Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: ticket stubs

This is topic ticket stubs in forum Ground Level at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Ramin Hashemi (Member # 2694) on 11-12-2004, 08:11 PM:

How many of you keep the ticket stubs and bag them at the end of the night? What is the purpose of this exercise? I have been doing it for "audit"purposes, but there is so many ways around it.

Posted by Jason Black (Member # 684) on 11-12-2004, 09:32 PM:

Ramin,

This is dictated by individual corporate policy or theatre level management. True, there are ways around it, but if every member of the staff is doing his/her job properly, each ticket would be accounted for in the given daily bag, EVERY DAY.

Your auditor simply pulls back your daily report(s) for said day, pulls the bag, and counts stubs. If they are really anal, they can compare sold categories to the actual ticket prices. This would take some time, of course, but in the event that someone is expected of 'relieving the company of funds' this proves to be a somewhat effective method of verifying a problem. There are, however, more effective and efficient methods of catching a thief....

Posted by Chris Brown (Member # 2800) on 11-13-2004, 01:15 AM:

We didnt used to do this until about a year ago...but we really got reamed by an auditor and so after that we got much more strict about it. We usually try and have the ushers rubber-band the tickets they take throughout the night, so that at the end, it is just a matter of counting groups of 100. Much easier that way.

Posted by Chase Hanson (Member # 2779) on 11-13-2004, 02:09 AM:

we've done this for as long as I have worked at my theater, im pretty sure that its company policy. We usually keep a Quarters worth of ticket stubs on hand.

As a note, I dont really understand why they hard count every bag. I think it would be easier and more cost effective to weigh bags of stubs and have a cheat sheet in 100 stub incrament. If the numbers arent even close than you hard count...if its within a nominal margin than you call it even.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 11-13-2004, 01:08 PM:

It's also in film company contracts that you have to keep the stubs.

Posted by Mike Spaeth (Member # 524) on 11-13-2004, 01:11 PM:

Century keeps no ticket stubs. They print a hard ticket that the tear to "mark" it and return it to you

Posted by Brad Allen (Member # 470) on 11-14-2004, 12:27 PM:

Yep, it's required by the film co's contract.
And your supposed to keep them I believe for 2 yrs.
It's for the film co's auditors, not the theatres owners.

Posted by Gordon McLeod (Member # 33) on 11-14-2004, 12:46 PM:

For years the canada customs and revinue agency (the fed tax man) required ticket stubs for an audit the register tape wasn't accepatble so they had to be kept for 7 years
Many theatres used to thread them on a string by date

Posted by David Yauch (Member # 2754) on 11-15-2004, 01:26 AM:

We keep ours around in giant envelopes until the audit fairies come and wisk them away in the night...

Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 11-15-2004, 09:59 AM:

"Paper Trails" are important for checking the integrity of both theatre personnel and voting machines.

Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 11-15-2004, 10:24 AM:

For years before the computerized ticketing system, keeping the ticket stubs presented way for the distribs to get a fairly secure way of checking the veracity of the theatre's box office report. You had to give the opening ticket number and the closing ticket number on a roll. Rolls were consecutively numbered, usually 10,000 tickets per roll, with at least 5 or 10 different colors. Naturally there are ways around this, but it would take collusion on the part of a number of employees. The consecutively numbered ticket rolls and colors that provided the security factor.

If a distrib wanted to check a theatre, they would send in a checker or "clicker" as we called them. He buys a ticket and then goes into the theatre and counts the heads. He then asks for the ticket stubs. If things are on the up-and-up, the only ticket numbers in that bad will be between the starting number on the report and the number on his ticket; anything else is suspect. Unless the theatre had unlimited number of rolls at various pricing and various colors where an employee could doctor the numbers, pulling tickets out of other rolls, it was a pretty foolproof system.

We still fill out box office reports that call for a starting and ending number, but of course there are no preprinted ticket rolls anymore; the computer just spits out the ticket with all the information on it. The computer tells me the number of tickets sold and I use 00001 as the starting number. I never could understand how computer generated ticket sales can offer any easy verification for the distrib. I can make the computer say anything I want. For verification, the checker would have to come in and confiscate the computer hard-drive.

I wonder what everyone did with all those neat ticket roll machines.

Posted by Jason Black (Member # 684) on 11-15-2004, 10:51 AM:

Auto-Maticket or something to that effect.

Fastest machines in the world. I never had one go down, never had to adjust the cutting blades. You simply loaded your ticket stacks (I guess they would have taken rolls also), hit the appropriate number of for the tickets desired and voila...

I miss them... they are nostaligic to say the least...

Posted by Dave Williams (Member # 299) on 11-15-2004, 12:38 PM:

There is a new way around stubs.

It is upc encoding and verification.

Tickets are printed and each one has its own identifier code. Only the ones that have been sold are valid by the reader.

you must have your ticket for entry or reentry. the usher carries a reader that is connected to the network system via wireless. It reads the ticket and instantly verifies the validity of it. No valid ticket, no entry. PERIOD.

Cost... not that much really. Plus you can get by the ticket stub requirements that most theaters have to live up to. The record of the read tickets and the record of the printed tickets is all you need. That with a head count is all the verification in the world anyone would ever need.

Ciao baby

dave

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 11-15-2004, 06:18 PM:

quote: Frank Angel
For verification, the checker would have to come in and confiscate the computer hard-drive.

If you will look at your current contracts, you'll find that they have the right to do just that.

Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 11-15-2004, 08:57 PM:

"For verification, the checker would have to come in and confiscate the computer hard-drive."

quote: Mike Blakesley
If you will look at your current contracts, you'll find that they have the right to do just that.

Nazi bastards

Posted by Barry Martin (Member # 1376) on 11-15-2004, 10:45 PM:

quote: Jason Black
Auto-Maticket or something to that effect.

Fastest machines in the world. I never had one go down, never had to adjust the cutting blades. You simply loaded your ticket stacks (I guess they would have taken rolls also), hit the appropriate number of for the tickets desired and voila...

I miss them... they are nostaligic to say the least...

We still have one and use it. I would prefer a computer printed system so that everyone's stubs told them which theater they were in and told us which movie/time they purchased without having to drag them back to the box office and "research" but it is nostalgic and just the right height so that when ejecting the maximum 5 tickets it can catch a little kid by surprise and make them jump. All in good fun of course. [Wink]

Posted by William Hooper (Member # 71) on 11-16-2004, 12:31 AM:

quote: Frank Angel
I wonder what everyone did with all those neat ticket roll machines.

The AutomaTickets I've seen used folded stacks of tickets, not rolls. Did they make AutomaTickets that used rolls?

Posted by Mark Hajducki (Member # 1732) on 11-16-2004, 07:25 AM:

quote: Frank Angel
no preprinted ticket rolls anymore

Although not preprinted with performance information the tickets used by the WABITS system (Warner Village / VUe) had a refrence number printed onto the unprinted tickets. When loading the machines the reference number of the first ticket had to be entered (twice) and the last number on the stack had to be entered (twice). This caused chaos during the busy times when the ticket stock ran out.

quote: Dave Williams
It is upc encoding and verification.

Tickets are printed and each one has its own identifier code. Only the ones that have been sold are valid by the reader.

I have seen a system like this used for ferry boarding cards (your ticket was also your room key). This system is also used at EasyCinema. The one issue with its use at a cinema is assuming you allow re-entry into the cinema (if people leave to use the toilet/phone/consessions stand) then it would have to accept the same ticket many times (and would not prevent groups recycling their tickets).

Posted by Barry Martin (Member # 1376) on 11-16-2004, 12:40 PM:

We have folded stacks of tickets, but I imagine a roll would work just as well if placed in the stock bucket. Yes, running out of tickets is a MAJOR pain in the middle of a show, as reloading is not a quick matter. Our tickets do have pre-printed numbers, we verify our attendance by writing down the beginning numbers, selling tickets, writing the ending numbers above the beginning and subtracting. We also just tear tickets at the box office since we only have two theaters and the theater entry is about 15 feet from the concession stand/box office so we can watch and make sure they go in the right film.

Posted by Jeremy Fuentes (Member # 2135) on 11-16-2004, 01:16 PM:

We have an Automaticket for a 5 screen theater. Two stations, one setup for matinee and another setup for evening. The tickets have preprinted numbers as well. Each auditorium has a seperate ticket color as well as the auditorium number printed on it. Evening tickets are a totally different set of colors. We tear tickets at the box office during the week and at the auditorium entrances on Friday and Saturday.