Curious what people’s experiences are with POS systems that integrate as seamlessly as possible with metrc. Weave seems to work best from my clients reports. I’ve heard a lot of complaints around green bits and many others. It’s an unfortunate cost that providers have to bare and there doesn’t seem to be a seamless or cost effective solution out there. I do have one client who runs everything through Excel but that seems to have a high technological threshold for entry due to sales integration.
Bang for buck Quickbooks running local or in Microsoft Azure server. Use a thin client that connects to virtual computers on Azure. This will allow you write of the Azure as a service. I think you can get Quickbooks POS with a 5 concurrent user license for under $1500 a year. 5 Thin clients with cash draws and scanner wands will run about $500 or less per station in fixed cost. Look at Quickbooks POS hardware
How many POS station are you looking at having. What is your costumer service queue model?
Do you also want to do financial, payroll and custom management?
One more thing if you want customer relationship management this depends on how fancy you want to get. The gold standard for CRM, start with Microsoft dynamics. If you are planning on being really big we need to talk a different track.
I wrote this a couple weeks back, and while I can’t speak to which one works the best with METRC, most of these do integrate with METRC, MJ FREEWAY, and BioTrack through all stages of cultivation and POS.
I have worked professionally in both Horticulture and Information Technology.
For scheduling a grow and all related activities the best bang for your buck is Microsoft Project. You can define production queues to your hearts content. I like using a grow unit of weeks as a starting point.
We can get into the nitty gritty of calendar math. But to simplify it a calendar repeats on a 27 year cycle. Plants don’t take time off. People take time off. I have an excellent business day calculation that I will share with anyone who wants to listen. This can help with scheduling people into your production schedule.
For me I want as much definable workflow as possible. The three R’s of work roles, rules and routes.
I am also a big believer of CMM 5 level processes because they are self correcting if production protocols are followed.
We use the standard integration API with between MS project and Quickbooks. Macro the steps for integration and power shell them.
I will never write another financial management system. Or custom queueing algorithm for greenhouse production.
Some of the biggest horticulture operation around the world use MS project. There are even free templates out there.
Custom software is fine when you get into the 100 million dollar operations size.
I implemented over 50 PeopleSoft HR/payroll and benefits systems and 10 PeopleSoft financial systems. I even done MSA and Oracle financials.
My suggestion is keep it simple. Automate everything, people are an expensive resource.
Does your system allow for automatic reporting? Just wondering because it’s such a major selling point for these software providers. But I suppose if you can keep it simple, it’s better than dropping additional $$$ on features you don’t need.
What type of financial reporting do you want? Are you doing actual or accrual based according.
Everything can be scheduled and customized.
Let’s start with the simplest question how detailed is your chart of accounts. Granularity of reporting is based on how you define your chart of accounts. For all horticultural business I like to handle each production cycle as project. Crop X each phase of crop x becomes Xa, Xb, Xc and say Xc. I can report on the crop as a whole or the phases. I can compare Ya to Xa or Xa last year to Xa this year. Your chart of accounts becomes critical.
Your KPI or KPM are only limited by your imagination.
The best system let you track anything you want.
I want employees to acount for all time in 10 minutes increments to cost back to crops. Uses RFI readers for each crop section. I would use a product out of Europe that handle access control with a verity of pins for each task. Upload the scrubbed data to the payroll and projects in accounting. Accounting can feed back to MS project the FTE of each step.
I know that the national average for production in a glasshouse is now .23 cents per square foot week. How do I compare?
But I certainly see your point. It seems that DIY is the way to go for a lot of these. Too much of a premium put on professional services or products when so much can be handled in-house
Download the free 30 day demo of Quickbooks. You can drill through every item. Uses there demo chart of accounts that best fits your situation. They have good demo data.
I use Quickbooks for a lumberyard here in town and a nonprofit. Granularity is how much time do you want spend bean counting widget or spend growing.
We used Quickbooks when in a wholesale greenhouse and farm operation between 1990 and 1996. The best part is any accountant worth his salt can modify your books with Quickbooks accountant services.
When we do our taxes we just send a copy of the books to the account. He fixes anything we did wrong for the year and sends them back to use. One place we do an accrual the other operation is on actuals.
I’m late to the game with this notice but I know a group that is working on an open-source point-of-sale solution that is already fully integrated with METRC and reports directly to QBO. Has some other wizz-bang features too.
I would think just an API between metric and quickbooks would make the most sence for the entry level and maybe spending big money on custom solutions for retail distribution channels when they cross the 100 million revinue point.
I would work with a product like Windward Studio to automate the generation of any speclity reporting I need to accomplish from my quickbooks to windward. I have worked with windward for years.
