There are several different formulas that casinos use.
I think we used:
Total fill per table - X total tables - X 2 - X 20%
When we opened the Palms we ordered 102,000 chips, 40,000 were $1. We had to reorder $1's about 3 months after opening.
I lost count of the missing $1's but last count I had over a year ago, was over 120,000.