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Cannabis Tracking and Licensing System reporting guide for provincial or territorial reporting authorities, distributors and retailers: Frequent issues and solutions

This page provides an overview of frequent issues you may encounter when submitting your monthly reports, as well as solutions to solve them.

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Disclaimer: Please note that these are hypothetical scenarios/examples and they are not exhaustive. In practice, some solutions may differ from the below examples depending on the circumstance. If you have questions, please reach out to ctls-bi-sscdl-ie.sc@hc-sc.gc.ca.

Closing inventory: Discrepancies between Opening and Closing inventory

If retroactive changes are necessary to rectify submitted reports, these changes must be properly recorded in the Cannabis Tracking and Licensing System (CTLS).

The system will not accept data if the Opening inventory values for a given month and product category differ from the previous month's Closing inventory in the same category by more than ±5%. This also applies to retroactive changes made to CTLS reports.

Scenario

If a minor discrepancy is discovered in inventory valuation that spans a period longer than two months, the official for the provincial or territorial reporting authority can opt to conduct a single retroactive change in the current reporting period to unify internal record-keeping with CTLS reports.

This should be done by reporting the required difference as an addition or reduction in the "Other" section of the respective product category.

Please note that all retroactive changes reflected in reporting should be flagged to Health Canada (ctls-bi-sscdl-ie@hc-sc.gc.ca) prior to submission.

Co-packing cannabis

The sale of multiple immediate containers in an outermost container is allowed for all classes of cannabis, except cannabis plants and cannabis plant seeds, provided that all requirements related to how these containers are packaged and labelled are met. A co-pack is essentially a multi-pack of the same product However, it is important to note that distributors and retailers are prohibited from creating, dividing, or re-packaging multi-unit packages.

For the purposes of monthly reports submitted via the CTLS, a packaged cannabis product – whether it contains one or more immediate containers – must be reported as a single unit throughout the supply chain.

Scenario

A retailer has received 10 co-packs of dried cannabis, each containing 5 immediate containers. Each innermost container has 3 grams of dried cannabis. The retailer sells these co-packs in, for example, Alberta through the "direct to consumer" retail method. The total value is $257. They want to know how to report this in their monthly tracking report.

Solution:

Packaged Inventory: Dried Cannabis

Packaged Inventory: Dried Cannabis

Sale: Dried Cannabis (Packaged)

Farmgate

A licence holder with a farmgate licence is interested in operating a retail store at their site, also known as a "farmgate" store. They want to know how to report this in the CTLS.

There are different reporting requirements for farmgate operations in each province or territory as retail sales is under their authority.

Scenario 1

Farmgate operations in a province may involve a cannabis transfer from a licence holder to a retail store. This may not involve the physical movement of cannabis but rather a paper transaction.

Scenario 2

In another province, farmgate operations may involve a transfer of cannabis to the provincial or territorial distributor and subsequently to the retail store. Again, this may not involve the physical movement of cannabis but rather a paper transaction.

The provincial or territorial reporting authority would then report the following in CTLS:

The licence holder would not report the retail sale to the retailer because this would be double-counting the sale since the provincial or territorial reporting authority has already reported the sale.

Language differences in reporting (English versus French)

Scenario

The official for the provincial or territorial authority in Quebec is submitting reports in French and consequently, they use a comma rather than a period as a decimal point.

Programs like Excel default to semicolons rather than commas as delimiters in .csv files when configured to be in French.

Solution: Depending on your language preference, you will need to ensure the correct punctuation is applied in the .csv templates before it is uploaded in the CTLS.

For the French version of the CTLS, you can only use commas in the .csv template. For example: 0,084. If you use 0.084, the file will be rejected.

For the English version of the CTLS, you may use commas or periods in the .csv template and the system will accept it. For example: 0.084 and 0,084 are considered equivalent in the English version of the CTLS.

Reporting sales

While packaged inventory reporting is designed to capture the physical flow of cannabis, sales are intended to capture financial flow and this requires a different reporting process.

Scenario

A licence holder sells and ships 1,000 units of dried cannabis products to a provincial or territorial distributor or retailer.

Solution: Packaged inventory reporting: The distributor or retailer records this as a 1,000-unit addition to their "Dried cannabis (Packaged)" inventory. Specifically, the field that they will report 1,000 units of dried cannabis products added is: "Additions to inventory – Quantity received – domestic". In the Reports tool, this field can be found in cell F9 of the "Packaged" tab.

Drop shipping

In some cases, customers can order cannabis for non-medical purposes through a provincial or territorial distributor's online platform. The provincial or territorial distributor then requests that the licence holder ship the product directly to the customer (commonly referred to as "drop shipping").

Scenario

A customer purchases 20 g of edible cannabis for non-medical purposes in a solid form (for example gummies) through a provincial or territorial distributor's online platform. The provincial or territorial distributor requests that the licence holder ship the product directly to the customer.

Solution: Sales inventory reporting: Although reporting changes to packaged inventory are not needed, they should report the quantity and retail value as a non-medical sale to the consumer via the online method. Specifically, the field to report the sale in is: "Sale of edibles (solids) for non-medical purposes – Direct to consumer (online)". In the Reports tool, this field can be found in the "Sales" tab. Starting in cell C83 and going to C96 is where the number of packaged units can be reported by the specific province or territory. Starting in cell D83 and going to D96 is where the corresponding retail value can be reported, depending on the specific province or territory. Cells C77 and D77 indicate the total for each column. The same concept applies to other cannabis products, as shown by the other tables in the "Sales" tab.

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