16 ms·

The humble receipt gets a redesign

207 points by colinprince 8y ago

hapidjus 8y ago
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.
thiscatis 8y ago
I rather have them digitally. Also, can we leave it with the "just did x" titles.
- smn1234 8y ago
  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 8y ago
    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.
  - mynameisvlad 8y ago
    You open up your email/website/app/whathaveyou and check there? That's far from the most insurmountable problem of digital receipts.
- EamonnMR 8y ago
  "A foo just bar" appears to be a fully acceptable title template. And sticking "now" in the previous sentence would make acceptable title too!
- MaxBarraclough 8y ago
  > can we leave it with the "just did x" titles Agree. It's a writing anti-pattern with clickbait origins.
- niteshade 8y ago
  Myself and a group of friends have been working on a email receipt parsing framework: https://github.com/openreceipt/source https://github.com/openreceipt/source Ideas, feedback and criticism is always appreciated!
joezydeco 8y ago
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.
- Panini_Jones 8y ago
  I'm actually not certain what behavior it's meant to incentivize in the 'useful' case.
  - busterarm 8y ago
    As someone who worked as a supermarket cashier while in high school, having items come up on the receipt in the same order that you scanned them is incredibly necessary when sorting out customer issues. Between that and changes in perception about spending, I'm certain that supermarkets would not want this. It's too pro-consumer for their bottom-line.
- arkades 8y ago
  > 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 8y ago
    No, just an outlier example. A way to show that graphing things like this would make Tufte's teeth grind.
- pwinnski 8y ago
  It seems that the wine(s) would be grouped together and the cheeses would be grouped together, possible with the veggies and possibly not. So the price disparity between a $100 bottle of wine and a $13 bottle of wine would be apparent, but it wouldn't affect the relative bars for the cheese or veggies.
- retSava 8y ago
Theodores 8y ago
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.
noer 8y ago
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.
sametmax 8y ago
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 8y ago
  You'd like to mandate that all stores keep a permanent record of every purchase ever made?
  - mynameisvlad 8y ago
    > (or gzipped json of it) Parent comment already covered that case. If the content is included in the code, it doesn't need to be stored anywhere. Nobody said permanent, either. It'd be reasonable that the data expires after a certain amount of time. Preferable, even, for limiting exposure in the event of a breach. Additionally, while I don't think this is the case for grocery stores, most stores do actually keep a record of every purchase made. The data and aggregated analytics on said data is huge, and it allows for things like faster returns and personalized coupons/recommendations.
  - anoncake 8y ago
    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.
    - fwip 8y ago
      That sounds solid, thanks for the detailed breakdown.
    - 8y ago
dugluak 8y ago
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.
mfatica 8y ago
This is a solution to a non-existent problem, and not even a good one.
- zwieback 8y ago
  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.
dugluak 8y ago
The only utility of a receipt for me is just so that I can make returns. Otherwise I simply trash them.
brucetribbensee 8y ago
But don't touch the paper! https://www.plasticpollutioncoalition.org/pft/2016/12/23/is-bpa-on-thermal-paper-a-health-hazard https://www.plasticpollutioncoalition.org/pft/2016/12/23/is-...
MatekCopatek 8y ago
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 8y ago
  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 8y ago
    For what it is worth, Føtex, one of the largest supermarket chains in Denmark prints the receipt with the items ordered in categories.
blululu 8y ago
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.
djmobley 8y ago
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 8y ago
  Thermal paper does not use ink, nothing would be wasted even if printing 100% black.
  - NeonVice 8y ago
    A waste of ink, no, but somewhat a waste of thermal paper.
    - post_break 8y ago
      If we're going to talk about wasting thermal paper CVS should be the company we're going after.
  - magduf 8y ago
    Actually, it would waste something: electricity. Thermal printers use power to heat the paper up, which makes it turn black. A receipt with more black printing on it takes more power to print. Not all receipt printers are thermal, however: a lot are thermal-transfer, that uses heat to transfer ink from a film to the paper. That stuff looks much better, and lasts much longer than the crappy thermal-printed receipts.
octocode 8y ago
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 8y ago
  I certainly don't want them on my CVS receipts.
robohamburger 8y ago
A QR code or something similar I could scan and get the receipt in csv would fix receipts for me.
- Nerada 8y ago
  Exactly what I want out of a receipt. Exactly. Just a QR code that translates to a csv of items and their costs.
neogodless 8y ago
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 8y ago
  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.
  - TAForObvReasons 8y ago
    More importantly, it doesn't solve the larger problem of "where did my money go?" since that usually is asked over a timeframe of more than one shopping trip. The question is usually "How did I spend $100 more this month on groceries than i budgeted?" and the only way to answer that is analyze all of the spend together
  - x2f10 8y ago
    >The print volume matters. Yes. There are some good ideas here that would be nice in practice. I like the categories and the fact items within that category are organized by price. However, IMHO, the bar chart and bubble charts are useless. These will only add to the cost, time, and confusion. Heck, most here don't even understand it. Where is the cost per lb information (for the meat)? That's useful.
ortusdux 8y ago
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 8y ago
  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.
Doubl 8y ago
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 8y ago
  there are other papers from as recent as the early 1990s which were used for receipts, in the US anyway, which also fade.
barking 8y ago
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 8y ago
  Anywhere, and in one of a dozen formats.
stedaniels 8y ago
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 8y ago
  Irradiate?
  - bloopernova 8y ago
    eradicate
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- m-app 8y ago
  This is something that seems long overdue, so hopefully it takes off. Interestingly, the domain is leading me to think on how we have reached a next phase in domain names, where you can not have $product.com anymore, but now need $verb$product.com. Of course what made this click for me is a domain I visit first whenever I (re)install a host: getflux.com
adamwong246 8y ago
I sure wish there was an app, or banking service, that automatically collects receipts.
krustyburger 8y ago
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.
myth_buster 8y ago
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).
- throwaway55554 8y ago
  I would love to provide an email address and have the receipt sent to me in a machine readable format. It would allow me to automate tracking how much I spend on each item at the grocery store, for example.
  - ljm 8y ago
    Apple do this and I’ve shopped at some other places that also do it. I don’t care about a printed receipt. Find a way for me to have proof of purchase without.
    - m-p-3 8y ago
      And the thermal paper used will fade out after a while, which can be a problem when you need it for warranty purposes. I scan the important ones, but it would be easy to have it already in electronic form at the point of sale.
  - xrd 8y ago
    This guy made it for New Seasons, a local high end supermarket. https://github.com/dtbrad/grocer https://github.com/dtbrad/grocer You can get them to email receipts.
- failrate 8y ago
  Paper, sure, but this is thermal paper, so no ink is used. You could arfue that the chemical coating on the paper is equivalent in resource cost to ink.
gumby 8y ago
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 8y ago
  The company interest is also to give customers value
  - firethief 8y ago
    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 8y ago
      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 8y ago
        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.
vbuwivbiu 8y ago
are they BPA-free ?
jeffchien 8y ago
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).
guelo 8y ago
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 8y ago
  So you're that person. I love it. keep it up.
- Alex3917 8y ago
  FWIW it's already been banned in Connecticut.
- scandox 8y ago
  I was hoping it some means of stopping issuing paper at all
- dractori 8y ago
  TIL: https://www.pca.state.mn.us/green-chemistry/bpa-thermal-paper https://www.pca.state.mn.us/green-chemistry/bpa-thermal-pape...
- susiecambria 8y ago
  I so agree about the topic. And while I do touch the receipts, though less and less the more I think about it, I am spending more time telling people they shouldn't touch it AND that it can't be recycled. The latter is always a big surprise. (Thanks to a witness at a public hearing on DC's Department of Energy and the Environment for raising this; it's the only thing I remember from the hearing!)
Sevii 8y ago
Square please send me an itemized email receipt.
DanBC 8y ago
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.
the_arun 8y ago
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.
- erdo 8y ago
  I really like this idea, a small QR code would save a lot of paper, _and_ avoid the requirement that I give the store my email address for an electronic receipt.
- niteshade 8y ago
  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/shops-sign-up-e-receipts-proof-of-purchase https://www.theguardian.com/travel/shortcuts/2016/oct/16/sho...
m463 8y ago
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"
- metaphor 8y ago
  Your assertion doesn't even make 1st base by simply considering cashier = owner, as is the case of many small businesses; it conflates one possible usecase as the only valid usecase.
  - m463 8y ago
    Receipts favor the business. Even returns help the business. Receipts may also be required by law (which still supports "the receipt is not for the customer")
    - metaphor 8y ago
      Issuing receipts is part of the cost of doing business which requires investments in infrastruture, maintenance, records keeping and reporting. They're a direct liability traceable to and accountable by the business noted. Furthermore, a business that accepts returns is the cost paid to increase customer confidence; it's called risk mitigation. Any return accepted is revenue rescinded and indirect cost incurred by the business to restock with the aim of winning future conversion. A business issuing receipts as required by law is a consumer protection mechanism; a business retaining its receipts is for tax compliance.
- JohnFen 8y ago
  > 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".
vitiell0 8y ago
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
- kevinsundar 8y ago
  Just wanna say I just signed up and the concept is incredible. Looking forward to trying it out. I've been looking for an app like this for awhile.
weberc2 8y ago
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.
rhizome 8y ago
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-double-sided/ https://www.raleys.com/news/raleys-register-receipts-go-doub...
zwieback 8y ago
I love it and want it!
rchaud 8y ago
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 8y ago
  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 8y ago
    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.
sccxy 8y ago
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.
JohnFen 8y ago
That's a really interesting idea. I have to admit, though, that I doubt it would make the receipt any more useful to me.
psukhedelos 8y ago
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.
- lqet 8y ago
  > Is there any argument to be made for the bank not having access to the individual purchases (e.g. privacy concerns, too much data)? 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?
- JohnFen 8y ago
  > 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 8y ago
    Why not?
    - 8y ago
Hamuko 8y ago
Where's the tax info? Has this designer ever met an accountant?
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
philpowell 8y ago
Test
ErikAugust 8y ago
I came for a QR code that scanned to some new open standard for receipts. Instead, I am disappointed.
philpowell 8y ago
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.
plantain 8y ago
Why do receipts exist? Why aren't they emailed to the address attached to my card?
- danielecook 8y ago
  Yes! For small transactions less than $20 they are meaningless. I wish there was a mechanism where you had to request a receipt if it was below a threshold like $20
- JohnFen 8y ago
  > 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.
dragonwriter 8y ago
The visualizations aren't particularly useful, and it creates a longer and thereby slower to scan receipt. Overall, it's a negative to me.
jheriko 8y ago
this looks expensive. a good design would be cheaper and make better use of the space - not waste it
cyberferret 8y ago
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.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
purplezooey 8y ago
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).

207 points by colinprince 8y ago

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.

thiscatis 8y ago

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

smn1234 8y ago
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 8y ago
  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.
- mynameisvlad 8y ago
  You open up your email/website/app/whathaveyou and check there? That's far from the most insurmountable problem of digital receipts.
EamonnMR 8y ago
"A foo just bar" appears to be a fully acceptable title template. And sticking "now" in the previous sentence would make acceptable title too!
MaxBarraclough 8y ago
> can we leave it with the "just did x" titles Agree. It's a writing anti-pattern with clickbait origins.
niteshade 8y ago
Myself and a group of friends have been working on a email receipt parsing framework: https://github.com/openreceipt/source https://github.com/openreceipt/source Ideas, feedback and criticism is always appreciated!

joezydeco 8y ago

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.

Panini_Jones 8y ago
I'm actually not certain what behavior it's meant to incentivize in the 'useful' case.
- busterarm 8y ago
  As someone who worked as a supermarket cashier while in high school, having items come up on the receipt in the same order that you scanned them is incredibly necessary when sorting out customer issues. Between that and changes in perception about spending, I'm certain that supermarkets would not want this. It's too pro-consumer for their bottom-line.
arkades 8y ago
> 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 8y ago
  No, just an outlier example. A way to show that graphing things like this would make Tufte's teeth grind.
pwinnski 8y ago
It seems that the wine(s) would be grouped together and the cheeses would be grouped together, possible with the veggies and possibly not. So the price disparity between a $100 bottle of wine and a $13 bottle of wine would be apparent, but it wouldn't affect the relative bars for the cheese or veggies.
retSava 8y ago

Theodores 8y ago

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.

noer 8y ago

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.

sametmax 8y ago

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 8y ago
You'd like to mandate that all stores keep a permanent record of every purchase ever made?
- mynameisvlad 8y ago
  > (or gzipped json of it) Parent comment already covered that case. If the content is included in the code, it doesn't need to be stored anywhere. Nobody said permanent, either. It'd be reasonable that the data expires after a certain amount of time. Preferable, even, for limiting exposure in the event of a breach. Additionally, while I don't think this is the case for grocery stores, most stores do actually keep a record of every purchase made. The data and aggregated analytics on said data is huge, and it allows for things like faster returns and personalized coupons/recommendations.
- anoncake 8y ago
  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.
  - fwip 8y ago
    That sounds solid, thanks for the detailed breakdown.
  - 8y ago

dugluak 8y ago

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.

mfatica 8y ago

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

zwieback 8y ago
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.

dugluak 8y ago

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

brucetribbensee 8y ago

But don't touch the paper! https://www.plasticpollutioncoalition.org/pft/2016/12/23/is-bpa-on-thermal-paper-a-health-hazard https://www.plasticpollutioncoalition.org/pft/2016/12/23/is-...

MatekCopatek 8y ago

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 8y ago
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 8y ago
  For what it is worth, Føtex, one of the largest supermarket chains in Denmark prints the receipt with the items ordered in categories.

blululu 8y ago

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.

djmobley 8y ago

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 8y ago
Thermal paper does not use ink, nothing would be wasted even if printing 100% black.
- NeonVice 8y ago
  A waste of ink, no, but somewhat a waste of thermal paper.
  - post_break 8y ago
    If we're going to talk about wasting thermal paper CVS should be the company we're going after.
- magduf 8y ago
  Actually, it would waste something: electricity. Thermal printers use power to heat the paper up, which makes it turn black. A receipt with more black printing on it takes more power to print. Not all receipt printers are thermal, however: a lot are thermal-transfer, that uses heat to transfer ink from a film to the paper. That stuff looks much better, and lasts much longer than the crappy thermal-printed receipts.

octocode 8y ago

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 8y ago
I certainly don't want them on my CVS receipts.

robohamburger 8y ago

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

Nerada 8y ago
Exactly what I want out of a receipt. Exactly. Just a QR code that translates to a csv of items and their costs.

neogodless 8y ago

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 8y ago
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.
- TAForObvReasons 8y ago
  More importantly, it doesn't solve the larger problem of "where did my money go?" since that usually is asked over a timeframe of more than one shopping trip. The question is usually "How did I spend $100 more this month on groceries than i budgeted?" and the only way to answer that is analyze all of the spend together
- x2f10 8y ago
  >The print volume matters. Yes. There are some good ideas here that would be nice in practice. I like the categories and the fact items within that category are organized by price. However, IMHO, the bar chart and bubble charts are useless. These will only add to the cost, time, and confusion. Heck, most here don't even understand it. Where is the cost per lb information (for the meat)? That's useful.

ortusdux 8y ago

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 8y ago
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.

Doubl 8y ago

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 8y ago
there are other papers from as recent as the early 1990s which were used for receipts, in the US anyway, which also fade.

barking 8y ago

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 8y ago
Anywhere, and in one of a dozen formats.

stedaniels 8y ago

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 8y ago
Irradiate?
- bloopernova 8y ago
  eradicate
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
m-app 8y ago
This is something that seems long overdue, so hopefully it takes off. Interestingly, the domain is leading me to think on how we have reached a next phase in domain names, where you can not have $product.com anymore, but now need $verb$product.com. Of course what made this click for me is a domain I visit first whenever I (re)install a host: getflux.com

adamwong246 8y ago

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

krustyburger 8y ago

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.

myth_buster 8y ago

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).

throwaway55554 8y ago
I would love to provide an email address and have the receipt sent to me in a machine readable format. It would allow me to automate tracking how much I spend on each item at the grocery store, for example.
- ljm 8y ago
  Apple do this and I’ve shopped at some other places that also do it. I don’t care about a printed receipt. Find a way for me to have proof of purchase without.
  - m-p-3 8y ago
    And the thermal paper used will fade out after a while, which can be a problem when you need it for warranty purposes. I scan the important ones, but it would be easy to have it already in electronic form at the point of sale.
- xrd 8y ago
  This guy made it for New Seasons, a local high end supermarket. https://github.com/dtbrad/grocer https://github.com/dtbrad/grocer You can get them to email receipts.
failrate 8y ago
Paper, sure, but this is thermal paper, so no ink is used. You could arfue that the chemical coating on the paper is equivalent in resource cost to ink.

gumby 8y ago

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 8y ago
The company interest is also to give customers value
- firethief 8y ago
  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 8y ago
    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 8y ago
      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.

vbuwivbiu 8y ago

are they BPA-free ?

jeffchien 8y ago

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).

guelo 8y ago

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 8y ago
So you're that person. I love it. keep it up.
Alex3917 8y ago
FWIW it's already been banned in Connecticut.
scandox 8y ago
I was hoping it some means of stopping issuing paper at all
dractori 8y ago
TIL: https://www.pca.state.mn.us/green-chemistry/bpa-thermal-paper https://www.pca.state.mn.us/green-chemistry/bpa-thermal-pape...
susiecambria 8y ago
I so agree about the topic. And while I do touch the receipts, though less and less the more I think about it, I am spending more time telling people they shouldn't touch it AND that it can't be recycled. The latter is always a big surprise. (Thanks to a witness at a public hearing on DC's Department of Energy and the Environment for raising this; it's the only thing I remember from the hearing!)

Sevii 8y ago

Square please send me an itemized email receipt.

DanBC 8y ago

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.

the_arun 8y ago

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.

erdo 8y ago
I really like this idea, a small QR code would save a lot of paper, _and_ avoid the requirement that I give the store my email address for an electronic receipt.
niteshade 8y ago
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/shops-sign-up-e-receipts-proof-of-purchase https://www.theguardian.com/travel/shortcuts/2016/oct/16/sho...

m463 8y ago

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"

metaphor 8y ago
Your assertion doesn't even make 1st base by simply considering cashier = owner, as is the case of many small businesses; it conflates one possible usecase as the only valid usecase.
- m463 8y ago
  Receipts favor the business. Even returns help the business. Receipts may also be required by law (which still supports "the receipt is not for the customer")
  - metaphor 8y ago
    Issuing receipts is part of the cost of doing business which requires investments in infrastruture, maintenance, records keeping and reporting. They're a direct liability traceable to and accountable by the business noted. Furthermore, a business that accepts returns is the cost paid to increase customer confidence; it's called risk mitigation. Any return accepted is revenue rescinded and indirect cost incurred by the business to restock with the aim of winning future conversion. A business issuing receipts as required by law is a consumer protection mechanism; a business retaining its receipts is for tax compliance.
JohnFen 8y ago
> 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".

vitiell0 8y ago

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

kevinsundar 8y ago
Just wanna say I just signed up and the concept is incredible. Looking forward to trying it out. I've been looking for an app like this for awhile.

weberc2 8y ago

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.

rhizome 8y ago

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-double-sided/ https://www.raleys.com/news/raleys-register-receipts-go-doub...

zwieback 8y ago

I love it and want it!

rchaud 8y ago

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 8y ago
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 8y ago
  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.

sccxy 8y ago

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.

JohnFen 8y ago

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

psukhedelos 8y ago

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.

lqet 8y ago
> Is there any argument to be made for the bank not having access to the individual purchases (e.g. privacy concerns, too much data)? 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?
JohnFen 8y ago
> 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 8y ago
  Why not?
  - 8y ago

Hamuko 8y ago

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

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

philpowell 8y ago

Test

ErikAugust 8y ago

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

philpowell 8y ago

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.

plantain 8y ago

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

danielecook 8y ago
Yes! For small transactions less than $20 they are meaningless. I wish there was a mechanism where you had to request a receipt if it was below a threshold like $20
JohnFen 8y ago
> 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.

dragonwriter 8y ago

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

jheriko 8y ago

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

cyberferret 8y ago

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.

deleted 8y ago

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purplezooey 8y ago

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).