Seed-to-Sale Software: Choosing the Right Platform

Which seed-to-sale platform is right for your cannabis business?

What is a seed-to-sale platform?

Seed-to-sale software is used to help simplify your processes and record anything and everything happening to and around your cannabis growing, cultivating, and selling activities. It is a means to gather and maintain multiple data collection points that growing, distributing and sale operations would need. Every interaction must be recorded, whether for cannabis or hemp products, or your team following your standard operating procedures (SOPs). Before we dive deep into seed-to-sale software, it’s important that you understand the meaning of seed-to-sale. If you feel like you don’t have the strongest grasp of its meaning, check out our post to learn more about it: Seed-to-Sale Meaning.

Seed-to-sale software also helps regulators ensure that cannabis companies follow all laws and regulations throughout the supply chain. This includes paying all applicable taxes and fees and tracking potentially contaminated products to recall them.

Supply chain management is essential in the legal cannabis space because it needs to happen at such a granular level. A single cannabis plant can be divided into multiple products, each with its own batch number, expiration date, and other data points.

Tracking this data is critical for compliance and also to improve your legal cannabis business operations. When you have complete visibility into your supply chain, you can make more informed decisions about your business.

Which seed-to-sale platform is right for your cannabis business?

What is a seed-to-sale platform?

Seed-to-sale software is used to help simplify your processes and record anything and everything happening to and around your cannabis growing, cultivating, and selling activities. It is a means to gather and maintain multiple data collection points that growing, distributing and sale operations would need. Every interaction must be recorded, whether for cannabis or hemp products, or your team following your standard operating procedures (SOPs).

Seed-to-sale software also helps regulators ensure that cannabis companies follow all laws and regulations throughout the supply chain. This includes paying all applicable taxes and fees and tracking potentially contaminated products to recall them.

Supply chain management is essential in the legal cannabis space because it needs to happen at such a granular level. A single cannabis plant can be divided into multiple products, each with its own batch number, expiration date, and other data points.

Tracking this data is critical for compliance and also to improve your legal cannabis business operations. When you have complete visibility into your supply chain, you can make more informed decisions about your business.

As a grower, why should I use seed-to-sale tracking software?

Simply put, you won’t be able to legally do anything with your product unless you can prove you’ve used an appropriate tracking method.

Licensed producers (LPs) can use seed-to-sale to track dozens of compliance metrics, including lab test results, inventory management, waste disposal processes, licensing requirements, and packaging and labelling requirements. All this heavily impacts the quality of your cannabis product. Quality assurance is, of course, crucial to building a successful grow. Check out our post on Cannabis QMS to get a better outlook on how you can optimize your quality management.

Professionals might use seed-to-sale to track important dates for their own cultivation purposes including phases of their growth cycle, seed acquisition, planting, seed germination, harvesting, and processing.

Seed-to-Sale Software Cost

The cost for seed-to-sale software ranges from $0 to $5,000+/month. However, the price depends on the size of your business, cultivation method, and specific needs. For example, an LP with a large commercial grow-op will need a more sophisticated seed-to-sale platform than a smaller operation. With the correct SOPs and training program, your team will love you for making this investment. To learn more about SOPs and training, check out our post on Seed-to-Sale Software: SOPs and Training.

Seed-to-Sale Software Benefits

Real-time Data/Inventory Management

Compliant cannabis businesses must always keep track of every plant and lot. Each activity is logged and timestamped, ensuring you always have records of your operations and essential business data at every stage of the supply chain.

CRM Functionality

Those operating in the cannabis industry know that it’s a complex business. Successful businesses scale their business relationships and communicate with other businesses, patients, and customers. A CRM system helps manage processes and record those interactions while automating marketing tasks to improve the customer experience.

Cannabis Cultivation Forecasting

Cannabis seed-to-sale software takes the guesswork out of cannabis cultivation by using historical data to predict inventory needs, staff scheduling, track cannabis, and more. At this stage in the supply chain, it’s important to have a clear understanding of what’s happening in your facility, and traceability systems mitigate cannabis compliance issues. For example, seed-to-sale software for hemp has helped countless clients benefit from its batch-planning features. To save you from guesswork, if you’re still unsure about what seed-to-sale software is, and who uses it, we wrote these brief pieces just for you. Check out What Is Cannabis Seed-to-Sale Software and Who Uses Cannabis Seed-to-Sale Software.

Integration with Government Tracking Software

Government tracking software is a way for state governments to regulate the cannabis industry and minimize illegal cannabis diversion. This type of software is also known as a seed-to-sale system or track-and-trace system.

Licensed cannabis business operators that want to stay compliant must integrate their own seed-to-sale tracking software with government software. This allows regulatory forces within state and local governments to track every cannabis plant from seed to sale throughout the supply chain.

Robust Traceability Tools

Having a complete view of your product is essential to quality control and compliance. By knowing exactly where each plant is at every stage of growth throughout your entire cannabis cultivation operation, you can ensure your plants are healthy and free of contaminants.

Business Intelligence Reporting

The cannabis industry continues to grow and evolve, which means cannabis businesses need to be able to make quick decisions based on data. Seed-to-sale software provides business intelligence reporting that gives growers the ability to track KPIs, generate reports, and make informed decisions about their operations.

Seed-to-Sale Software enables you to:

Track payments

Tracking payments is critical for any cannabis business. It allows you to see who has paid, how much they’ve paid, and when the payment was made. This information can be used to generate invoices, track inventory, and more.

Track transportation

Tracking transportation allows cannabis operations to see where their product is at all times. This information can be used to manage inventory, ensure compliance, and make sure product arrives safely to its destination.

Identify cannabis strains and batch numbers

Compliance reporting involves abiding by state and national laws. This often requires tracking cannabis strains and batch numbers. This information is necessary for product recalls, quality control, and supporting marketing and cannabis sales efforts.

See details of any transaction

Financial management starts with understanding your transactions. Seeing the details of each transaction allows you to track your marijuana inventory, understand your margins, control costs, and make informed decisions about your business with real-time data.

Integrate with other software

Cannabis businesses often need to integrate their software with other applications, particularly for regulatory compliance reporting. This can include accounting software, point-of-sale systems, and eCommerce platforms. Integration makes it possible to share data between applications and improve efficiency throughout your entire operation.

Optimize cultivation by strain

Tracking and optimizing your cannabis plants shouldn’t stop at the strain level. By understanding how each strain grows and matures, you can adjust your cultivation process accordingly. This includes things like watering schedules, nutrient management (nutrient levels), light cycles, and more.

Your facility sensors are fully integrated into the GrowerIQ platform, allowing you to track everything you’re doing right and learn from past errors.

Over time, you’ll improve your grow’s potency and yield. This technology-based marijuana platform extracts data from your cultivation activities and environmental sensors to create suggestions that optimize grow conditions.

With GrowerIQ-generated insights, you’ll maintain the quality and consistency your customers expect. Growing high-grade cannabis plants will become a trackable, repeatable process.

Monitor your facility in real-time

Maintaining a safe and secure cannabis facility is critical to compliance. Seed-to-sale software provides live monitoring of your facility so you can see what’s happening in real-time. This includes things like temperature, humidity, lighting, and more.

Receive alerts when something goes wrong

You can’t be in your cannabis facility 24/7, but with seed-to-sale software, you don’t have to be. Receive alerts if something goes wrong so you can take action quickly. This can help you avoid costly mistakes, keep your operation running smoothly, and maintain compliance.

Track production costs

Your business cannot serve its stakeholders if it’s not sustainable; profitability is a crucial consideration! Allocate resource and supply costs to automatically create expense tracking for your cannabis facility. This information can be used to inform financial reports, understand your margins, and make data-based decisions about your operations.

Your finger remains on the pulse of your operations as you receive smart default reports with automatic updates. Whether you’re selling to cannabis dispensaries or manufacturers, identifying optimal production outcomes by tracking your environmental and grow activities on our MJ platform.

Scale your business

Whether a part of the Canadian cannabis industry or located in another region, as your cannabis business grows, you’ll need a seed-to-sale solution to track cannabis and scale with you. Seed-to-sale software is designed to grow with your business, so you can continue using the same system as you expand your operations.

Essentially, seed-to-sale process tracking provides you with broader visibility over your business operations, so you’re able to increase efficiency and profitability.

Handle chain of custody management

Every touchpoint must be recorded. From leaves that must be destroyed to the number of seeds you’re planting. A thorough seed-to-sale tracking process is required to protect consumers, whose health and safety are the primary concern.

If something goes wrong with a marijuana batch, LPs, retailers, and regulators can determine where and what went wrong, which enforces liability and responsibility every step of the way. This chain of custody keeps a paper trail of the ownership, regulation, transport, lab testing, and consistency of products. Each LP must comply with safety and hygiene requirements so that its products are safe for human consumption.

Governments around the world enforce the use of strict tracking processes, which seed-to-sale software can help with, in order to monitor cannabis companies’ processes, and record which companies are paying relevant taxes and complying (or violating)  local laws. They are able to recall products from the point of sale in the rare event that a product has been compromised. The aforementioned chain of custody gives officials the ability to determine the exact location, time, and batch number of any product (including oils, flowers, concentrates, edibles, or extracts) that could have been tainted and needs to be recalled.

Systemize manufacturing management

The best seed-to-sale system should help a cannabis company manage manufacturing from start to finish. The software should streamline the process of defining, managing and tracking manufacturing recipes; scheduling production; monitoring work in progress; and quality control.

Cannabis ERP software supports the manufacturing business model while ensuring the operation adheres to state regulations. It does this by:

• Enabling real-time tracking of the manufacturing process from seed-to-sale
• Standardizing quality control procedures
• Generating compliance reports
• Integrating with other business software, such as accounting and point-of-sale

Cannabis ERP software is an important tool for any cannabis company that wants to improve its operations based on past trends and data visualizations. Whether manufacturing cannabis products or growing and selling cannabis, an ERP system can give you the insights you need to make strategic decisions that will help your business thrive.

Expert Cannabis Industry Advice

As any plant owner may know, keeping a plant healthy is difficult, and marijuana is no different. Plus, regulations can be tedious. They differ per legal framework, so having a healthy cannabis production operation and a sound facility only covers the basics. There’s also endless paperwork, different compliance systems, and constant traceability requirements from growers to sellers. 

Good seed-to-sale software will have built-in elements to mitigate the difficulty of these processes. Advice and safeguards from cannabis consultants, microbiologists, or master growers can protect you from costly mishaps. Digitalization can facilitate the completion and saving of files and documents. Premium hardware can make sure your facility runs smoothly and efficiently, which contributes to the profitability of future yields.

These are just some of the benefits your business could enjoy, so make sure you’re aware of the different aspects of seed-to-sale platforms.

We can go on about cost vs. benefits for as long as you’d like. To give you more confidence, we also wrote a piece specifically on Seed-to-Sale Software Cost vs Benefits.

Seed-to-Sale Software FAQ

Do I need to use a seed-to-sale platform?

By not using seed-to-sale software, you risk the credibility, reputation, and validity of your company in the cannabis industry. Your chosen platform will ensure producers, distributors, and retailers maintain compliance with all laws and regulations. Tracking eliminates the risk of making mistakes, skipping crucial steps, or processing errors that would result in hefty fines or even criminal charges.

Tracking solutions also protect a company’s reputation. If a batch is tainted, you can pinpoint exactly which step in the process went wrong. This avoids having to recall thousands and thousands of dollars worth of product. Without a tracking solution, your cannabis business simply cannot scale to the same extent as other competitors.

Implementing effective seed-to-sale software in your operation is a safe and guaranteed way to grow your marijuana business.

Which seed-to-sale tracking system is required in Canada?

GrowerIQ is cannabis seed-to-sale software Canadian growers can rely on to stay compliant with Health Canada. If you’re looking at cannabis software solutions, keep in mind that this is designed to simplify the tracking process for cannabis companies, including inventory management and documenting business processes for marijuana cultivators and other marijuana industry operations throughout the entire supply chain.

Is seed-to-sale required in Canada?

The majority of states require seed-to-sale tracking. However, Canada does not require it. Even with this being the case, cannabis businesses in Canada should have a seed-to-sale tracking system in place to manage operations, document business processes, and other crucial activities that contribute to their success. Check out seed-to-sale tracking for software for a quick guide on getting started with setting up this system.

Who uses cannabis seed-to-sale software?

State and local governments require cannabis software for inventory control and tracking other activities throughout the supply chain. Cannabis tracking software is also used by licensed growers, manufacturers, dispensaries, and other members of the cannabis industry to ensure compliance.

How does seed-to-sale software work?

Platforms like GrowerIQ track inventory from the time the seed is planted to when the final product reaches the customer. This cannabis-specific business management technology allows companies to keep up with their compliance management using a software solution integratable with other software solutions required by law enforcement agencies.

What is a seed-to-sale platform?

A seed-to-sale software is a tracking process to record anything and everything happening to and around your cannabis growing, cultivating, and selling processes. It is a means to gather and maintain all the data that growing, distributing and sale operations would need. Every moment of interaction within the production chain must be recorded, whether for cannabis, hemp, or standard operating procedures (SOPs).

Seed-to-sale software also helps regulators ensure that cannabis companies follow all laws and regulations. This includes paying all applicable taxes and fees and tracking potentially contaminated products to recall them.

As a grower, why should I use seed-to-sale tracking software?

Simply put, you won’t be able to legally do anything with your product unless you can prove you’ve used an appropriate tracking system.

Licensed producers (LPs) can use seed-to-sale to track dozens of compliance metrics, including lab test results, inventory tracking, waste disposal processes, licensing requirements, and packaging and labelling requirements. All this heavily impacts the quality of your cannabis product.

Professionals might use seed-to-sale cultivation software to track important dates for their own cultivation purposes including phases of their growth cycle, seed acquisition, planting, seed germination, harvesting, and processing.

A Seed-to-Sale Software enables you to:

• Track payments

• Track transportation

• Identify cannabis strains and batch numbers

• See details of any transaction

Essentially, seed-to-sale provides you with broader visibility over your business operations, so you’re able to increase efficiency and profitability.

Do I need to use a seed-to-sale platform?

By not using seed-to-sale software, you risk the credibility, reputation, and validity of your company. Your platform will ensure producers, distributors, and retailers maintain compliance with all laws and regulations. Tracking eliminates the risk of making mistakes, skipping crucial steps, or processing errors that would result in hefty fines or even criminal charges.

Tracking solutions also protect a company’s reputation. If a batch is tainted, you can pinpoint exactly which step in the process went wrong. (This avoids having to recall thousands and thousands of dollars worth of product? Without a tracking solution, your cannabis business simply doesn’t seem professional.

Implementing effective seed-to-sale software in your operation is a safe and guaranteed way to grow your marijuana business.

Chain of Custody

Every touchpoint must be recorded. From leaves thrown in the garbage, to the number of seeds you’re planting. This thorough tracking is to protect consumers, whose health and safety is the primary concern. If something goes wrong with a marijuana batch, LPs, retailers, and regulators can determine where and what went wrong, which enforces liability and responsibility every step of the way. This chain of custody keeps a paper trail of the ownership, regulation, transport, lab testing, and consistency of the product. Each LP must comply with safety and hygiene requirements so that its products are safe for human consumption.

The government enforces the use of seed-to-sale software to monitor cannabis companies’ processes, and record which companies are paying relevant taxes and complying (or violating) provincial and local laws. They are able to recall products in the rare event that a product has been compromised. The aforementioned chain of custody gives officials the ability to determine the exact location, time, and batch number of any product (including oils, flowers, concentrates, edibles, or extracts) that could have been tainted and needs to be recalled.

Expert Advice

 As any plant owner may know, keeping a plant healthy is difficult, and marijuana is no different. Plus, regulations can be tedious. They differ per legal framework, so having a healthy grow-op and a sound facility only covers the basics. There’s also endless paperwork, different compliance systems, and constant traceability requirements from growers to sellers. 

Good seed-to-sale software will have built-in elements to mitigate the difficulty of these processes. Advice and safeguards from cannabis consultants, microbiologists, or master growers can protect you from costly mishaps. Digitalisation can facilitate the completion and saving of files and documents. Premium hardware can make sure your facility runs smoothly and efficiently.

These are just some of the benefits your business could enjoy, so make sure you’re aware of the different aspects of seed-to-sale platforms. 

Find Out More

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