Home/Industries/Cannabis Processors
Price Every Batch Off What It Really Cost.
Extraction and infused products burn money in stages, from input material through testing and packaging. We follow the cost through every stage, so you sell to retailers knowing what each unit really leaves you.
Cannabis Processor Accounting Across Michigan
A processor brings in plant material, turns it into oil, concentrates, edibles or vapes, then packages it and sells it to retailers. Every one of those steps adds cost, and every one is a place for cost to go missing between the extraction room and the invoice.
Like cannabis growers, processors are producers, so more production cost can generally be carried into inventory than a dispensary is allowed. Wherever Section 280E still applies, that matters, because cost of goods sold is where most of the room to reduce taxable income lives. Our monthly bookkeeping for processors runs in QuickBooks Online and is built around your batches.
Every partner at True North is a QuickBooks Online ProAdvisor. Team members have finished a Cannabis Associate Program and a Cannabis Specialist Program, with a certificate for each, and the DOPE CFO method for cannabis businesses runs through our daily work instead of sitting on a shelf.
- Batch and lot costing from input material to packaged unit
- Work in process valued at every month end
- Yields tracked against the material that went in
- Wholesale prices checked against real unit cost
Where A Processor's Margin Leaks Between Stages
The trouble usually starts with yield. Input material arrives at one cost, comes out of extraction as a much smaller amount of oil, and that oil gets split across a dozen products. If the books do not carry the input cost through to what came out, every finished unit is priced on a guess.
Then there is the product sitting in the middle. Crude waiting to be refined, distillate waiting for cartridges and gummies waiting on test results are all work in process with real cost in them. A month end that ignores them misstates both inventory and profit.
Testing and packaging finish the job. Lab fees, retests, cartridges, jars and labels add up per unit, and a batch that fails has to be written down rather than carried at full value.
How We Cost A Batch From Input To Invoice
Each month we follow your batches through the books the way they moved through the building.
Selling Into Michigan Retail With Your Eyes Open
Michigan processors sell into a crowded field of retail buyers, and wholesale prices do not wait for your books to catch up. Knowing unit cost before you quote is the difference between a good account and a busy one that loses money.
We work with processors across Michigan, remotely, by phone, video and secure file exchange. When input purchases run ahead of sales, cash flow forecasting shows you the gap before it arrives. Processing is one of the cannabis operations among our industry specialties.
Questions Processors Ask About Batch Costing
We buy input material from several growers. Can you cost that accurately?
Yes. Each purchase is recorded at what you paid and what it took to get it to you, and it follows the lot it went into. When material from different sources is combined, we carry a blended cost through the batch so the finished product reflects what it actually took to make.
How do you handle a batch that fails testing?
It depends on what happens next. If it can be remediated, the extra cost goes into the batch. If it is destroyed, the cost is written down in the month it happens and matched to your destruction records, so inventory stops carrying product you no longer have.
Will our production team have to record things differently?
Usually not by much. We work from what your team already keeps, such as batch sheets, the state's seed-to-sale tracking entries and payroll hours, and only ask for more where a cost cannot be traced without it. The goal is better numbers, not more paperwork on the production floor.
Upstream And Downstream Of Extraction
Cultivation costs tracked through the grow, so cost of goods sold holds up when the return is prepared.
Cannabis growers in detail Cannabis TransportersSecure transport operators with cost per run, driver payroll and every manifest tied to an invoice.
Cannabis transporters in detail Cannabis RetailersDispensary books where inventory, cash, cost of goods sold and excise and sales tax are reconciled every month.
Cannabis retailers in detail All Industries We ServeCannabis, food and beverage and retail, with the credentials and detail behind each specialty.
Return to IndustriesFind Out What Your Best Seller Really Earns
Bring us a recent batch and the books as they stand. The first consultation is free, and we will show you how we would cost it from input to invoice.