A Dispensary Closed and Owes You Money: What to Do This Week

You hear it from a driver or a rep. The store is dark, the buyer's phone rolls to voicemail, and your last three invoices are still open. When a dispensary closes owing you money, the first week decides a lot: who you can still reach, whether you make a claim deadline, and whether the paper you signed gets used in time.

This guide is written for the cannabis brand holding the unpaid invoices. It walks through what to do first, how to tell which kind of closure you're looking at, and what each one means for your money.

What to do first when a dispensary closes owing you money

Stop shipping on credit, confirm what actually happened to the store, and gather your paper the same day. Then find out whether a court has put anyone in charge. Those steps cost almost nothing, and they protect your place in line while you decide how far to pursue the balance.

Get the statement right before you send it. List each invoice number, date, amount and days past due, then total it. Tie each line to its Metrc manifest so nobody can later argue about what was delivered. If your books and the manifest disagree on anything, fix that now, because it's the first thing a receiver or an attorney will ask about.

Closed, sold or in receivership changes who you chase

A locked door can mean four different things: a temporary pause, a sale to new owners, a court-supervised receivership, or owners who simply walked away. Each one points you at a different person. Find out which you have before you spend money, because the right next step depends entirely on it.

• A pause. The license is still active and the entity is still in good standing. The store may reopen after a compliance issue, a landlord fight or a cash crunch. Your debtor is unchanged, so keep following up in writing and consider a payment plan if the owners surface.
• A sale. The sign is the same, or a new one went up, and the buyer on the phone is someone else. A new owner may or may not have taken on the old debt. That depends on how the deal was structured, so ask for the owner change in writing and let your attorney read it. Don't reopen credit until the old balance has an answer.
• A receivership. A state court appointed someone to run or sell the business. That person is now your contact, and a claim process may be running with a deadline on it. The next two sections cover this.
• No process at all. The entity sits there, no receiver was appointed and nobody answers. Your options are direct: a final demand, the guaranty if you have one, and a suit if the numbers justify it.

Three public records settle most of this in an afternoon: your state regulator's license lookup, the secretary of state's entity record, and the court docket in the store's county. Ask your attorney to run the docket search if your county doesn't offer one online. If the store sits in a state that tracks unpaid wholesale invoices, like New York with its C.O.D. list, check that too. Our state-by-state payment rules show where those rules exist.

Why federal bankruptcy usually isn't the route

Federal bankruptcy has generally been closed to businesses that touch cannabis, because the plant remains illegal federally for most purposes. So you shouldn't assume a closing store will produce a bankruptcy case with a court-supervised creditor process. A wind-down may run through state court or never reach a court at all.

The clearest statement came from a federal appellate panel in Colorado in In re Arenas. One of the debtors held Colorado marijuana licenses, and the panel asked whether someone in the marijuana business could get relief in federal bankruptcy court. Its answer was "No." It upheld the denial of their move to Chapter 13 and the dismissal of their Chapter 7 case.

Federal rescheduling hasn't settled the question. A federal order effective 04/28/2026 moved marijuana under a state medical license to Schedule III, while adult-use cannabis stayed in Schedule I. Don't assume that change opens bankruptcy to a dispensary. If you do receive a bankruptcy notice from a former customer, take it to your attorney the same day. Collection activity can be restricted once a case is filed.

How a state receivership treats your invoice

A receiver is a person a state court appoints to take control of a business, then run it or sell it. For a brand, this is where deadlines bite. You may need to file a written claim on time, and you should expect to stand behind several other groups when the money is divided.

Rules differ by state, so treat Washington as a worked illustration rather than your rule. There, RCW 7.60.210 says a claim in a general receivership must reach the receiver within 30 days from the date notice is mailed, though the court can shorten or extend that for cause. A claim that isn't filed is barred from any distribution. Secured claims are carved out of that requirement. The statutory notice form also tells creditors to file proof of the claim with the court and send the receiver a copy, so follow your notice exactly.

The order of payment matters just as much. Under RCW 7.60.230, creditors with perfected liens are generally paid from their collateral first. Then come the costs of running the receivership, certain wages, consumer deposits, support debts and unsecured taxes, all ahead of "other unsecured claims." That last group is where an ordinary open invoice usually sits.

Regulators get involved too. Washington's WAC 314-55-137 requires anyone filing a receivership against a cannabis licensee to serve the state board with notice, and limits who can serve as receiver. California's 4 CCR § 15024 requires a receiver or assignee to notify the Department of Cannabis Control in writing within 14 calendar days. The regulator may therefore know about the case before you do, so a call or email to its licensing staff is worth making.

Don't wait for a notice to find you. Washington requires mail only to known creditors, plus a newspaper notice, so a vendor missing from the store's records could learn too late. Once you learn a receiver exists, send your name, your contact details and your balance in writing, and ask how and when claims are due. Attach the statement, invoices, manifests and any signed credit documents, and keep proof of when you sent it.

The paper you signed decides how much you can reach

When the store has nothing left, your recovery depends on what you signed before the first shipment. A personal guaranty lets you pursue a person instead of an empty company. A perfected security interest moves you ahead of ordinary creditors. Without either, you're generally an unsecured creditor with a valid invoice.

• Personal guaranty. A signed guaranty is a separate promise from an owner to pay. Its wording and your state's law decide how far it reaches, so send the guarantor a written demand once your attorney has read it. If you don't use one yet, start with our personal guaranty template.
• Security interest. If your agreement granted a security interest and you filed to perfect it, tell the receiver and your attorney right away. Under UCC § 9-322, a perfected interest beats an unperfected one, and perfected interests rank by the time of filing or perfection. Search the store's state filings too, since a lender may already hold the first position.
• Promise to pay. A signed promise-to-pay letter confirms the balance in the store's own words, which helps when you're proving a claim later.
• Credit application. Your credit application names the legal entity and the owners. Those are often the first details you'll need once the phone stops working.

Two clocks in the Uniform Commercial Code are worth raising with your attorney, though each state adopts its own version. The first is short. Under UCC § 2-702, a seller who finds a buyer took goods on credit while insolvent may demand them back within 10 days after the buyer received them, and a successful reclaim rules out your other remedies for those goods. That limit doesn't apply if the buyer misrepresented its solvency to you in writing within three months before delivery. A good-faith purchaser's rights come first, and taking regulated product back raises its own compliance questions, so ask your attorney and your regulator before you try it. The same section lets you refuse further delivery except for cash once you discover a buyer is insolvent.

The second clock is long, but it isn't endless. UCC § 2-725 gives four years to sue for breach of a sale contract, and a contract can shorten that to as little as one year. Read your own terms before you assume you have time, and ask your attorney which court and which state's law apply to a cannabis contract.

The mistakes that cost brands the most

Waiting closes doors. A brand can assume the owner will call back, keep shipping to a related store, or learn about a claim process after it has closed. A short written record, started the first week, keeps every option open while you decide what the balance is worth.

Three more to avoid. Don't take product back informally or off the books, however friendly the owner is, without checking your state's transfer rules first. Don't threaten what you won't do, or anything you aren't entitled to do, in a message that could end up in front of a judge. And don't hand the file to an outside collector before you've read your guaranty, because you may give up a share of money you could have pursued directly. Our comparison of outside collectors and software lays out that trade-off.

Weigh the cost honestly as well. A small balance owed by an empty entity with no guaranty may not justify a lawsuit. In that case, ask your CPA how to handle the write-off, record what you learned, and put your time into the stores that are still open.

What to change before the next store goes quiet

You can't collect from a store with nothing left, but you can decide how much you stand to lose next time. Set credit limits, collect signed paperwork before the first shipment, hold shipments on seriously late accounts, and follow up on a fixed schedule so a slide gets noticed while the store still has cash.

A slide often shows before the doors close. Payments shrink, promises slip and the buyer gets hard to reach. Our guide to the warning signs a dispensary is about to stop paying covers what to watch for, and the net terms policy builder gives you a written policy your whole team can follow. The full playbook is in how to get paid by dispensaries.

That's the part we handle for brands still selling to open stores. With ShelfSpace AR, every invoice goes out with a pay link and reminders run in your name on the schedule you pick. You approve the payment plans, we run them, and a final notice goes out once an invoice passes your mark. We can't reopen a closed store, but steady follow-up means a slide gets noticed while there's still money to collect.

A closed store doesn't erase your invoice. It starts a race for whatever is left, and signed paper plus a dated file on day one puts you in the best position to reach it.