Mastering the Offline Scanner
Venue WiFi drops. Phone signal disappears in a field. Sacketickets is built for that, so your staff can keep checking tickets at the gate with no internet at all. There's just one routine you need to follow on the day — and if you skip it, people can slip in on tickets that were already used.
Crucial: Locking Off Ticket Sales
When operating in offline mode, you must lock off ticket sales before scanning begins.
Why does this matter?
Think of it like a printed guest list. Before the event, each phone downloads its own copy of everyone who bought a ticket. Once your staff go offline, that copy is all the phone knows — it can't check for updates.
So if sales are still open, two things go wrong:
Late buyers get turned away. Someone buys a ticket from the car park at 10pm. They were never on the copy your staff downloaded, so the scanner says “not found” — even though they really did pay. Now you're sorting that out at the gate with a line building behind them.
The same ticket can get used twice. While the phones are offline, they can't tell each other what's already been scanned. Gate A has no way of knowing Gate B just let someone in on that ticket. So one person could send a photo of their QR code to a friend, and both walk in through different gates.
Closing sales first means the list every phone downloads is complete and final — nobody is missing from it, and nothing changes behind your back.
The Event Day Workflow
Lock Off Sales
At least 1-2 hours before gates open, log into your Sacketickets dashboard and officially close online ticket sales for the event. This finalizes the guest list.
Initial Device Sync
While you still have strong WiFi or data, open the Sacketickets Scanner on every phone your staff will use and tap “Sync Event Data”. Check that each phone shows the same ticket count — if one is different, sync it again before you leave.
Scan Offline
Head to the gates. From here your phones don't need internet at all. Each one checks on its own that a ticket is genuine, and saves the time that person walked in.
Post-Event Sync
After the event, get every phone back on WiFi or data and open the app. It will send up the scans it saved during the night, which is what fills in your attendance numbers back in the dashboard.
Need to sell tickets at the door?
Keep all door sales on one phone, and keep that one phone online. Everything sold at the gate then runs through a single place, so it can never clash with the offline phones checking pre-sold tickets.