Why you might want to switch cannabis POS systems?

As cannabis retail owners understand, cannabis POS systems are not decisions to be made lightly. They not only cost money (with monthly prices often being higher than that of free or generic POS systems), but also take substantial amounts of time to set up, understand, and train your staff on.

Most retailers will try their best to avoid needing to ever switch systems past initial setup. As long as your system supports all the core functionalities of POS, inventory control, compliance, and reporting your store should be able to get by. However, the challenges occur when you are scaling.

Types of data

There are several important data points to consider then transferring data from one system to another.

• Product data
  • Includes: Product names, SKUs, barcodes, images, descriptions, prices, costs, and more
• Inventory data
  • Includes: Product identifiers, quantities, and more
• Customer data
  • Includes: Names, emails, phones, notes, and more
• Sales data
  • Includes: Sales receipts, dates

What data Greenline supports

Greenline’s onboarding team can help import product data and customer data. However, it’s important to note that data formats can be drastically different between different POS systems, and some exported columns might not be compatible with Greenline’s data structures.

If your pre-existing product data is not compatible, Greenline will have you covered. Our provincial product catalog feature (in supported provinces) will allow you to quickly import a wide range of product data simply by searching for a product’s SKU or barcode. Our customer success department will help you with any bulk imports using this data if necessary.

Due to the detailed sales and inventory tracking that is required for provincial cannabis compliance reports, Greenline cannot accept historical sales and inventory data. As a result, we recommend retailers use their previous POS system up to the last day of the month while preparing Greenline for use, then switching all operations to Greenline on the 1st of the next month. This will ensure that your compliance reports have a somewhat reliable data source for your compliance reports while providing a fresh start for the next. Transitioning in the middle of a month can make compliance reconciling exceptionally difficult.

Product data checks

Once you’ve imported your product data into Greenline, we recommend going over the following checks.

• Every cannabis product is assigned to a Health Canada compliance category
• Every cannabis product has a SKU, barcode, and an equivalent dried flower cannabis weight (contributes to the 30 gram purchasing limit)
• Every sellable product has a non-$0 retail price
• Every sellable product is assigned to the correct taxes

Other product details (such as images and descriptions) can be added afterwards if not provided in the initial data import.

The next steps will be to add your first inventory. If you have pre-existing inventory, we recommend using our Audits feature before the 1st of the month. If you are ordering new inventory, using our Purchase Orders feature after the start of the month will help add new quantities as well as will out your initial wholesale costs.

Learn more

You can book a demo with us here to learn more about how Greenline can help your store scale during this exciting time in Canadian cannabis retail.