What's new in GRACe 1.3 (and why it's still free)

GRACe 1.3 is out! That's four updates in just over a fortnight. If you're already running GRACe, Home Assistant should be offering it to you right about now.

Not running it yet? Stick around. It won't cost you a cent. It never has.

Quick refresher: What's GRACe?

GRACe (the Grower's Regulatory Assistance & Compliance Engine) is the compliance portal we built for small cultivators, and we've been working on it since back in October 2024. It runs as an add-on inside Home Assistant, right alongside the automations a lot of you are already using, and at its heart it's a simple ledger. Take some clones, they go in. Harvest, destroy or send plants, they come out. Same with your dried flower.

From that ledger, GRACe does the boring bits for you:

• Your monthly materials-out report for the Medicinal Cannabis Agency, drafted into an email in one tap
• The annual stocktake
• Shipping manifests and Chain of Custody paperwork
• Licence expiry reminders, SOPs, police vetting records and the rest of your paperwork, all in one place

Records can't be edited after the fact, either. That's not a flaw, it's the whole point! The Agency wants things recorded on the day they happen, not "tidied up" at the end of the month.

These days it's running at around half of New Zealand's licensed cultivators. Not bad for something we give away!

New in 1.3: retire your typos

We've all done it. You're adding a new genetics in a rush, fat-finger the name, and now "Whte Widow" sits in every drop-down in your system. Forever. Taunting you. Because GRACe never deletes anything (see above), there was no getting rid of it.

Well, now there is! This one started out as a suggestion sent in by another grower, and it was too good an idea not to build. Head to Administration → Retire genetics and retire it. It disappears from the lists you pick from when you're adding plants, recording flower or making a manifest. Your reports and history don't change one bit: everything that was ever recorded against it still shows up, exactly as it was.

It's compliance software, so of course there are a couple of safety nets:

• Only once nothing is left on site. No plants growing or drying, and no flower. The page shows you exactly what's still there ("2 plants growing, 1 drying and 230 g of flower"), so you know what needs to be sent, destroyed or used up first.
• Bring it back any time. Changed your mind, or got another cut of an old favourite? Hit Bring back, or just add the name again and GRACe brings back the original instead of making a duplicate.

It's just as handy for the cultivars you've stopped running. Your lists stay short and tidy, and your records stay complete.

The last few weeks

1.3 is the newest, but it's been a big few weeks all round. Have a swipe through:

• Report reminders on your phone. Turn them on under Administration → Report reminders, pick your phone (it uses the Home Assistant app) and send yourself a test. From 9am on the first weekday of the month, IF you've got a report due, you'll get a nudge. Nothing went out last month? No notification. The Agency doesn't want "nothing sent" reports anyway.
• Mark plants as sent, straight from a manifest. Make a manifest for plants going to another company, and GRACe opens Harvest / Destroy / Send with those plants already ticked and the company chosen. Check, confirm, done.
• Add a genetics or a company without leaving the page. It's right there at the bottom of the list, and nothing you've already typed gets lost.
• Check before you save, and catch the extra zero. Entries show you a summary to confirm before they're saved, and anything bigger than usual (you set what "big" means) needs an extra tick. Because 1,000 clones when you meant 100 is a very awkward entry to have sitting in your ledger.
• Times are now NZ time, so your monthly reports line up with NZ months, even for that early morning entry on the 1st.
• The annual stocktake counts harvested plants as Harvested, rather than lumping them in with Destroyed.

After each update, a short "What's new" pops up the first time anyone opens GRACe, so nobody on your team misses a thing.

Why we keep giving it away

We get asked this a lot: why not charge for it?

Honestly? Because the whole industry is better off when everyone's got more time in the garden. Most NZ cultivators are small operations, a handful of people, and some are basically a one-man band (like us). Compliance shouldn't cost you a monthly subscription on top of your licence fees, your testing, and everything else you're already forking out for. That was why we started it in the first place, to avoid that cost and time overhead. I'd much rather you spent that time in the garden than hunched over a spreadsheet at 9pm on the last day of the month.

When growers' records are tidy, the Agency's job gets easier, audits go smoother, and the whole sector looks more professional. That's a win for every one of us.

It's the same reason Field Notes exists: passing on what we've learned (often the hard way) so you don't have to.

GRACe is open source too, so anyone can see exactly what it does with your data. Spoiler: it stays on your own Home Assistant box, and in your own backups. If you're handy with code, you're more than welcome to chip in.

Getting it

Already running Home Assistant? Here's all it takes:

1. Go to Settings → Add-ons → Add-on Store
2. Tap the three-dot menu → Repositories, and add https://github.com/Chill-Division/GRACe_repo
3. Install GRACe, turn on "Show in sidebar" and "Auto update", then hit Start

There's a first-time user guide built right into the add-on, with screenshots for both PC and phone, plus a walkthrough video if that's more your thing.

Got an idea for what GRACe should do next, or something about it that drives you up the wall? Retire genetics started out as exactly that, so flick us a message on Instagram, or get in touch.

Now go and retire those typos!