Picking a cannabis POS: the 7-question scorecard

Don't read this once and forget. Print it. Bring it to every demo. Score each vendor 0-2 on each question (0 = couldn't answer, 1 = answered with caveats, 2 = clean answer with proof). Top score is 14. Anyone under 10 is a maybe at best — under 7 is a no.

Every POS says 'WSLCB-compliant' (or MED, DCC, CRA, OLCC, depending on your state). The question is whether compliance is built into the platform or handed back to you to enforce manually.

• 0 points: 'Our customers handle compliance themselves.' That's your job, not the platform's.
• 1 point: Documentation + reports — the rules are listed somewhere, you're responsible for following them.
• 2 points: Coded gates that refuse the action. Sale to minor at 9pm? The register won't process it. Manager override? Logged with reason + audit row.

Multi-year contracts and exit fees are how legacy cannabis POS keeps customers who would otherwise leave. The platform should earn its keep monthly — your data should leave with you.

• 0 points: Multi-year minimum, exit fees, data-export fees.
• 1 point: Annual minimum, free data export, no exit fee.
• 2 points: Month-to-month, full SQL or CSV export anytime, no exit fee, no penalty.

Some POS vendors lease hardware with the software bundle. The number reads cheaper but the math gets uglier when you renew or want to leave. A few vendors lock the hardware to their cloud — your printer stops working the day you cancel.

• 0 points: Vendor-locked hardware, can't run without their cloud.
• 1 point: Vendor-leased but commodity (any printer/scanner works).
• 2 points: Operator-owned commodity hardware. Software runs on standard iPad / Windows / Linux register. You buy hardware once at retail.

Most cannabis-POS treats payroll as a third-party integration — your hours come out of the POS but you still pay Gusto / Comploy / a separate provider for the actual filings. That's two vendors, two bills, two places where data drift starts.

• 0 points: No payroll. Hours export to a separate system you manage.
• 1 point: Payroll integration with a third-party provider. Hours sync but filings live elsewhere.
• 2 points: Form 941, W-2 batch, W-3, 940 FUTA, state-specific filings (WA L&I + PFML + SUI / OR similar / CA EDD) all generated from the same database as the till. No re-keying.

The fastest signal of platform quality: do the people who built it actually use it? Does anyone at the company run a dispensary on this code? If yes, ask them to walk a real Monday morning — opening till, first transaction, customer lookup. Watch for hesitation.

• 0 points: 'We don't operate stores ourselves.'
• 1 point: 'A few of our staff have worked at dispensaries.' Past-tense.
• 2 points: 'Our founder owns and operates [N] dispensaries on this code right now.' Present-tense + verifiable license numbers.

Cannabis POS outages happen. They cost real revenue every minute. The question isn't whether the vendor will have an outage — it's whether they tell you about it before you find out from a customer in line.

• 0 points: No status page. No published incident history.
• 1 point: Status page exists but updates are vendor-discretion (they post when they feel like it).
• 2 points: Public incident history, postmortems for every SEV-1 / SEV-2, status page tracks the actual surfaces (POS / inventory / payroll / payments) — not just 'all systems operational.'

If a vendor can't tell you what week 1 looks like, they don't know how to migrate you. The good answer is a written plan with named owners and defined hand-offs. The bad answer is 'we'll figure it out together once you sign.'

• 0 points: 'We'll work that out after contract.'
• 1 point: Generic timeline (4-8 weeks) with vague phases.
• 2 points: Week-by-week plan, named owner per surface, fixed-scope quote written ON the demo call. Cutover date that respects your busiest day.

If no vendor scored above 10, the right move is to wait. The cost of switching POS twice is higher than the cost of running on what you have for another quarter while a 10+ option emerges.