The cannabis client books you don't have to fix first.
§280E-aware, audit-ready bookkeeping built for how cannabis CPAs actually work. Clients' books arrive clean and segregated — you render the positions.
Cleaning up a cannabis client's books is the most liability-prone work on your desk.
It's slow, it's manual, and every §280E return starts the same way: reconstructing which costs are inventoriable and which aren't from a year of commingled transactions. The general-ledger tools your other clients run on were never built for §280E — and they don't talk to METRC or dispensary POS.
Federal law now treats medical and adult-use cannabis differently under §280E.
A partial rescheduling moved medical cannabis to a footing where §280E no longer applies to it. Adult-use stayed where it was — still fully subject to §280E. For an operator running both, the deduction now turns on a single question: which activity is which. And the burden of proving it sits in the books.
Books that can't segregate medical from adult-use — transaction by transaction — aren't just messy anymore. They're an audit exposure for the client, and a documentation problem for the CPA who signs the return.
Four things the books do before they reach you.
§280E-aware chart of accounts.
Inventoriable costs captured at the transaction, so COGS is built as the books close — not reconstructed from a year of history at the deadline.
Medical vs adult-use, tagged at the transaction.
Every transaction carries its activity and license. The segregation §280E now demands lives in the ledger — not in a spreadsheet you rebuild each spring.
Each license its own clean books — that roll up.
Multi-entity, multi-state by default. Every license keeps a clean, separate set of books and consolidates to one view, without commingling the positions.
The audit trail behind the position paper.
Every classification carries its support and its methodology documentation — the workpapers behind the position, assembled before anyone asks the question.
Schedule L, mapped from the books and tied out — line by line
You render the tax positions. 420Ledger makes sure the books support them.
A system of record for cannabis books — not a tax advisor. The chart of accounts, the tagging, the audit trail, and the methodology documentation are ours to keep clean. The positions, the judgment, and the signature stay entirely yours.
See the books your §280E work should start from.
Walk through a segregated, audit-ready cannabis ledger with us — and see what a clean handoff looks like.
PuffSeal LLC d/b/a 420Ledger. The cannabis-only system of record for accountants. 27 states.