A Chart of Accounts Built for 280E
The chart of accounts is the tax strategy. Every cost account is designated inventoriable or non-inventoriable at setup, and production costs are further segmented by function so allocations can be supported later. Departments or classes track activity by location, license and business line.
Done correctly, the trial balance itself produces the COGS computation. Done poorly, someone reconstructs it from memory in March, and that reconstruction is exactly what an examiner will take apart.
- Inventoriable versus period cost designation at the account level
- Departmental tracking by license, location and function
- Separate treatment of plant-touching and non-plant-touching activity
- Consistent vendor and item mapping to keep costing stable
The Monthly Close
We run a fixed close calendar with a documented checklist: bank and cash reconciliation including vault counts, POS or invoice revenue tie-out, inventory rollforward reconciled to BioTrack, accrual and prepaid schedules, payroll reconciliation to filed returns, intercompany elimination, and a variance review against budget and prior period.
The deliverable is a package, not a file: statements, key metrics, a variance narrative, and an open-items list with owners and dates.
Cash-Intensive Business Discipline
Where currency is still involved, bookkeeping quality is a defense. Daily cash logs, dual counts, over/short tracking, documented deposits and a vault reconciliation tied to the ledger create the record proving income was fully reported.
We also maintain the documentation cannabis-compliant financial institutions require, so a banking relationship isn't lost over a request the operator can't fill.
Cleanup and Catch-Up Engagements
Many operators arrive with years of untouched or unreliable books. Cleanup follows a sequence: establish an inventory baseline, rebuild the chart of accounts, reconstruct bank and cash activity, rebuild inventory rollforwards from BioTrack and purchase records, then re-close each period going forward.
We scope cleanup explicitly, with a fixed sequence and a defined endpoint, so it doesn't turn into an open-ended project.
Systems and Workflow
We implement accounting platforms, track-and-trace integrations, POS connections, AP workflow and document management sized to the operator, and we write the procedures down. Documented workflow survives staff turnover, which in cannabis is frequent.
Where a client keeps bookkeeping in-house, we supervise: we design the system, review the close, and own the technical positions while the internal team does the daily work.
