Alaska pot shops would have to balance their inventory every single day

Alaska marijuana retailers would have to close out their books against the state's tracking system every single day under a draft rule headed to the Marijuana Control Board on Monday.

At the close of business, each store would have to reconcile its point-of-sale transactions and its current inventory against what the state system says it should have — and account for any variance between what came in and what was sold, transferred or destroyed. Product manufacturers face the same daily deadline, except they would reconcile transaction by transaction rather than as a daily total.

That is a new nightly obligation for businesses that currently operate under tracking rules written in 2016. The draft repeals four separate sections that have applied to cultivation, retail, manufacturing and testing facilities since February of that year and folds them into a single rule covering product "from either the seed or cutting" through sale to a consumer or destruction.

Cultivators would assign a tracking number to every mature or flowering plant. Facilities receiving deliveries would have to reject anything arriving without a valid transport manifest, and document any difference between what the manifest says and what actually showed up.

The scale is not small. A board memorandum counted 481 marijuana licenses up for renewal as of late January.

The rule has not been adopted — its register number and effective date are still blank. Inventory tracking is on the agenda for the board's special meeting Monday, a Zoom-only session starting at 9 am.