A retail receipt is a record of sale; a document that proves the customer bought and paid for the purchased items.
The receipt is a very important document at the retail business, because it’s the proof that a transaction has been completed at the store and based on this subsequent actions could take place, such as delivery of items, exchange of items or returning the items and issuing a refund to the customer.
Without the original receipt, a customer cannot prove that they paid for the items.
It’s a best practice for store owners to setup their POS to only print one original sales receipt, which will be handed over to the customer at the time the transaction has completed. Any subsequent reprints for the same receipt should be labeled as “Duplicate” or “Copy”.
In case of exchange or refund, the original receipt should be taken from the customer and attached to the exchange/return receipt copy that is kept at the store.
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This is important to prevent any misuse of the receipt in issuing false refunds by store employees in the future. If this happens, it can be uncovered during a retail audit through the “Duplicate” labelling.
The best practice for a retail store receipt is to include the following information:
*In case of payment by cards, it is advised to include the credit card authorization code that the card machine generates on the retail receipt generated by the POS. This is to be able to link both transactions together, so the person doing banking on the next day will be able to reconcile all the card transactions with their corresponding POS transactions.
