potential problems and help put a plan in place to correct them. Our clients receive the peace of mind that their operation is in order in the event of an inspection.
briAnne Ramsay is now sharing her insights, techniques, and tools, to master Metrc cultivation and processing audits after operating in the regulated market for 8 years.
Save labor costs and build or strengthen your auditing practices with the RMCC course “How to Master Metrc Cultivation & Processing Audits”. After completing this audit course, you’ll walk away with confidence in your ability to conquer large-scale, company-wide audits and you can rest easy knowing your operation has the safeguards and procedures in place to scale and grow when the time is right.
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