Lottery from PDI to your books
Lottery runs through the register, but most of it is not your income. This page explains what PDI shows for lottery, what belongs in your books, and how to stop lottery inflating your revenue.
Works with your POS, back-office & accounting stack
Lottery is one of the items most often recorded wrongly in a gas station's books. Most of what comes in belongs to the lottery, not to you. PDI is a back-office system for gas stations and c-stores, and it reports lottery separately from other sales. Confirm the exact reports in your setup with your PDI representative.
Lottery sales and payouts are reported on their own lines, apart from store items. That separation is what lets you keep them out of income.
Most of the sales amount is held for the lottery and settled with it on a schedule. Your income is the commission you earn, not the full sales amount.
Sales and payouts go through a liability account. The commission is recorded as income. The settlement to the lottery clears the liability.
When lottery is counted as sales, revenue is overstated, margin looks wrong, and the amount owed to the lottery is not tracked.
To see which lottery numbers to pull, go to the lottery reports. To see what goes wrong, go to where it goes wrong. If you want a team to handle it, what we do covers it.
Follow one day of sales from the register to PDI to QuickBooks Online, see where the numbers go missing, and how to check that all three agree.
Read more →The usual causes when PDI and QuickBooks Online disagree, how to find the gap, and how we reconcile the two.
Read more →Monthly bookkeeping for stores that run PDI: daily reconciliation, month-end close and PDI totals posted into QuickBooks Online.
Read more →What PDI back office software does, which reports to pull each month, and how its totals reach QuickBooks Online.
Read more →What PDI and QuickBooks each do, why most stores need both, and how to keep them in agreement.
Read more →How PDI fuel and store inventory reach QuickBooks Online, and how to explain a fuel variance.
Read more →Send us a day or a month and we'll show you where the three systems disagree.
Get started →Sales and payouts go to a liability account, not income.
The commission you earn is booked as income.
Payments to the lottery are matched to the amount owed.
The liability is checked each month so it does not drift.
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Clay PearsonPDI lottery reports and the lottery settlement statements.
Sales and payouts are removed from store income.
Net amounts owed are recorded in a liability account.
Payments to the lottery clear the liability.
You get the books and a note on any lottery difference and its cause.
Report names and layouts vary by store setup and state lottery. Ask your PDI representative what yours are called.
Revenue is overstated by the full amount of lottery sales.
Winners paid at the counter are never deducted.
The commission is buried inside sales or never recorded.
The payment to the lottery is expensed instead of clearing the liability.
The balance grows or shrinks and nobody knows why.
Settlements that fall after month-end land in the wrong month.
You want to know how it should look in the books.
Your store margin looks wrong and lottery may be the reason.
The amount owed does not match what the lottery says.
If you are not sure how lottery is recorded today, tell us and we will work it out.
A 30-minute call, then about 48 hours while we review your books. You get our findings and a plain explanation of how we would fix them.
We agree which PDI lottery report feeds which account and document it.
The first month is reconciled, closed and reported, then it runs on a schedule.
Fuel inventory, daily POS reconciliation, jobber statements and fuel versus store margin.
5 services →Car wash, lottery and ATM, vendor and DSD invoices, prepared food, shrinkage and more.
9 services →Fuel excise and motor fuel tax, multi-category sales tax, BSA/AML-aware books and entity tax.
4 services →Multi-location consolidation, store acquisitions and disposals, and loan and financing packages.
3 services →FAQ
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Gas station & c-store accounting questions, answered.