What to Do When METRC Goes Down:
Your Contingency Playbook

METRC outages are not a question of if, but when. California has experienced outages lasting up to 9 hours. Maryland had five emergency sales exceptions in two weeks due to METRC downtime. When the system goes down, your sales floor doesn't have to stop — but only if you have a documented contingency plan that your staff has actually practiced.

Step 1: Detect the outage

Your POSi system should be configured to alert management immediately when METRC API connectivity fails — not wait for a budtender to notice that tags aren't scanning. Set up automated monitoring on the METRC API endpoint for your state (api-{state}.metrc.com) and configure alerts to fire after 3 consecutive failed health checks at 60-second intervals. Your IT provider should be notified simultaneously.

Step 2: Switch to offline capture

Most modern cannabis POS systems (Dutchie, Flowhub, Treez) support an offline mode that queues transactions locally when METRC is unreachable. Verify this is configured and tested before you need it. If your POS doesn't support offline mode, switch to manual capture: printed sales receipts with package tag numbers, quantities, and customer verification — logged in a spreadsheet or paper form that mirrors your POS fields.

Step 3: Notify your state agency

Most states require you to report extended METRC outages and document your offline procedures. California's DCC, for example, requires licensees to continue tracking activities and report to METRC within 3 business days of system restoration. Have your state regulator's contact information posted at every terminal.

Step 4: Reconcile when service returns

This is where most dispensaries fail. When METRC comes back online, every offline transaction must be entered and reconciled — package by package, tag by tag. If you processed 200 transactions during a 6-hour outage, that's 200 entries that need to match your physical inventory exactly. Errors here trigger state audit flags. Build reconciliation procedures, assign a dedicated person, and budget the time. This is not a task you rush through at close.

Infrastructure that prevents the problem

The best contingency plan is one you rarely need. Dual-WAN internet with automatic failover (primary broadband + cellular backup) eliminates the most common cause of METRC connectivity failures: your own internet going down. Add a UPS to your networking equipment so a power blip doesn't kill your connection, and configure your POS terminals to fail gracefully into offline mode. These are infrastructure decisions your IT provider should have made on day one.