The Cannabis Procurement Gap: What Your ERP Isn’t Tracking (And What It’s Costing You)
Your ERP tracks every gram of cannabis.
But what about the gloves, the labels, the mop heads, the POS paper?
Those line items feel small—until they quietly add up to $10K, $20K, even $30K/month in untracked spend.
Here’s the uncomfortable truth:
Most cannabis operators are bleeding margin through non-cannabis procurement—and don’t even know it.
The Invisible 30%
Your Metrc account knows where every nug went.
But non-cannabis inventory—like packaging, PPE, cleaning supplies, office gear, and facility items?
That’s a different story.
These purchases:
- Aren’t tracked in compliance systems
- Rarely get structured in ERP workflows
- Live outside standard SOPs
- And are often managed through… memory and inboxes
Yet they account for 25–40% of your total operational spend.
That’s a massive blind spot.
Where It Goes Wrong
Across all the cannabis operators we’ve worked with—MSOs, vertically integrated players, and single-store teams—the patterns are the same.
1. Decentralized Chaos
- Every team orders what they need, when they need it
- Multiple vendors for the same items
- Rush orders become the norm
- No pricing consistency, no vendor controls
2. No Approval Trail
- POs live in email
- Personal cards get used “just this once”
- Spend is discovered after it happens
- No live budget tracking or forecasting
3. Finance is Flying Blind
- 15–25 hours/month chasing receipts
- GL coding done manually
- Month-end is delayed—again
- Cost accounting? Incomplete and inaccurate
The Data Doesn’t Lie
Here’s what our internal analysis found:
- 82% of operators have no formal system for non-cannabis purchasing
- The average org overpays 15–22% for identical items across sites
- 30% of these purchases are last-minute rush orders (avg. 35% markup)
- Finance spends 18+ hours/month reconciling them
That’s not a rounding error. That’s your margin—leaking silently.
What It’s Really Costing You
For a $5M/year cannabis operation:
- ~$1.5M is spent on non-cannabis inventory
- A 15–20% inefficiency = $225K–$300K in lost margin
- Equivalent to growing top-line revenue by 5–6%—without selling a single extra gram
And that’s before factoring in lost productivity, downtime, or compliance risk.
This Isn’t Just a Cost Problem—It’s an Ops Problem
- Operational Risk: One missing item halts production
- Lost Time: Staff chasing supplies ≠ revenue-generating activity
- Data Gaps: No visibility = no leverage with vendors
- Compliance Gaps: Unstructured spend = audit risk
What the Fix Actually Looks Like
Smart operators aren’t replacing their ERP.
They’re filling the gap around it with dedicated procurement infrastructure:
✅ Centralized vendor management
✅ Standardized catalog across locations
✅ Role-based approval workflows
✅ Live budget tracking
✅ Purchase → PO → invoice → payment, all in one flow
✅ Analytics that surface vendor and spend insights
Want to Know What It’s Costing You?
We built a 60-second calculator to show you how much margin you’re losing right now.
No email. No sales pitch. Just raw numbers.
Most operators find $10K–$25K/month in recoverable savings—even with just one grow or a couple retail locations.
Where This Is Headed
The best cannabis operators are already treating procurement as a strategic function, not a back-office chore.
Here’s where things are going:
- ERP + procurement system integration
- Mobile-first tools for real-time orders
- Vendor standardization across states
- Automated inventory restocking
- Analytics driving decisions—not gut feel
Those who fix this now will outlast the price compression, licensing chaos, and supply chain swings ahead.
Final Thought
You don’t need new vendors. You need a system that stops the bleeding.
The good news? It takes 60 seconds to find out what your process is really costing you.
