Metrc setup has a correct order, and skipping ahead costs you rework. Do it out of sequence and you'll be entering data twice.
Credential your account
Complete Account Manager training and first-time login before touching anything else.
Order tags
Place your initial plant and package tag orders through the Admin menu.
Build out each facility
Add employees, strains, locations, and items before any inventory moves.
Receive tags once they physically arrive
Don't mark tags as received in Metrc until the box is actually in your hands.
The Account Manager
During licensing, one person gets identified as the Metrc Account Manager: an owner, a designated responsible party, a primary contact, or another representative authorized to act for the licensee. That person has to attend Metrc's Account Manager New Business training before they can touch the system at all.
Once training is done and the annual license is issued, the Account Manager contacts Metrc Support directly, by email or by phone, to start credentialing. Metrc validates the information and sends a Welcome to Metrc email with a login link and temporary password.
That link is only good for 24 hours. Miss the window and you need the expired-link process or a resend from Metrc Support. This isn't a soft deadline. Plan the first login for the same day the email lands.
Logging In and Setting Up the Profile
The first login walks through the California and Metrc User Agreements. Both have to be accepted before the account goes any further, no partial access. After that comes the User Profile: name and contact info, a password meeting Metrc's minimum standard (one uppercase letter, one lowercase letter, one number, one special character), and a security question and answer for password recovery. Once the security answer is saved, it stops displaying anywhere in the system, so don't lose it.
Adding Employees
Only the Account Manager creates employee accounts, and only for people who actually need Metrc access to do their job. Each person should get the minimum permissions their role requires, not blanket access by default.
The Account Manager is responsible for the accuracy of everything every credentialed user enters into the system. That's not a formality. If an employee logs a bad harvest weight or fat-fingers a package adjustment, that's on the Account Manager's account, not a shared liability.
Adding an employee requires their full name and a unique email address. If that email has already been used for another employee at any licensee, they won't get a Welcome email; they'll get an Access Granted notice instead, since Metrc treats the address as an existing user. Like the Account Manager's own login, the employee's first-time link expires in 24 hours. If it lapses before they log in, the Account Manager can resend it from the employee's record, as long as the employee never completed their profile setup. Once they have, it's a standard password reset instead.
Permissions, Not Job Titles
Metrc separates what someone is called from what they can actually do. Employment role, Owner, Manager, Employee, Consultant, or Local Jurisdiction representative, is just a label. Permissions are the real access control, granted individually, and which ones are even available depends on the facility's license type; a Cultivator has no use for Sales permissions, and a Retailer has no use for Plants permissions.
| Permission | What It Grants |
|---|---|
| Administration | Tag orders, strains, locations, items, and adding other employees |
| Plants | Creating plantings, moving plants, changing growth phase, logging waste, harvesting |
| Packages | Creating, adjusting, and repackaging into smaller or larger quantities |
| Transfers | Creating, modifying, voiding, and receiving or rejecting transfers |
| Transfer Hub | Viewing manifests, editing transporter info, recording departure/arrival times |
| Sales | Entering sales data or initiating sales uploads |
| Reports | Generating pre-defined reports |
For operators running more than one license, the Account Manager can grant an employee access to multiple facilities at once through the Facilities function, instead of setting up that person separately under each license.
Strains Before Items
Each facility has to build out its own strains and items before anything can move through the system. Strains come first, since a lot of item categories require a strain to be attached. Skip this order and you'll be recreating items after the fact.
Items are specific to a single facility. Unlike employees, strains, and locations, they can't be created across multiple licenses at once, and a facility can't have two items with the same name. An item name also can't just be the category, it has to describe the actual product ("Blue Dream 3.5g Jar," not "Flower"). Every item needs a category, and California defines those categories itself: whether it's weight-based, volume-based, or count-based, and whether it requires a strain, a unit weight, or a unit volume attached. That category also determines the unit of measure options available, so getting it right the first time avoids a rebuild later.
Don't Receive Tags Early
Tags get ordered before employees and inventory are fully built out, but they don't get marked as received in Metrc until they physically arrive at your facility. Receiving them early, before the box is in your hands, creates a mismatch between what Metrc thinks you have and what's actually on site. That gap is exactly what an inspector or an auditor is trained to notice.