A jar has a name, a weight and apparently a busier calendar than the rest of us. Sample date. Test date. Report date. Sometimes a separate packing date. They all look official, but they are not interchangeable.
Cool Ranch Mintz’s 28g flower batch gives us a useful example. The blue label identifies the product; its matching paperwork explains when specific laboratory events happened. Neither asks you to become a detective. Just read the heading beside the date.
Three dates, three jobs
| Field in the report | Recorded date and time | What it describes |
|---|---|---|
| Date sampled | September 3, 2026 · 11:10 | The recorded sampling event |
| Sample received | September 3, 2026 · 15:01 | The laboratory’s receipt of the sample |
| Report created | September 10, 2026 · 11:24 | Creation of this version of the report |
The times above are reproduced as printed; the report does not label a time zone. Individual testing sections also have their own dates. For example, the cannabinoid section records September 8, 2026, at 11:52. A single headline date cannot stand in for every event.
A report date is not a harvest date
September 10 tells us when this report was created. It does not establish when the flower was harvested, cured or packed. Reading it as the flower’s birthday would give the paperwork credit for something it never said.
That distinction matters whenever someone uses the word “fresh.” A recent document date, by itself, cannot prove recent harvesting or describe how a package has been stored. Use the actual field name, and leave an unknown date unknown.
Match the batch before matching the calendar
This six-page ACT Laboratories report identifies Cool Ranch Mintz hybrid flower, a 28.0000g unit weight and batch TCR-F-CRM-901. Those identifiers connect the discussion to one documented batch. A different package with the same strain name may need a different report.
The practical habit is simple: product, format, batch, then dates. The calendar is much more useful once you know whose calendar you’re reading.
Source: full Cool Ranch Mintz report — TCR-F-CRM-901
Related: how to match a package to an official recall
Related: understanding cannabis storage
