How Cannabis Vendor Credit Recovery Works

What Is Cannabis Vendor Credit Recovery?

Cannabis vendor credit recovery is the process of reclaiming money your dispensary is owed when products are returned, expire on the shelf, or when vendors owe you for co-marketing promotions. Most dispensaries lose tens of thousands of dollars each year because these credits slip through the cracks. ShelfSpace tracks every credit-eligible event and turns it into a formal credit memo that gets applied to your next vendor payment.

We built our credit recovery system around three distinct credit types, each with its own trigger and workflow. Whether inventory comes back defective, ages past its sell-by date, or a vendor agreed to fund a promotion, the result is the same: a credit memo that reduces what you owe.

The Three Types of Credits

• Return credits — Generated when product is sent back to a vendor due to defects, recalls, or overstock. We track returns in METRC and match them to the original purchase. Learn more about return credits.
• Expiration credits — Generated when product expires before it sells. If your vendor agreement includes expiration protection, we flag expiring inventory and create the memo before the product even leaves your shelf. Learn more about expiration credits.
• Co-marketing credits — Generated when a vendor funds a promotional discount. The vendor agrees to cover part of a price reduction, you run the promotion, and a credit memo is created for the funded amount. Learn more about co-marketing credits.

How Credits Get Applied

Once a credit memo is approved, the amount is deducted from the vendor's next outgoing payment. For consignment vendors, credits offset the next weekly settlement. For wholesale vendors, credits are subtracted from the next AP check. Every deduction is itemized on the payment stub so both sides have a clear paper trail.

If a vendor disputes a credit, our approval workflow manages the back-and-forth. Vendors can accept, counter-propose a different amount, or decline with a reason. If a vendor does not respond within 16 days, the credit is approved by default.

Why Credits Go Uncollected

Without a system in place, credits fall through for predictable reasons: no one tracks expiration dates across hundreds of SKUs, return paperwork gets lost, and co-marketing deals are agreed to verbally but never documented. The average multi-location dispensary leaves more than $50,000 per year on the table in uncollected vendor credits.

ShelfSpace eliminates every one of those gaps. Returns are tracked in real time through your POS and METRC. Expiration dates are monitored daily. Promotional agreements are recorded and converted into credit memos the moment the promotion ends. Everything flows into your QuickBooks integration so your books stay accurate.