ODC Quarterly Reporting for Cannabis (2026): Deadlines and Templates

Australian medicinal cannabis licensees file four cumulative reports a year, one per permitted site, with a hard 15th-of-the-month deadline. Miss one and the Office of Drug Control can issue infringement notices or move on your licence.

ODC quarterly reporting for cannabis is the recurring operational obligation that catches more Australian Licensed Producers than any other compliance task. The Office of Drug Control administers it under the Narcotic Drugs Act 1967, and every cultivation, production, and manufacture permit holder files using the ODC Cannabis Reporting Template. Reports are cumulative from 1 January, due by the 15th of the month following each quarter end, and Q4 must include a full annual reconciliation. This page covers the four deadlines for 2026, how the cumulative format works, the per-site rule, the records behind every figure, and how your data flows up to the International Narcotics Control Board.

For where quarterly reporting fits in the broader regulatory stack, see the Australian cannabis compliance checklist and the upstream ODC cannabis licence Australia guide.

What Are the ODC Quarterly Reporting Deadlines for Cannabis Licensees?

Australian medicinal cannabis licensees submit four quarterly reports per calendar year to the Office of Drug Control, each due on the 15th of the month after the quarter ends. The submission vehicle is the ODC Cannabis Reporting Template, an Excel workbook published by the Office of Drug Control that captures monthly breakdowns of cultivation, production, manufacture, use, and stock balances for every controlled cannabis material on site.

Here are the four deadlines for 2026 plus the first deadline of 2027. Bookmark this table; the dates repeat every year because quarters are fixed to the calendar year.

Build your internal close calendar to land final figures with the QAP no later than the 10th, leaving four working days for QA review and submission. Late or non-submission is one of the explicit triggers in the Office of Drug Control’s compliance escalation framework, alongside false or misleading information.

How Cumulative Quarterly Reports Work for Australian Cannabis Licensees

The most common error new Australian licensees make on their first ODC quarterly report is treating it as a discrete three-month return. It is not. Each report restates the year to date: Q2 covers January through June, Q3 covers January through September, and Q4 covers the entire calendar year plus a full annual reconciliation against opening stock, all activity, and closing stock.

Worked example. A single-site cultivator with this 2026 activity:

• January-March: 200 clones planted, 50 plants to flowering, 18 kg fresh harvest, 4.2 kg dried
• April-June: 100 new clones, 60 plants to flowering, 22 kg fresh harvest, 5.1 kg dried, 0.3 kg trim destroyed

The Q1 report (due 15 April) covers January through March. The Q2 report (due 15 July) restates the same Q1 figures plus April, May, and June. Q3 adds July through September. Q4 contains all twelve months plus a reconciled annual total. You are not replacing prior figures each quarter, you are extending them.

One practical consequence: any restatement of prior-quarter figures shows up immediately in the next submission. Correct a March harvest weight in May and the Q2 report will display the corrected figure where Q1 displayed the original. The Office of Drug Control sees both versions. Keep a documented audit trail of every restatement, the reason, and the sign-off, because a quiet correction invites questions on inspection.

The Q4 annual reconciliation also forces an explicit closing-stock figure that must match next year’s opening stock to the gram. Discrepancies between Q4 closing and Q1 opening balances are the single most common trigger for follow-up correspondence from the Office of Drug Control.

How Do You File ODC Quarterly Reports for Multi-Site Operations?

Each permitted site files separately. The Office of Drug Control treats every permit as a discrete reporting entity, so a company with a cultivation permit in regional Victoria and a manufacture permit in Sydney files two reports per quarter, not one. Activities are authorised at the permit level, not the licence level.

Three operational rules follow from the per-site requirement:

• Separate ODC Cannabis Reporting Template workbooks per permit. Do not combine sites in one file. The Office of Drug Control matches each submission to a specific permit reference, and bundled workbooks may trigger a request to resubmit in the correct format.
• Per-site stock balances must close to the gram. Inter-site transfers appear as outbound movement at the origin and inbound at the destination. Both sides must reconcile to the same weight, date, and batch identifier.
• Per-site QA sign-off. The qualified person at each site signs off the figures for that site. A central compliance manager may coordinate submission, but the figures must be traceable to the local batch records.

A producer running three permits across two states files twelve submissions per year, not four. Operations teams routinely underestimate this load when scoping QAP capacity for quarterly close.

What Records Must You Keep to Support Quarterly Reporting?

Every line on the ODC Cannabis Reporting Template must be traceable to a primary record. The Narcotic Drugs Act 1967 and supporting regulations require licence holders to maintain records sufficient to demonstrate compliance with permit conditions and to allow Office of Drug Control inspectors to reconcile reported figures against on-site stock. The Therapeutic Goods Administration adds further record-keeping obligations for any product released under TGO 93. Records must be retained for the period prescribed by the Narcotic Drugs Act and TGA guidance and retrievable for inspection at any time. Confirm the current retention period against your specific permit conditions; the duration is set in regulation and can shift between cultivation, production, and manufacture activities.

The minimum record set behind a quarterly report:

• Seed-to-sale traceability. Every plant tagged from propagation through to finished product or destruction, with stage transitions (propagation, vegetative, flowering, harvest, drying, curing, processing, finished product or destruction) timestamped and operator-attributed. This produces the cultivation and production figures on the template.
• Batch records and weight logs. Weight at every transition: fresh harvest, post-dry, post-cure, and any in-process loss for trim, sample removal, or destruction. The Q4 reconciliation depends on a clean weight bridge from opening stock plus inputs to closing stock plus outputs plus losses.
• Destruction logs. Witnesses, weights, methods, and reasons for every destruction event, reconciling against the reduction in active inventory.
• Transfer records. Manifest, weight, batch identifiers, and timestamps for inter-site or inter-licensee movement of controlled cannabis material.
• Sample removals. Sample weight, batch source, date, and receiving laboratory. Samples leave active inventory and must be tracked.
• Stock counts. Periodic physical counts compared against the digital inventory record, with explanations for any variance.

The Office of Drug Control may inspect any of these records on demand. The cleaner the seed-to-sale system, the faster the quarterly close. GACP cannabis cultivation SOPs produce upstream cultivation data, and the PIC/S GMP v17 cannabis Australia framework governs manufacturing data feeding the production sections.

How Does ODC Quarterly Data Feed INCB Reporting?

The Office of Drug Control does not collect this data for domestic purposes alone. Australia is a signatory to the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs 1961, which obliges Australia to report on quantities of controlled cannabis materials at every stage of the supply chain to the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB). The Narcotic Drugs Act 1967 implements that treaty domestically, and your quarterly submission is the data source the Office of Drug Control aggregates to file Australia’s annual INCB return.

What this means for a Licensed Producer:

• Your quarterly figures must be defensible at the international level, not just the domestic level. Treat them with the same rigour as a financial reporting line.
• INCB publishes annual narcotic drugs technical reports aggregating global production, manufacture, and consumption. The cannabis figures inside Australia’s entry are built from your data and every other Australian licensee’s data.
• The Office of Drug Control reconciles individual submissions before consolidating the national figure, so material discrepancies are caught before any inspection visit.
• The obligation to file with INCB is fixed by treaty; the Office of Drug Control cannot grant a domestic extension that compromises the international filing. This is why the 15th deadline is enforced firmly.

Quarterly reporting is not paperwork the Office of Drug Control invented. It is the mechanism Australia uses to meet a treaty obligation in force since 1961, and errors at the licensee level propagate all the way up the chain from your batch records to Australia’s annual return to INCB.

Frequently Asked Questions

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