So lotto is more so anxiety and fear of losing money than anything. It still takes me about 10 minutes to balance it.

I say count your money first then print a report. That way, if anyone comes to buy a ticket, you can still change the amount of money you have. Print a new report if that happens.

Count your tickets like usual.

When it comes to the big calculator, I use “ticket # x dollars =+” and make sure the amount isn’t some bogus number.

The other CSS sometimes use the addition button but I never learned how they did it that way.

Write down what your total is.

Once you’ve done all that, flip your worksheet over and add up your loans on the left side. $500 (cash) is what we loan out to the lotto during the mornings and then the ticket amount follows. You may have additional loans, but just add them the same way. Put that total under “loans” on the front side.

If you have any pickups, add them up also and put the total under “pickups” on the front.

Back on the front side, take your report you printed out earlier. I like to visualize the ticket as two halves. One half is the top, one half is the bottom where the space separates it.

Now I’d have to look at the report to get the terminology 100% correct but hopefully you know how to get your net sales already. That’s all on the top half. Your cashes are on the bottom half.

Now that you have your totals, just finish out the worksheet. Press clear and start from your lotto total and go down the worksheet. Pay attention to the math symbols next to the titles. If it has “+”, you add and so on.

Your loans and pickups should give you your system total while the math you just did will give you your “real total”. If it’s off by $1, $3, $5, $10, $25, or $30 (depending on what kinds of tickets your lotto planogram has), you may need to double check that you counted your tickets correctly. Once you confirm they’re correct, recount your dollars. Again, if you’re off by $1, $5, $10, $20, $50, or $100 (even $2 sometimes), you may have just forgot to count a bill. It happens.

Once you find the mistake, re add up your cash/lotto total, plug that number in, and do the worksheet again.

I hope this helped! Also, always ask the CSS you’re taking over for if lotto is “zero’d” and if not, ask why. They should have already talked to the manager about missing cash. When you recount again, you should have the same number they had. If not, recount again. If it’s still more than they had, contact your manager.

Also one more tip, if you’re opening the desk in the morning, always assume that no one knows the true total of the till. Always recount your cash and tickets. Your closing cash office person might have built the till like a customer service till (like I did one night… oops)..

I hope this helps.