Crowcery
Costco receipts are dense and full of house jargon: TPD lines with trailing minus signs, a row of asterisks announcing the Bottom of Basket, item numbers that are not barcodes, and tax flags that only appear on some items. Here is what each piece means on a Canadian Costco receipt.
A shortened mock-up of a real Nova Scotia Costco receipt (identifying details altered). Every block is explained below, and the math reconciles to the cent.
The first line after the warehouse header is your membership: a lane or sequence number, the word Member, and your 12-digit membership number. Every purchase is tied to it, which is why Costco can look up years of your purchases for returns without a receipt.
The 5-7 digit number starting each line is Costco's internal item number, the same one printed on the shelf price sign. It is not the product's UPC barcode, so it will not match anything in a barcode lookup app. Item numbers also get reused and reassigned over time (seasonal and roadshow items especially), so an old receipt's number may point at a different product today. KS in a name is Kirkland Signature, Costco's house brand. Asterisks around a name (like **KS BATH**) are a Costco convention often taken to mark an item that will not be restocked, though Costco does not officially document it.
A line like 2027971 TPD/597726 6.00- is an instant discount. The trailing minus sign marks it as money off, and the number after the slash points back at the item it discounts: TPD/597726 is $6.00 off item 597726 (the collagen just above). You paid $20.99 for that item, not $26.99. Sometimes the reference is a word instead of a number (TPD/SOCKS) when the discount covers a category. These are the same discounts flagged with an asterisk on the warehouse price signs; all of them also add up into the TOTAL DISCOUNT(S) line at the bottom.
The asterisk rows (Bottom of Basket, BOB Count N) are not about your items at all. They are the cashier's checklist marker for large items left on the bottom of the cart; the count is how many such items were rung up at that point. Ignore them when reading your purchases.
Like Walmart, Costco prints one line per unit: two identical CUCUMBERS lines are two packs of cucumbers, not a double-charge.
On Canadian Costco receipts the letter after a price is the tax class (this example is from Nova Scotia, where HST is 14%):
| Flag | What it means |
|---|---|
| H | Fully taxable: HST was charged. Sums to the HST line in the footer. |
| G | Only the 5% federal GST was charged (children's clothing, for example, in provinces with the point-of-sale rebate). Sums to the GST line. |
| (blank) | Zero-rated: no tax. Most basic groceries. |
The full decode, with the P HST / G GST footer reconciliation and the Quebec variant, is in the Costco tax codes guide.
You can check the math on the example: H items net of their TPDs are $23.99 + $26.99 - $6.00 + $6.99 = $51.97, and 14% of that is the $7.28 HST line. The G items net to $9.99, and 5% of that is the $0.50 GST line. Note the discounts reduced the tax too: tax is calculated on what you actually paid. The letters in front of the footer tax lines (P HST, G GST) are Costco's own group labels; go by the percentages.
TOTAL NUMBER OF ITEMS SOLD is what the door checker compares against your cart. On receipts we checked, it counts one per item line, and TPD discount lines do not count: 8 items above, even though 10 priced lines printed. The date on a Costco receipt is printed year first (2026/01/31) in the payment block and again in the footer, so it is unambiguous, unlike Walmart's month-first dates.
Available in Canada; English-language receipts; not offered in Quebec. Or try the read-only demo first, no signup needed.
How to read a Superstore or Loblaws receipt
How to read a Walmart Canada receipt
Grocery receipt discounts and promo math
Costco receipt tax codes (H, G)