What BioTrack Actually Records
BioTrack is the seed-to-sale system New Mexico's Cannabis Control Division requires licensees to use, assigning unique tags to plants and packages and logging every movement, transformation, transfer, sale and disposal event. It functions as an independent physical inventory ledger running in parallel with the accounting system.
For an accountant, that parallel record is a genuine advantage: an independent quantity source that the financial inventory can be tested against every single period, rather than taking the books' word for it.
Following a Package Through Its Lifecycle
Packages get created, split apart, combined, adjusted, transferred under a manifest, sold at retail, and finally closed out once depleted. Each of those events should generate a matching financial entry — a receipt recorded at cost, a cost transfer between package identifiers, a write-off, or a charge to cost of goods sold.
Wherever a physical event in BioTrack has no financial counterpart in the ledger, a variance opens up and keeps widening until someone sits down and reconciles it.
- Package creation and cost assignment at receiving or at harvest
- Splits and combinations that shift cost between package identifiers
- Manual adjustments requiring a documented reason and financial effect
- Manifest-based transfers matched against invoices and physical receipts
Manifests and Inter-Licensee Transfers
Every movement between licensees travels under a BioTrack manifest listing packages, quantities and the receiving license. Receiving should be a three-way match every time: manifest, invoice and physical count, with any mismatch resolved before the product is accepted into inventory.
Accepting a manifest that doesn't match what physically arrived creates a compliance record that contradicts your own books — one of the worst positions to be in if a regulator or an IRS examiner ever looks closely.
Waste, Samples and Manual Adjustments
Waste, destruction events, quality-control samples and employee product all pull inventory out physically. Each one needs to pull the corresponding cost out financially too, backed by a documented reason.
Manual adjustments in BioTrack deserve the closest scrutiny of all. An adjustment made purely to clear a compliance discrepancy, without a matching journal entry on the books, is the single most common source of drift between the two systems.
Building a Real Monthly Reconciliation
The monthly reconciliation compares opening inventory, receipts, production, sales, waste and adjustments as recorded in BioTrack against the general ledger's inventory rollforward and the physical count.
Sort every difference into a category — timing, documentation, costing, physical loss or system error — assign an owner, and set a resolution date. Keep the signed workpapers with the tax file for the year.
