Best Dispensary Software of 2026

Being heavily regulated, the cannabis retail industry poses a number of challenges for the owners of medical or recreational dispensaries.

The sheer number of regulatory compliance related to security, age restrictions, documentation, packaging and staff protocols make it highly likely that a dispensary owner may miss some rule. This will result in hefty fines or even having your dispensary license revoked.

Dispensary software records all the necessary information digitally, so that you can easily manage industry compliance. It will also ensure that you have access to the required documents and reports during a compliance audit.

To help dispensary owners find the right software for their dispensary, we've written this buyer's guide that covers all the necessary information. Read on to find out about the features of this software, its benefits and market trends that owners should know and follow.

In this guide, we'll cover:

What Is Dispensary Software?

Common Features of Dispensary Software

What Type of Buyer are You?

Market Trends to Understand

What Is Dispensary Software?

The demands of a cannabis dispensary are significantly different from those of a general retail business. For this reason, a regular retail management solution will not suffice for a cannabis dispensary. As a dispensary owner or manager, you need dedicated dispensary software to manage your operations.

Dispensary software is a retail management and point-of-sale (POS) solution tailored to the needs of a cannabis retail business. This type of software helps dispensary owners do the following:

• Manage inventory for single or multilocation store dispensaries.

• Record data, such as age of the buyer and the quantity of purchase, to prepare reports at the time of audit checks.

• Schedule store employees and manage shift timings.

• Manage dispatch and delivery of inventory and products.

• Store transaction data to create real-time financial reports such as profits, losses and expenses.

Reporting dashboard in cannabis dispensary POS tool, Cova (Source)

Common Features of Dispensary Software

In this section, we've covered the key software features that a dispensary software buyer should be aware of at the time of purchase. Thoroughly understand the usefulness of these features in your business to select the right dispensary software.

What Type of Buyer Are You?

When purchasing a dispensary software solution, you need to understand all the necessary compliance requirements so you can be sure to choose a solution that adheres to them. In this section, we're covering three common types of dispensary businesses and the compliance challenges for each type and the software features that address them.

Medical dispensary. The first thing you need to ensure is that all your buyers have a valid medical cannabis card. In addition, many medical marijuana dispensaries are also regulated by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). Such dispensaries should invest in software that is compliant with HIPAA standards.

Recreational dispensary. These are unlike medical dispensaries, where only medical cannabis cardholders are authorized to purchase products. Recreational dispensaries should conduct the initial eligibility verification process, such as age and quantity of purchase, on their own. For this reason, they need a solution that records customer details such as name and age, quantity of purchase and details of a state-issued ID card, such as a driver's license.

Medical and recreational dispensaries. If you operate both recreational and medical dispensaries, you'll have to manage various compliance rules for different customers. For instance, the legal minimum age for a medical marijuana buyer (in states where purchases are legal) is 18 years old, but for a recreational marijuana buyer it's 21 years old.

The THC content of cannabis products is also different for each type of dispensary. For this reason, dispensary software buyers who operate both medical and recreational dispensaries need a solution with procurement and selling features such as barcode scanning, inventory management and customer management.

Market Trends to Understand

The cannabis retail industry is evolving quickly, and so is the dispensary software space. To keep up with all the advancements in this space, you should be aware of the following market trends:

Fraud detection to be integral in dispensary software. Employee-led theft and fraudulent activities have legal and financial consequences for the business. A recent such incident at a Colorado dispensary resulted in a loss of about $10,000 to the business.

As a result, dispensary software vendors are including fraud detection features such as cash drawer management and employee access permissions. Some software vendors also offer theft-detection in their inventory management module, which alerts dispensary owners about discrepancies in stock levels.

Based on our estimates, vendors will continue to develop and enhance their fraud management functionality to be an exclusive offering in their solutions by 2020-2022.

Dispatching to be an important integration. Integrations with dispatching and fleet management systems help dispensaries track the movement of their products from the farm to the warehouse, and warehouse to dispensary. As cannabis retail businesses grow and sales volume increases—increasing the number of shipments—we expect to see an increase in the demand for dispatching functionality by 2020-2025.

Real-time compliance management to see wider adoption. Marijuana Enforcement Tracking Reporting and Compliance (METRC) integration lets dispensaries share their real-time compliance data with the government's regulatory agencies. This integration saves time and effort for managing regulatory compliance. As it gains popularity and investor funding, we believe that it will see increased adoption by 2020.

Marijuana industry to become e-commerce-savvy. With rapid growth in the number of online buyers, e-commerce is becoming increasingly important for a dispensary. We anticipate an increasing demand for e-commerce integration in dispensary software by 2020.