Licensees must have a point-of sale (POS) system in the authorized store. The POS must, at minimum, capture records of all cannabis and cannabis transactions in the authorized store.
The AGCO and the Ontario Cannabis Store (OCS) have introduced a data platform to help reduce your regulatory burden by both simplifying your cannabis reporting requirements and improving its accuracy. This data platform is called the POS Data Reporting Platform. All authorized retailers in Ontario are required to use an in-store POS system that is fully integrated with the POS Data Reporting Platform.
How It Works
The POS Data Reporting Platform automatically extracts, standardizes, and validates the data that you already house in your system. This is done via an Application Programming Interface (API) connection between your POS system and the POS Data Platform. The OCS processes the extracted data and shares it with the AGCO and notifies you of any errors.
It eliminates the need for monthly preparation and submission of reports and improves the accuracy of the data submitted to better fulfil your provincial and federally-mandated regulatory reporting requirements.
If they have been onboarded with OCS, your POS provider will set up your system to automatically pull your required provincial and federal regulatory reporting data directly from your in-store POS system. Once it is processed by the OCS, the data required for provincial and regulatory reporting will be available for federal regulatory reporting. The OCS populates and completes reports required by Statistics Canada and Health Canada.
Integration of your POS system with the POS Data Platform enables you to meet your provincial and federal regulatory reporting requirements.
A list of POS providers that are fully integrated with the POS Data Reporting Platform can be found here, For more information about the POS Data Reporting Platform email OntarioCannabisDataReporting@ocs.ca
Ongoing Data Quality
Once added to the platform, you may receive data reconciliation error notifications. A list of data reconciliation error messages is available from the OCS Wholesale webpage.
It is important that you promptly address any error messages you receive to maintain data accuracy and compliance. If you have any questions about specific error messages, contact your POS Provider.
The AGCO validates incoming data to ensure retailers’ compliance with their regulatory obligations. If our validation efforts identify any issues, we may directly reach out to you for resolution.
Closing an Authorized Store
If you are a CROL holder permanently closing an authorized store, you must notify the AGCO of your intent to close by:
- Notifying the AGCO through the AGCO Notification Matrix; and
- Submitting a Request to Cancel an Authorization Amendment on the iAGCO online portal.
Prior to the cancellation of the RSA, the holder must ensure that any cannabis left unsold or undistributed is sold, transferred or destroyed. This means that there must not be any cannabis in the store and the inventory levels must be reported as zero or null in the point-of-sale system.
If you are selling cannabis to another RSA holder, you must:
- provide written notice of the sale to the AGCO as part of the Request to Cancel an Authorization Amendment in the iAGCO online portal
Once the RSA cancellation request has been submitted, and both parties have received written correspondence from the AGCO advising as to whether either CRSA is under suspension or whether any proposals to revoke or suspend either CRSA or CROL have been issued, and the parties proceed with the sale transaction, both parties must accurately document the cannabis sale and purchase transaction as follows:
- The CROL who is closing their store must record the sale of cannabis as an outgoing inter-store transfer in their POS system, identifying the CRSA number of the CROL purchasing the cannabis to indicate where the cannabis is being sold to. This must be completed prior to the cancellation of the CRSA.
- The CROL purchasing the cannabis must record the purchase as an incoming inter-store transfer in their POS system once they have transported it to their store, identifying the CRSA number of the CROL selling the cannabis to indicate where the cannabis was purchased from.
- Note: Both the purchaser and the seller are responsible for ensuring that the inventory counts match the sale agreement before the cannabis is transported to the purchaser’s retail store.
For detailed regulatory and operational steps required prior to closing a retail store, please refer to the "Request to Cancel a(n) Licence/Authorization” and “Inter-operator Inventory Sales” sections of this guide.
Transfer of a Retail Store Authorization
When an RSA transfers, any existing cannabis inventory transfers with the RSA. Each ROL holder involved in the RSA transfer must accurately document the incoming and outgoing cannabis inventory in their respective point-of-sale systems.
When the transfer application is ready to be approved, the AGCO will provide the transfer applicant with guidance on the following steps:
- The CROL receiving the CRSA will be provided with a new CRSA number.
- The CROL receiving the new CRSA number must provide this number to the CROL transferring the CRSA.
- The CROL transferring the CRSA will record the cannabis inventory that remains in the authorized store as an outgoing inter-store transfer in their POS system. The new CRSA number will be used as the recipient where the inventory is being transferred to. This must occur before the transfer application is approved.
- When the transfer application is approved, the CROL receiving the CRSA will record the incoming cannabis inventory as an incoming inter-store transfer in their POS system, identifying the old CRSA number as where the inventory was transferred from.
For detailed regulatory and operational steps required for RSA transfers, please refer to the "Transferring a Retail Store Authorization” section of this guide.
Please refer to the Cannabis Seed-to-Sale Data Entry Guidelines for instructions on entering data into a POS system section of AGCO Cannabis Seed-to-Sale Data Entry Guidelines: e-Learning Module as noted in the Helpful Resources section of this guide.