Lottery Inventory Spreadsheet for Tracking: Digital vs. Manual

Lottery inventory tracking is one of the biggest headaches for convenience store owners, managers and employees. For decades lottery scratchers have been tracked using manual logs that take significant time to complete and review. 

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Today you have different options for tracking your lottery, including printable logs, lottery tracking spreadsheets, or automated lottery tracking software.

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What is a Lottery Ticket Daily Sales Log?

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Even though your state may not require that you keep lottery tracking logs, all of them encourage it. This is because lottery tickets are very easily lost or stolen, so keeping track of inventory is necessary to detect and deter internal theft. Additionally, in the case of a break-in or robbery, having detailed inventory records increases your chances of getting the stolen inventory voided and refunded by the lottery. 

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Many retailers think using a printable daily sales log is the only way to track lottery ticket inventory. Most states offer a free printable daily lottery sales log that you can use. It’s simply just a piece of paper where employees write the time, their name, and ticket numbers sold.

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If you use daily logs, it costs you about 15 minutes at each end of each employee’s shift for them to log their inventory. The manager must then spend additional time reviewing and reconciling these reports because they are prone to human error.  

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Lottery Ticket Daily Sales Log Example

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If you want to use a traditional, printable lottery ticket daily sales log, you can usually get one from your state’s lottery website. If not, here is a template for your employees to track their lottery movement and sales for each shift.

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Each scratcher ticket has a game number, a pack number and a unique ticket number. These three numbers appear on the back of each ticket, usually on the bottom. At the end of their shift (sometimes also at the beginning) employees need to go through each game, write down each pack number and the unique ticket number that is on the top of the pack (next to be sold). Then, they subtract that ticket number from the ticket number recorded from the previous shift.

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The result is the “movement” or “inventory movement” and indicates how many tickets should have been sold for your shift. This number is then reconciled with sales for each game to make sure that sales match the movement:

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Shift B’s top unique ticket number  -  Shift A’s top unique ticket number  = Inventory Movement

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Employees also sometimes write down the number of scratchers that were sold, but this is often done by the manager.

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A Smarter, Faster Alternative to Using a Lottery Ticket Sales Log 

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LottoShield is a completely automated way to track and manage your lottery category. Unlike other lottery tracking systems, LottoShield doesn’t require manual entry by your employees, saving you in labor costs and eliminating human error. 

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LottoShield also goes beyond basic ticket tracking, and pulls data from your state’s lottery system, including invoices, daily sales, payouts, scratcher pack information, and other data as available. This can be used to protect your inventory that is in backstock, which is not yet placed on the shelf. It also automates your accounting. 

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Why Use Lottoshield

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Lottoshield has many great features and benefits that make tracking lottery sales and identifying instances of lottery theft easy, including:

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• Automatic reconciliation of your scratcher inventory with scratcher sales, eliminating the need for manual logging and reconciling. 
• Automatic detection of issues. Is your graveyard shift employee voiding lottery transactions? Are they taking tickets before they place them into the bin? Our detailed timelines and reports are designed to answer these questions and surface the underlying issue, saving your from time-consuming investigations.
• LIghtning-fast audits. Scan your inventory in just seconds using the proprietary LottoShield scanner. No need to connect it to a computer, or to enter bin numbers. Scan in any order. 
• Reconciliation of online lotto and payouts on a daily basis in most states.
• Automatic monitoring of packs in backstock to make sure no pack is activated or stolen. 
• Adds new games to your price-book, eliminating the need to manually enter new games into your POS.

LottoShield offers a free, no-risk 30-day trial, and has helped convenience store chains across the country to streamline and secure their store operations. If you’d like to give LottoShield a try, schedule a demo by clicking the link at the top right of this page.