
The humble receipt gets a redesign - colinprince
https://www.fastcompany.com/90347782/the-humble-receipt-gets-a-brilliant-redesign
======
rchaud
Struggling to understand the use case for this. I stare at my grocery receipts
like everyone else, but it's to verify the prices I bought them at; sometimes
I pick up an item that I think is marked on sale, when it's actually the
adjacent item that's been discounted. As a whole, the bubble chart doesn't
tell me anything. Meat costs more than an equivalent amount of fruit. Unless
you're looking to go vegetarian for financial reasons, you're not going to
learn much from that chart.

Splitting up items into a taxonomy is somewhat useful, but not when it only
exists on a printed receipt that will go into the trash. It's also not that
useful if you make multiple trips a week, as single people often do.

Finally, it's not useful at all if the categories are based on the company's
SKU/ERP nomenclature, as opposed to a human-centric approach. If one brand of
Ice Cream appears under "Eggs & Dairy" but another under
"Confectionery/Bakery" what value do you get by having that itemized on a
receipt?

~~~
schmookeeg
I like it more than the old fashioned receipt it seeks to replace. I would
look at it and it would bring me a small, fleeting bit of joy.

I prefer no receipts at all, but that doesn't seem to be a universal option.
So if I'm going to get the paper receipt anyway, may as well have some
pleasing design applied to it, and a thought-provoking categorization for me
to reflect upon before I crumple and toss the thing. Beats the pants off of
the old version.

If I was reading a business plan and being asked to invest, yeah, I'd respond
to it your way too. As a "thing that could exist", though, I appreciate it.

~~~
rchaud
I just don't think groceries are the right market for this. For "joy", the
differentiator has to be in-person customer service, because grocery margins
are razor-thin, and the last thing any exec wants to propose is to modify the
ERP (there be dragons) so it generates the clean data that's required for
visualizations.

At my store, they are pushing to reduce checkout staff by "encouraging"
customers to use self-checkout. It hasn't been going well, but this is a
retail-wide trend, and cost-cutting pressures are immense.

Again, because this is so data-centric, the visualizations will generate
errors and miscategorizations that will confuse customers more than if they
had ye olde dot matrix printed receipt.

~~~
JetSpiegel
> At my store, they are pushing to reduce checkout staff by "encouraging"
> customers to use self-checkout. It hasn't been going well, but this is a
> retail-wide trend, and cost-cutting pressures are immense.

This infuriates me so much, I started to see if I could game the system. Fruit
is the easy part, you fill your bag with the expensive fruit, and select
apples or something cheap on the checkout scale. Works better on larger
stores, the minimum wage person overseeing 6 self-checkout machines can't
watch everything, maybe half the people need help, or the scale borks for some
reason.

My local supermarket replaced pre-packaged bread bags, weighted by the
employees with a complete alacarte system which is complete shitshow. You pick
the bread on one place, do your entire shopping and then have to remember what
kind of SKU have you chosen. It's a complete waste of time for everyone, and
I'm pretty sure the surrounding traditional bakeries won here, the bread
selection has lowered substantially on the supermarket.

~~~
luckman212
So you're "infuriated" that retail stores have to cut staff in order to
survive, yet in the next breath you boast about how simple it is to steal from
the store? I see you also didn't forget to belittle the hapless "minimum wage
person" who you're purporting to care about.

~~~
JetSpiegel
> yet in the next breath you boast about how simple it is to steal from the
> store?

> I see you also didn't forget to belittle the hapless "minimum wage person"
> who you're purporting to care about.

That's my point. The employees are valuable, even in a pure profit-driven
analysis.

> retail stores have to cut staff in order to survive

This is completely false, "surviving" is not the word to describe retailers.

------
neogodless
Here's my opinion:

What she got right

\- see items within categories from most expensive category to least, each
category showing a percent of your total grocery bill

\- see relative price within a category at a glance (even if you buy wine,
that's within your alcohol category, so it won't mess up the relative pricing
of your dairy or snacks)

What might not go so well

\- the bubble chart is less universal and intuitive (and it's "quirky")

\- does volume (of what's printed) matter for thermal printing costs?

\- would waiting to print the receipt at the end cause a big slowdown vs
printing as you ring items up? (I believe with most current systems, items can
be added and removed, and they show up as 'add' and 'remove' line items,
because it does print as you scan.)

Many people mentioned digital/CSV breakdowns. I know Home Depot quietly
connected my credit card to my email address after asking me if I wanted a
digital receipt, and I typed in an email. So this seems like a reasonable
option, for anyone that grants permission. (Home Depot annoys me because I say
"Yeah! E-mail me!" and then they hand me a receipt anyway. Ungh!)

~~~
octocode
The print volume matters. These new receipts would be at least 3x longer than
they need to be, and thermal paper:

a) costs money

b) is considered to be highly toxic

c) often isn't accepted by local recycling programs (but people still throw
receipts in anyway)

d) ultimately end up in the garbage, or even just littering street corners.

~~~
erdo
> 3x longer

I used to work for a large payment processing company that supplied POS
systems to retailers, I was surprised to find that receipt length does matter
a lot to some retailers.

The department that shipped till rolls liked long receipts, it made enough of
a financial difference to them to matter.

The retailers hated long receipts, because obviously that meant they needed to
buy more till rolls.

(It's worth remembering that the customers for most POS solutions are
retailers, not the person who buys something in a shop)

~~~
adventured
> The retailers hated long receipts, because obviously that meant they needed
> to buy more till rolls.

Changing out the printer roll is very annoying as well, for a retailer's
cashiers. It's slightly time consuming and it doesn't always go smoothly. It
inevitably results in a customer having to wait longer, slowing the checkout
process further. The less often that action is needed to be performed, the
better.

------
gumby
What's the incentive for a shop to provide this info? From their PoV they
provide it in the itemizations. You can do with that what you will.

It's in the shop's interest to use an antipattern that _obscures_ detail so
you don't reflect on where your money is going, and possibly choose to spend
less.

~~~
iddan
The company interest is also to give customers value

~~~
firethief
Value as judged by the customers, not rational actors. Useful as this is,
drawing more focus to costs would drive customers to shop elsewhere. A version
of this I could see shops actually implementing would be a graph of the
"savings" per-item, a metric which is essentially meaningless but gives people
savvy feelings.

~~~
IggleSniggle
I disagree. I would prefer to shop at a place that showed me this. It would
increase my loyalty to that grocer. The downside to the grocer is that I might
be less inclined to buy meat, but maybe that still works because I instead
gravitate to expensive veg options and look at my percent spend and celebrate
my good decision making.

The only way this would drive me to use a different grocery is if it did a
price comparison vs other grocers and I discovered I was getting screwed...but
even then, if it was marginal, I’m not sure I would change grocer.

Edit: currently, as a shopper, you are most likely to just look at the bottom
line. I think you are right that grocer adoption would be complicated from a
business decision perspective, but I think implementation of this would hit
“brand names” more than anyone else. It’s in both the grocers and shoppers
best interest.

~~~
firethief
I never said _no one_ would like it, so your counterexample isn't a basis to
disagree unless you think most people are as rational as you [think you are]
in the checkout line (they aren't).

Besides, our own assessments of our preferences are notoriously inaccurate. It
would be _logical_ for you to like it, but I'll believe you actually do when
you make choices reflecting the preference. Which you'll never have a chance
to do unless some store's marketing department thinks this is a good idea.

~~~
IggleSniggle
You are right, I am disagreeing on the basis of speculation based on my own
experiences and preferences. I assumed you were making an argument from the
same place? That said, you are right, we will likely never have the
opportunity to test this particular preference.

So, from the place of my personal experience: I am sucker like everyone else,
and prefer stores that tell me a per-unit price that I can compare like-to-
like brands, often to the point of irrationality. I will also grant that I
could have a backlash on this if it makes the receipts unduly long, which is a
reason for me to prefer RiteAid over CVS. Plenty of reasons not to like this.
I just don't _personally_ believe that drawing attention to price would be a
reason for me to stop shopping at a place, although it would (hopefully) alter
my buying habits within said store.

~~~
firethief
> You are right, I am disagreeing on the basis of speculation based on my own
> experiences and preferences. I assumed you were making an argument from the
> same place?

Actually, no. I too think I have logical preferences and would prefer the
additional information--but I don't think typical shoppers would respond well
to it, possibly including myself (because I don't know if I would act in
accordance with my estimation of my hypothetical preferences). So I'm making
my argument from psychological principles, and in particular by inferring what
supermarkets know about the psychology of typical shoppers (because I'm not an
expert, but I assume the people the big supermarkets consult to stay
competitive are the best in the field).

> So, from the place of my personal experience: I am sucker like everyone
> else, and prefer stores that tell me a per-unit price that I can compare
> like-to-like brands, often to the point of irrationality.

If that's what people actually want, stores have no idea what they're doing.
The supermarket where I usually shop uses different units for the "unit
prices" of different brands, so if I want to compare unit prices I have to do
the math myself. The information they highlight tends to be the "sales", which
serve to: convey a feeling of beating the system (even when they're so common,
taking the sale obviously just means not paying the sucker price); and
constantly invalidate all previous price comparisons for commodities like
coffee where in-depth price comparison would otherwise make sense.

> I just don't _personally_ believe that drawing attention to price would be a
> reason for me to stop shopping at a place, although it would (hopefully)
> alter my buying habits within said store.

I wouldn't expect anyone would think they'd be unhappy to have the additional
information, because people consistently assume their behavior is logical. Ha.

------
MatekCopatek
This might be a local thing, but in my experience shops work hard to obfuscate
the receipts as much as possible. If they're competing on price, their tactic
is usually to promote a few random products they have the best price on and
then hope you'll pick their store to buy all your groceries. For that reason,
they are absolutely against giving you raw data, because that would allow you
to make a shopping list and find the store with the best total price.

I remember some people tried to do an app that would let you scan receipts and
make comparisons, but they gave up. Even stores from the same huge chain would
have different prices for the same item and a different name on the printed
receipt as well. I don't want to get into conspiracy theory territory, but it
looked very deliberate.

Eastern Europe here BTW.

~~~
behringer
My thoughts exactly? Why would any store ever want this? It's completely
against their interests. They want to sell high priced/high margin items. They
don't want customers shamed into spending less on bakery and alcohol and other
non-essentials.

Likewise customers might feel alienated seeing how much data they're giving to
the store and feeling bad for spending 20 percent of their meat budget on a
rib eye.

If you want to follow this closely your food buying habits, get an app. I
think it'd be weird to have this receipt. I mean I'd have to shred the thing
before I'd even be comfortable throwing it away!

~~~
henrikeh
For what it is worth, Føtex, one of the largest supermarket chains in Denmark
prints the receipt with the items ordered in categories.

------
myth_buster
I'm surprised by the reception this is getting.

I may be wrong here, but my approach to this would be completely counter to
the one taken. Instead of overhauling POS systems (which are painful/tedious
to do), I would try to build an OCR app that reads the items and does all that
viz in the app, saving some paper and ink in the process.

In addition to above constraint with POS systems, I don't have one stop shop
for getting all items in one category (say groceries).

~~~
mnort9
Your solution may be the better product, but info on receipt has 100% user
adoption compared to the extreme minority that will put in the extra work to
download the app, scan the receipt, etc. Distribution is the big win here.

~~~
weberc2
If you overhaul the system to provide those data via an API (instead of OCR-
ing receipts or printing these relatively useless visualizations), then not
only could DIY folks like the parent and myself do the analyses ourselves, but
any number of personal finance tools could also support the system to make it
easy for their customers to visualize their own data.

------
guelo
I was hoping was this about removing the toxic chemicals from thermal printer
paper used for receipts. I refuse to touch that stuff and I warn cashiers that
they should wash their hands often.

~~~
rsl7
So you're that person. I love it. keep it up.

------
noer
I don't understand how a bubble chart based on percentage of the total from
various departments fixes receipts? Knowing the percentage of my total that
comes from a specific department isn't a problem I have, though maybe it is
for others. I'd be more interested in being able to self categorize my
purchases and breaking down the percentage that way.

------
thiscatis
I rather have them digitally. Also, can we leave it with the "just did x"
titles.

~~~
smn1234
how do you contest wrong quantity scanned, while in person? Less effective to
seek reimbursement to do so after leaving the shop.

Are you suggesting an app that is connected to register that shows the
scanning activity live, and somehow retaining that entirely in digital copy??

~~~
mijamo
If you pay by card it could just be handled by Visa for instance. That would
be neat.

And it doesn't mean you wouldn't be able to get a paper copy in addition if
you want.

------
philpowell
I usually like fresh takes on traditional, utilitarian design. But this has
left me cold. For two main reasons:

1\. This is trying to fix a problem which doesn't exist for 99% of people. A
family struggling to figure out the math of feeding their kids with ~$0 will
not recognise "mindful" shopping.

2\. There are much better problems to solve in retail. Store design is
confrontational and manipulative. Fix that first. Then fix packaging and
presentation so that we all understand a bit more about what we're buying and
how we can cook stuff. Then create meal deals which match ingredients, rather
than pre-packs.

But I think the main reason this idea felt like the lowest of low-hanging
fruit, is this: I'm severely sight impaired, and, on ocassion, I still get
shouted at by staff when I can't negotiate an automated checkout easily, or I
don't understand a chocolate-pimping deal they are pushing at checkout.
Customer service is focused on "service", not "customers". Fix that first,
then create pretty reciept graphs.

------
sametmax
Love it.

It's missing a qrcode with a date, uuid, total, tax and unguessable url to the
items list and prices (or gzipped json of it) so that we can finally scan
import receipts with software.

Qr codes should be mandatory on most paper docs IMO. Forms, invoices,
contracts, etc.

~~~
fwip
You'd like to mandate that all stores keep a permanent record of every
purchase ever made?

~~~
anoncake
No need for that.

30 bits to represent the 13 digit IAN.

3 bytes for prices up to 167772.16. If you frequently buy things more
expensive than that, just have one of your servants transcribe the recipe to
your favorite format.

1 byte for the number of items. If you buy more than 255 of one thing, we'll
just add another line to the recipe.

That's 60 bits per line item. A QR code holds up to 23,648 bits. That makes up
to 394 line items per QR code, without compression, which ought to be enough
for anyone.

If you do buy more than that, the POS crashes^H prints another QR code.

~~~
uponcoffee
>3 bytes for prices up to 167772.16. If you frequently buy things more
expensive than that, just have one of your servants transcribe the recipe to
your favorite format.

>1 byte for the number of items. If you buy more than 255 of one thing, we'll
just add another line to the recipe.

You could split prices greater than 167772.16 into chunks, delimited by using
zero for the number of items in the subseqent line items.

~~~
anoncake
I think it's simpler to make the field variable length. The same is necessary
for the count field, buying >= 256 grams of something is common.

------
the_arun
Instead, what if receipts just include a QR code to a web page giving all
kinds of details? customer could save or integrate with their personal
financial management service.

~~~
niteshade
My thoughts exactly, this approach helps with the issue of anonymous purchases
(i.e. retailers linking payments with email addresses[0]) although presumably
retailers will try and make up for it by shoving analytics on the receipt
display page, though that can also be disabled with an adblocker.

[0]:
[https://www.theguardian.com/travel/shortcuts/2016/oct/16/sho...](https://www.theguardian.com/travel/shortcuts/2016/oct/16/shops-
sign-up-e-receipts-proof-of-purchase)

------
dugluak
Receipt should be just data. Mixing analytics in it seems to be overkill.
Making it easy to feed the data to a separate analytics app seems to be a
better idea so that consumers can analyze their spending not only for that
particular instance of purchase but also over a period of time.

------
psukhedelos
Good on Susie! There's something really cool and fun about integrating data
visualisation into an old school receipt.

My question is, what prevents itemisation in bank statements directly?

I have always wanted for my itemised purchases to show up directly in my bank
account (instead of just the total). From there, I could see how much I am
spending by either automatically generated or manually defined categories. One
step further would allow me to budget my money not into separate accounts but
by category (think sub-folders within your accounts). You can define the
limits of a category and transactions are declined when you've hit your budget
and attempt a purchase of that category / product type.

Is there any argument to be made for the bank not having access to the
individual purchases (e.g. privacy concerns, too much data)?

Are account holders with a grasp and control of their money and spending not
more beneficial to a bank / businesses (not an expert, so forgive me if this
is a bit naive)?

I think some third party apps attempt to solve this, but as far as I'm aware
they are more of a view of your accounts and not able to control transactions
/ spending limits. Personally I'd also rather not give my buying information
to another entity.

~~~
JohnFen
> I have always wanted for my itemised purchases to show up directly in my
> bank account (instead of just the total).

I 100% do not want this, ever, period.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Why not?

~~~
ColinWright
See the sibling comment in this thread:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19903991](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19903991)

> _I can 't get my head around the fact that you are actually suggesting this.
> Do you want your bank to know that you buy 30-40 bottles of beer each week?
> Do you want them to know that you buy medicine for a terminal disease during
> your visit to discuss a family home loan?_

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Seems like the store could use your public key to encrypt the data it uploads
to your bank, they get the full data, you decrypt it. It's then just using the
current channels.

But, I imagine it's easier to have the store make a temporary xml/json file on
their servers, give you the QR code to access it, then you can control the
data flow from then.

------
Theodores
I have wondered before why it is that you can't buy groceries with a
'compelling receipt' that shows you other database fields. Everything has
calories/sugar/salt/fat etc. in a per 100g form (measurements are different in
USA). So you could checkout some online shopping and see how many calories you
are getting for your money.

If you wanted to improve your shopping you could see what was being wasted on
'empty calories' and remove it from the order. Just being to sort the checkout
by 'most salt/100g' would be interesting to me and plenty of people who do
diets.

However, this would not help most people to click the 'buy now' button.

So it is for this reason this receipt idea has to go. Receipts only really
have to be read by people who do tax expense forms. Fancy receipts have been
possible for years now - you could have a full colour receipt with pictures of
everything, all fonts 'on brand', as fancy as it gets. But no retailer has
decided to do this, there is something for the receipt we know being the
throwaway thing it is.

------
sccxy
My self-service supermarket kiosk has option for "no receipt".

I register with my bonus card and can look all my receipts online.

No need to waste paper. It is 2019 after all.

------
robohamburger
A QR code or something similar I could scan and get the receipt in csv would
fix receipts for me.

~~~
Nerada
Exactly what I want out of a receipt. Exactly.

Just a QR code that translates to a csv of items and their costs.

------
joezydeco
I don't quite get the bargraph. So it's charting the price of everything
relative to the most expensive item in the ticket?

What happens if I buy a $100 bottle of wine and the rest is small priced
cheeses and vegetables for a party? It becomes useless.

~~~
arkades
> What happens if I buy a $100 bottle of wine and the rest is small priced
> cheeses and vegetables for a party? It becomes useless.

Do you find this an everyday event?

~~~
joezydeco
No, just an outlier example. A way to show that graphing things like this
would make Tufte's teeth grind.

------
stedaniels
Flux [0] in the UK are currently trying to irradiate the paper receipt. It's
integrated with Monzo bank too. IIRC there's an API to do whatever you like
with the data. I imagine Monzo will start doing cool data visitations to help
your spending habits.

[0] [https://www.tryflux.com/](https://www.tryflux.com/)

~~~
fwip
Irradiate?

~~~
bloopernova
eradicate

------
weberc2
I would be content if there was an easy way to get the raw itemization info so
I could load it into any system I want to do any analysis I want. Instead of
breakdowns per trip I could get breakdowns per month or per annum. I could
also choose from a variety of visualizations instead of being beholden to
whatever is printed on the receipt.

------
cyberferret
This reminds me of a design competition a few years ago that I saw in a
magazine, where prominent designers were hired to redesign the simple, common,
every day invoice layout.

The results were a hideous, arty, mess that almost every business surveyed
with the samples said were unreadable and would increase the workload on their
accounts staff. All they wanted was a simple layout with the invoice number
and date somewhere on the top right, then the total amount and the tax
breakdown somewhere on the bottom right.

That facilitated data entry into their own accounting system for later
processing. If they wanted to query a specific thing on the invoice, that was
a secondary consideration, but even then, they wanted things laid out simply
so they could find the line item, see the price (and quantity) and the line
total. That was it. Something the common, every day invoice layout does well
today.

The problems I have with this concept (and this comes from over 20 years of
installing Point of Sale systems), is that a lot of POS systems these days
still print the receipt items as they are scanned (to save time, I guess). So
having the bubble chart at the top would be impossible as you don't have all
that data until the entire transaction is finished.

Also, when the customer gets this receipt, the transaction is over. This is
after the fact. It is really hard to 'undo' anything, and any learning about
spending patterns will be forgotten by the time they next do a shopping run in
a few days.

Another thing - I frequently have blow outs in my shopping, but that is
usually when I tend to treat myself to a special item, or perhaps purchase a
new frying pan etc. as part of my normal food shopping. This would result in a
large bubble or bar on my receipt, whilst negating other more important things
to a much smaller scale.

For example, last week my fresh veg bar looked like: [======....] but today it
looks like [==.......] next to my very expensive tub of foie gras that I
impulsively purchased as a treat or for a party. I may have bought the same
_quantity_ of vegetables, but visually it looks like I really skimped on them
this time around.

I applaud designers such as this OP who try and push the traditional
boundaries and expectations, but sometimes, a little more real world
experience and application would save everyone a lot of time. This is akin to
a non-pilot enthusiastically putting forward and promoting that circular
runway idea from a couple of years ago.

------
barking
When i find a receipt the first thing I often wish to know is when it is
dated, so if it's old I can just dump it. It can be really frustrating as it
can be anywhere on tiny piece of paper. There should be a receipts standard
that all should have to comply with so everything is always in same place.

~~~
frosted-flakes
Anywhere, and in one of a dozen formats.

------
dugluak
The only utility of a receipt for me is just so that I can make returns.
Otherwise I simply trash them.

------
brucetribbensee
But don't touch the paper!

[https://www.plasticpollutioncoalition.org/pft/2016/12/23/is-...](https://www.plasticpollutioncoalition.org/pft/2016/12/23/is-
bpa-on-thermal-paper-a-health-hazard)

------
djmobley
Looks like a lot of ink wasted on a visualisation which is of limited benefit
to the consumer, and likely to result in lost revenue for the retailer, as
people become more aware of how much they are spending on particular product
categories.

~~~
narrowtux
Thermal paper does not use ink, nothing would be wasted even if printing 100%
black.

~~~
NeonVice
A waste of ink, no, but somewhat a waste of thermal paper.

~~~
post_break
If we're going to talk about wasting thermal paper CVS should be the company
we're going after.

------
Doubl
Thermal printers are the ones where the text becomes invisible over time I
believe. They should be outlawed as a way of providing anything of record. My
credit union gives them as their way of giving you your statement.

~~~
jjtheblunt
there are other papers from as recent as the early 1990s which were used for
receipts, in the US anyway, which also fade.

------
vitiell0
Interesting seeing so many people asking for digital receipt data.

Cooklist lets you connect your loyalty cards and automatically download all
your past and future purchases into one place. (like Mint.com for grocery)

You can see aggregations of all your grocery spending across retailers plus
see recipe ideas to cook with the groceries you bought.

We've thought about introducing more advanced visualization of grocery
spending or an export tool if anyone is interested.

Disclaimer: I'm a cofounder at [https://cooklist.co](https://cooklist.co)

------
m463
What people don't get is:

receipts are not for customers.

They prevent a crooked cashier from pretending to ring something up and
pocketing the cash.

Ever seen those signs? "If you didn't get a receipt, your meal is free"

~~~
JohnFen
> They prevent a crooked cashier from pretending to ring something up and
> pocketing the cash.

How?

A receipt would only be useful for that if the customer diligently looks for
an omission. I'll bet that rarely happens. What seems more likely is that the
customer will notice that they were charged more than what the total on the
receipt said, and will demand that the store refund the "extra charge".

~~~
m463
I meant everything you just purchased, not a line item (although that's a
clever variation but you might still be caught)

The idea is that there's a history of the transaction in the register to get
the receipt (so it happened), and it was handed to someone and they might read
it.

~~~
JohnFen
I still don't understand how a receipt helps for this use case. Can you
explain in a bit more detail?

------
ortusdux
I feel a better solution would be a QR code at the bottom that combines each
product's UPC and price with the name of the store, date, etc. From there it
would be easy to feed that into an app. Whomever created the app could fund it
by selling the consumer spending habit data. They could incentivise the app's
use by providing analytics, directing consumers to cheaper alternatives and
integrating coupons.

~~~
rtkwe
It'll have to be a link to a webpage/API. Thermal printers won't get you good
enough resolution to put that much in a QR code for anything but a very small
purchase with only a few items.

------
dragonwriter
The visualizations aren't particularly useful, and it creates a longer and
thereby slower to scan receipt. Overall, it's a negative to me.

------
rhizome
Receipt designs from an employee of a company that does not create receipts, I
can't think of better evidence of boredom.

The most helpful receipt redesign is already here at Raley's: print on both
sides of the paper.

[https://www.raleys.com/news/raleys-register-receipts-go-
doub...](https://www.raleys.com/news/raleys-register-receipts-go-double-
sided/)

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hapidjus
Were I do most of my grocery shopping they send me the receipts to my email. I
guess you could make a third party service to better visualize them. Any
suggestions for other improvements or companies that already has great
receipts?

I know there are services that can connect to your bank and categorize your
purchases but it would be great to have a finer granularity. Perhaps you could
just forward all receipt emails.

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octocode
Adding these black bars and bubble charts makes the receipt three times longer
than it needs to be. Printing millions of these a year would be a huge waste
for something that hardly anyone would look at. The side-by-side picture in
this article has the "new" receipt cropped off at the bottom, showing only
_half_ of the things that were purchased on the same amount of paper. Add all
of the pricing information, addresses, etc. and that full receipt would be
insanely long.

Receipt paper is already an environmental nightmare. Let's not add more of it.

~~~
dugluak
I certainly don't want them on my CVS receipts.

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ErikAugust
I came for a QR code that scanned to some new open standard for receipts.
Instead, I am disappointed.

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krustyburger
I would love to see this design adopted by major retailers. If that were to
happen, could Ms. Lu receive any compensation for her contribution? I gather
that the profit motive was far from her mind but this idea could still turn
out to be a major contribution to commerce.

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blululu
This is great. We should use this. Listing items in order of cost alone is a
win. The bar plot is a nice touch. The category breakdown is also nice (minus
he bubble plot). I feel like this would help people budget and reduce waste.

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mfatica
This is a solution to a non-existent problem, and not even a good one.

~~~
zwieback
Disagree, I look at my grocery shopping receipt every time to look where I
spent more than expected and I love the look of this, would even pay a couple
pennies extra to have it.

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DanBC
This is brilliant, and I hope it gets taken up by some companies.

Sadly, I think some of them are going to look at total printing time, and
they're not going to accept longer print times.

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jeffchien
I like some of the concepts, but in general this just seems to take more paper
(and the side-by-side photo is mildly deceptive by not showing that).

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purplezooey
Would be nice if they also didn't print them with thermal transfer ink, which
is really bad for you when it gets on your hands (BPA).

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JohnFen
That's a really interesting idea. I have to admit, though, that I doubt it
would make the receipt any more useful to me.

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plantain
Why do receipts exist? Why aren't they emailed to the address attached to my
card?

~~~
JohnFen
> Why aren't they emailed to the address attached to my card?

I don't know how many people are like me, but no retailer has my email
address, and I don't use affinity cards.

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adamwong246
I sure wish there was an app, or banking service, that automatically collects
receipts.

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Hamuko
Where's the tax info? Has this designer ever met an accountant?

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Sevii
Square please send me an itemized email receipt.

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jheriko
this looks expensive.

a good design would be cheaper and make better use of the space - not waste it

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zwieback
I love it and want it!

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vbuwivbiu
are they BPA-free ?

