Print a Sales Receipt With Real Point-of-Sale Detail

How to Write a Sales Receipt

A sales receipt is the record of a completed retail transaction — the customer has paid, the goods have changed hands, and the receipt documents what was sold, for how much, and how it was paid. It's the customer's proof of purchase and the merchant's record of the sale. This guide covers what belongs on one and how to handle tax and payment detail, using a bold retro-retail design — a burnt-orange masthead, per-item icons, and DM Mono figures — as the worked example.

Itemize Everything Sold

The heart of a sales receipt is the item list. For each item, show enough to identify it later:

• A title — the product name
• A descriptor — variant, size, edition, or condition, on a sub-line
• The price — per item, in tabular figures so the column aligns

An itemized receipt lets a customer return one item without ambiguity, claim a specific expense, or verify they were charged correctly. A receipt that shows only a grand total can't do any of that.

Show Tax as Its Own Line

Total the items into a subtotal, then add sales tax as a separate, clearly rated line ("CA sales tax 10.25%"), then the grand total. Breaking tax out — rather than burying it in the prices — is both a legal expectation in most jurisdictions and a practical one: customers and their accountants need to see the tax paid. Set the rate to your jurisdiction's figure and let the receipt reconcile the subtotal, tax, and total.

Record How They Paid

Capture the payment method and its reference. For a card, that's the card type, the last four digits, an authorization code, and how it was read ("Visa ending ••5108, Auth 048912, chip read"). For cash, note the amount tendered and change. This detail is what makes the receipt verifiable against your end-of-day batch and what a customer's dispute or expense claim relies on.

Date, Number, and Identify the Register

Note the date and time, a sequential receipt number, and — if you run more than one till — which register and cashier handled the sale. This is the metadata that makes your sales auditable and lets you find a specific transaction later. It costs nothing and it's invaluable when a customer comes back with a question.

State Your Return and Store Policy

The footer is the place for your return window, condition rules ("graded by hand and sold as-is"), and any store-credit terms. Putting the policy on the receipt sets expectations at the moment of sale and heads off disputes — the customer agreed to terms they could see in their hand.

Selling cash-only at a market stall or pop-up rather than running a card-taking storefront? A cash receipt is the better fit — it adds a tendered-and-change block built for handing physical money across a counter.