Metrc
What happens when Metrc goes down, and how to keep selling
What a Metrc outage means at a dispensary counter, how to keep selling without losing sales records, and what to check once Metrc is back.
Transcript
When Metrc goes down, the line shouldn't stop. Cannavate keeps selling, queues every sales receipt, and posts them to Metrc the moment it's back. Cannavate. The complete retail system for Illinois dispensaries.
What an outage looks like
Metrc is the state system every sale is reported to, and it occasionally slows down or goes offline for everyone. At the counter it shows up as receipts that will not post, package lookups that time out, or error messages in the POS. None of it means the sale itself did not happen; it means the state record has not been written yet.
At the counter
- Keep the line moving if your POS queues receipts. The sale is recorded locally with its packages, and the report to Metrc waits.
- Do not re-enter sales by hand in Metrc while your system is also queuing them. That is how duplicate receipts happen.
- Follow your store’s downtime procedure and the current guidance from Illinois regulators, and note when the outage started and ended.
When Metrc comes back
- Confirm every queued receipt posted. The count of sales during the outage should match the receipts that went through.
- Look for anything that failed or was rejected, and fix it (usually a package that ran out or a quantity that no longer matches).
- Spot-check inventory for the packages sold during the outage so Metrc and the shelf agree.
How Cannavate handles an outage
Cannavate keeps selling, queues every sales receipt, and posts them to Metrc the moment it is back, retrying on its own. Store HQ shows the queue, so a manager can see what is waiting, what posted, and anything that needs review, without re-keying a single sale.