The financial operating system for your dispensary.
Your books, your vendor payments, your 280E taxes, your Metrc compliance, and your inventory, running as one connected system instead of five disconnected tools. Lodestar handles the money side of the business so you can run the floor, not the spreadsheets.
Everything your back office does, in one place.
Connect your POS and Metrc once. From there, Lodestar runs your money, your books, your inventory, your compliance, and your team as one connected system, and tells you exactly what to do next.
- Vendor ACH paymentsOne tap approve builds a bank ready NACHA file from your own origination credentials, encrypted at rest.
- Owner approval queueMoney never moves without your explicit sign off. Approve or hold from your phone.
- Direct disbursementConnect Moov, Column, or Treasury Prime to push payments straight through, skipping the bank portal entirely.
- Cash runwayLive view of cash on hand against upcoming obligations, and exactly how many days you have before it's tight.
- Vendor self enrollmentSend a secure link; vendors enter their own encrypted bank details. You never handle their account numbers.
- Duplicate payment protectionEvery payment carries an idempotency key, so a network hiccup can never double pay a vendor.
- Blind drop & cash controlsReconcile drawer drops against expected totals to catch shrinkage from theft or error before it compounds.
- Automated bookkeepingEvery sale, invoice, and payment journals itself into a cannabis aware chart of accounts. No month end scramble.
- 280E separationCOGS and non deductible SG&A (marketing, rent, front of house payroll) split on every entry, all year, not reconstructed in April.
- 280E optimization hintsSurfaces SG&A that may reclassify as indirect inventory cost under IRC 471, every hint flagged for your CPA to review.
- Gross receipts & municipal taxLocal taxes on total revenue calculated and tracked per your jurisdiction's rate.
- P&L, COGS & 280E reportsAccountant ready CSV and PDF on demand, every figure tied back to its source transaction.
- Tamper evident ledgerA hash chained record of every entry you can verify end to end. Proof nothing was altered after the fact.
- POS sync, any providerDutchie, Treez, Sweed, Blaze, or Meadow. Sales and stock flow in automatically, no manual exports.
- Sales velocityPer product sell through speed measured as days to zero stock, derived straight from your posted ledger.
- Aged stock markdownsProduct sitting past its optimal sell through window is surfaced before it expires; approved price changes push back to your POS.
- Market trend insightsSee where the market is heading and how your shelf moves against it, with clear reorder, markdown, or drop calls.
- Bundle suggestionsPair a slow SKU with a fast one to clear it without simply discounting away your margin.
- Shrinkage trackingPhysical counts reconciled against the ledger flag inventory loss from theft, error, or vendor fraud early.
- Metrc compliancePer license seed to sale sync keeps your reported inventory current with the state automatically.
- Compliance watchdogFlags destruction deadlines, on hold packages, and Metrc sync gaps before any of them becomes a violation.
- Three way matchInvoice vs, purchase order vs, what physically arrived, mismatches caught before you ever pay.
- Vendor scoring & risk contextOn time and accuracy scores plus per invoice risk flags surface before you approve a payment.
- State license verificationAccounts are verified against the public license registry across legal states at signup.
- Tamper evident audit logA hash chained record of every action, logins, approvals, config changes, you can verify end to end.
- Gated, verified signupA WOLFE access code bound to your specific license plus email verification, no open signups, ever.
- Two factor authenticationOptional authenticator app login with one time recovery codes, so a stolen password isn't enough.
- Roles for your whole teamInvite managers, budtenders, compliance, and accounting with scoped access to only what they need.
- Bank grade isolationYour books are encrypted and isolated at the database layer, one shop can never see another's data.
- Brute force & rate protectionRepeated bad logins lock the account; abuse is throttled automatically.
- Your data, your rightsExport a full copy any time and request deletion, financial records retained only as long as the law requires.
Cannabis is the hardest retail business in America to run the money side of.
You're taxed under IRC 280E, locked out of normal banking, forced to track every gram in Metrc, and stitching together a POS, a bookkeeper, a spreadsheet, and your bank's clunky portal. One mistake in any of them is expensive. Lodestar was built specifically for this, by an operator who lived it.
You can't deduct normal expenses
Federal law taxes you on gross profit, not net. Misclassify a single cost between COGS and SG&A and you either overpay the IRS or hand an auditor a reason to come after you. Lodestar separates them on every entry, automatically.
Banking treats you like a risk
Few banks will touch cannabis, and the ones that do hand you a manual ACH portal. Lodestar builds bank ready NACHA files from approved invoices so you pay vendors safely, without wiring cash or guessing.
The state is watching every package
Seed to sale traceability is mandatory. A sync gap, a missed destruction deadline, or a package stuck on hold can become a violation. Lodestar watches Metrc for you and flags trouble before it becomes a fine.
Built by an operator, for operators.
Lodestar was built by someone who has run every role in a dispensary, budtender to GM to compliance to ownership, not a software firm guessing at cannabis. Every step below is set up with you, scoped to your state, license class, and POS.
1 · Onboard your shop
Dispensary name, license, owner email, WOLFE access code. We verify against the state license registry and stand up your tenant, books isolated, encrypted, yours alone.
2 · Connect POS & Metrc
Link Dutchie, Treez, Sweed, Blaze, or Meadow plus your Metrc license. Sales, inventory, and seed to sale packages sync in, no manual exports.
3 · Set up banking & vendors
Add ACH origination from your bank's paperwork (encrypted at rest). Load vendors, or send each a secure self enrollment link so they enter their own banking.
4 · Books keep themselves
Every sale, invoice, and payment journals into a cannabis aware chart of accounts. COGS and non deductible SG&A split per IRC 280E/471 on every entry.
5 · Pay vendors, approve in a tap
Approve an invoice and a bank ready NACHA file is built. Three way match, vendor scoring, and per invoice risk flags surface before money moves, your sign off required.
6 · Watch demand & compliance
Sales velocity, market trend insights, and aged stock markdowns guide what to move. The Metrc watchdog and a tamper evident audit log keep you ahead of violations.
See it on a live walkthrough.
We don't hand the tool out cold. We walk you through it. Schedule a live demo and we'll show you Lodestar running on real dispensary workflows, then scope the setup to your operation.
Most shops move to ongoing monthly support after the demo, tailored to your state, license, and POS.