A Growing Cannabis Market

The cannabis industry is growing rapidly. According to Statista, revenue in the worldwide cannabis market is projected to reach $64.73 billion USD in 2024, with the United States being expected to generate the highest revenue ($42.98 billion). The US also “continues to lead in innovation and investment, shaping global trends in cannabis legalization and product development.” In total, 24 states and the District of Columbia have legalized cannabis for recreational use, and another fourteen states have legalized it for medical use only. This has led to an upsurge in new cannabis-infused products, ranging from ice cream to seltzers to energy drink mixes and beyond. Medical use has also increased in the wake of the pandemic, with cannabis being used to ease the symptoms of various ailments, including long covid.

With this growth, innovation, and expanding legalization comes great opportunity for cannabis businesses, but that opportunity brings along a set of very unique challenges.

Addressing the Challenges of a Rapidly Changing Industry

Growth is a welcome benefit for many cannabis businesses today, but, when that growth is sudden and dramatic, it can be difficult to manage. Your business may not be equipped with the tools it needs to seize opportunity when it comes.

With legalization comes an increase in regulatory requirements, which vary greatly from state to state and change over time. Your business will need to keep up with all these shifting requirements to make sure that you remain legally compliant.

Until September 2023, cannabis companies could not access traditional banking services. The passage of the SAFER Banking Act made this somewhat easier, providing protections for “federally regulated financial institutions that serve state-sanctioned” cannabis businesses—meaning that banks can provide services to these businesses without penalty. Banks are also no longer allowed to terminate a deposit account just because it belongs to a cannabis company. But the SAFER Banking Act hasn’t erased the qualms some financial institutions have about working with cannabis companies, creating some considerable financial management challenges for your business.

So, how can you meet, overcome, and grow in this environment? Rather than facing these challenges alone, you need the right partner, with the right business management technology, to set your organization up for sustainable success in a market that is changing every day.

You need a partner like Acumatica.

The Right Partner for Your Cannabis Business

Acumatica’s cloud-based enterprise resource planning (ERP) system is the complete business management solution you need to take your business to the next level. Data and information are the lifeblood of a growing business, and Acumatica helps you put all of your disparate operations and systems into a single solution—giving you the tools you need to innovate, collaborate, and anticipate what’s next. You can personalize workflows to your business, build custom reports and dashboards that instantly show you the data you want to see, and boost companywide collaboration with a system that adapts to your evolving needs. And beyond these basic functionalities, Acumatica is designed to solve those tough challenges specifically facing cannabis companies.

Growth

Acumatica is built to scale with you as your company and the broader industry grow by leaps and bounds. Unlike other ERP vendors, Acumatica charges only for the resources you actually use—not for the number of users you add to the system. This unlimited-user licensing is designed to give you the freedom to grow on your terms. Add as many people to the system as you need: year-round employees, seasonal employees, shareholders, consultants, auditors—you name it. You’ll never be penalized with extra per-user charges for growing.

Regulatory Compliance

Acumatica is the ideal ERP software for regulatory compliance. Its framework is purposely designed for developing procedures to achieve and maintain NSF cGMP 455 and Marijuana Enforcement Tracking Reporting Compliance (METRC), keep up with FDA requirements for cannabis products, and follow EPA regulations for hemp farming. It also streamlines the process of ensuring vendor and customer quality compliance—including labeling, product specifications, shipping details, and more.

Financial Management

Cannabis companies find themselves managing their finances entirely on their own—without the support of traditional banking services. Acumatica’s Financial Management solution simplifies financial complexities with automated and customizable workflows; streamlined accounts receivable, accounts payable, and general ledger accounting; powerful reporting, dashboards, and data analysis; tax and cash management; recurring revenue management; and more. With Acumatica, you have the support you need to keep up with your finances in ways that best suit your company.

Marketplace Solutions for Cannabis Businesses

The Acumatica Marketplace is filled with 132 (and counting) software solutions that augment and extend the base functionality in the Acumatica system, so you can fully personalize it to your business. Specifically for the cannabis industry, Acumatica provides integrations with:

• MaxQ Cannabis Management Solution, which provides cannabis manufacturers with state-of-the-art automation to streamline and simplify the cannabis production process. It is a fully integrated seed-to-sale management suite with expert consulting, implementation, and support services and built-in integrations with METRC, LeafLink, and Health Canada.
• Quantum Leaf Software, which provides real-time tracking mechanisms to help ensure regulatory compliance. It offers transparent product traceability, total labor management, and detailed analytics to help you compare, contrast, and improve your business practices.
• eWorkplace Apps Quality Management Suite, which extends the Acumatica solution to meet unique quality compliance requirements. It supports testing and recall, inspections and checklists, calibration, forward and backward traceability reporting, quality data collection, and more.

Budding Businesses Thrive with Acumatica

Acumatica is the right solution to help your cannabis business navigate its new market environment, anticipate the unexpected, and manage growth on your terms. Leading hemp-derived CBD (cannabidiol, a chemical with medicinal benefits) brand, cbdMD, found this out firsthand when they switched to Acumatica.

The company, based in Charlotte, North Carolina, was abandoned by its former ERP system, NetSuite, when Oracle announced it would no longer support the cannabis industry. That turned out to be a good thing for cbdMD because switching to Acumatica saved the company over $200,000 and gave it an agility that was impossible with its previous system. cbdMd has moved from shipping 3,000 orders a day to processing 1,000 orders an hour. And, with Acumatica, the company more easily manages the rigorous testing requirements for maintaining NSF cGMP 455 compliance.

Says Casey Lassiter, the ERP Manager for cbdMD, “We’re constantly coming out with new products and new innovations based upon our research efforts. With Acumatica, we’re well-prepared to handle whatever is next.”

Similarly, cannabis company Happy Valley, based in Massachusetts, was looking for software to help it manage it’s 45,000-foot cannabis cultivation and cannabinoid extraction facility, manufacture consumer packaged goods, distribute those goods across the state through its own proprietary distribution network, sell those products in its own retail stores, and advance the genetic science behind cannabis breeding and development. QuickBooks just couldn’t fit the bill, but Acumatica’s customizability and user-friendly accessibility opened Happy Valley to a new world of instant data, smooth regulatory compliance, and the confidence that business decisions were being made with accurate, detailed information.

Commenting on the value of Acumatica’s data sharing capabilities, Kai Earthsong, Happy Valley’s VP of Supply Chain Management, says, “If you are ready for and serious about 360° granular level information tracking, this is the software for you.”

To learn more about how Acumatica can prepare your cannabis business to seize opportunity today and secure success for tomorrow, contact our experts.