Crowcery

Canadian grocery receipt guides

Crowcery reads grocery receipts from Canadian supermarkets. These are plain-English explanations of what is actually printed on Canadian grocery receipts, written from real receipts. No jargon left undecoded.

• Does your grocery receipt add up? How to check it in three steps
  Each line against your cart and the shelf price, the taxable base times your province's rate, then the totals, and what each kind of mismatch means.
• What a grocery receipt reveals about you
  Card tail, auth code, membership number, store, till, cashier and second, transaction id: what each field is and what to cover before posting a receipt photo.
• How to read a Dollarama receipt
  The H code, the full barcode printed on every line, what INCL. ECO means, and why most of a Dollarama basket is taxable.
• How to read a Sobeys receipt
  1C and C, department headers, the Scene+ block, and why a YOU SAVED line and a YOUR DISCOUNT line mean opposite things.
• Scene+ points on your Sobeys receipt, explained
  POINTS EARNED lines under items, Produce and Meat Department Offers, spend-and-get offers, and how Total Points Earned adds up.
• PC Optimum points on your receipt, explained
  The Pts offer lines above the subtotal, the Digital offers block, what 10,000 points is worth, and why your card is charged less than the total.
• How to read a Superstore or Loblaws receipt
  Department headers, quantity prefixes, Gross/Tare/Net weigh lines, deposits, member pricing and the footer date line.
• Grocery receipt abbreviations decoded (PC, NN, KS, GV, CHKN, BRST)
  What the short item names mean: store-brand prefixes, product abbreviations, the two-letter codes that are not brands, and why names are cut off mid-word.
• Which groceries are taxed in Canada, and why
  The six-or-more bakery rule, the 600 mL single-serving drink rule, the 25% fruit juice threshold, ice cream, salads and hot deli food, with the exact CRA thresholds.
• Shoppers Drug Mart & Giant Tiger receipt codes (GP and N)
  Why the G in GP does not mean GST, what the trailing S and the department number are, and three worked examples that reconcile to the cent.
• Receipt tax code letters explained, every chain (GP, MRJ, HMRJ, J, H, C)
  One lookup table for the letter after the price, chain by chain: GP and N, MRJ and HMRJ, J and D, 1C and C, T.
• Superstore & Loblaws tax codes explained (H, MRJ, HMRJ)
  What the letter clusters after each price mean, and how to check the HST math yourself.
• How to read a Walmart Canada receipt
  The ST#/OP#/TE#/TR# header, tax letters like D, J and Z, repeated item lines, and the month-first dates.
• Walmart Canada receipt tax codes explained (D, J, A, Z, Y, G, H)
  Why kids' clothing is taxed at 5%, why one tax line covers several letters, and why H is not the HST marker at Walmart.
• How to read a Costco receipt
  TPD discount lines, the Bottom of Basket banner, item numbers vs barcodes, and the item count door checkers verify.
• Costco receipt tax codes explained (H, G)
  Why most items carry no letter, and how the P HST and G GST footer lines reconcile against the flags.
• Grocery receipt discounts and deposit math explained
  Multi-buy deals, member pricing, YOU SAVED vs YOUR DISCOUNT, deposits and eco fees, plus a full receipt reconciled to the cent.
• Weighed items on grocery receipts (kg prices, Gross, Tare, Net)
  What Gross, Tare and Net mean, per-pound shelf tags vs per-kg receipts, MAN WT, and the rounding.
• Bottle deposits and eco fees by province
  Deposit and refund amounts across Canada, the half-back systems, and the fees that never come back.
• How long should you keep a grocery receipt?
  Days, the store's return window, the warranty period, or six years: which one applies depends on why you are keeping it. Plus why thermal paper fades first.
• The Scanning Code of Practice: wrong scanned price, free item
  When a scan error makes the item free or $10 off, the first-item-only rule, and Quebec's stronger $15 law.