Crowcery
Real Canadian Superstore, Loblaws, No Frills, Zehrs, Valu-mart and Atlantic Superstore all print the same receipt format. It packs a lot into narrow paper: department headers, barcodes, quantity prefixes, weigh lines with tare deductions, deposits and member-pricing discounts. Here is what every block means, top to bottom.
This is a shortened mock-up of a real Atlantic Superstore receipt (identifying details altered). Every block on it is explained below, and the math reconciles to the cent.
Lines like 21-GROCERY, 27-PRODUCE or 35-DELI are not items. They are department section headers: everything printed below one belongs to that department until the next header appears. The number is the store's internal department code. Handy when you are hunting for one item on a long receipt: jump to its department first.
A normal item line has four parts:
| Part | Example | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| Barcode | 06038302830 | The product's barcode as scanned. Loose produce shows a short 4-5 digit PLU code instead (4017 is Granny Smith apples everywhere in North America). |
| Name | PC YUZU H LEMON | An abbreviated product name. PC is President's Choice, NN is No Name. The name is cut to fit the paper, so vowels often disappear. |
| Tax flags | HMRJ | A letter cluster. Only the H matters to your wallet: it means sales tax was charged. The full decode is in our tax codes guide. |
| Price | 2.50 | The line total (not the unit price, if more than one unit rang in). |
A parenthesised number prefix means several units rang in on one line. The line's price is the total for all of them, and a qualifier row underneath shows the per-unit math:
Two lemonades at $2.50 each, $5.00 on the line. Deposits group the same way: 2@$0.10 under a DEPOSIT line is two ten-cent bottle deposits.
Anything sold by weight prints the scale math. The simple form is one qualifier row, weight times price per kilogram:
Self-serve items where a container is involved print the long form, and this is the one that confuses people:
Gross is what the scale saw, Tare is the weight of the packaging (deducted, so you do not pay for the container), and Net is what you actually pay for: 1.040 kg at $15.41/kg is $16.03. If you ever see MAN WT on one of these rows, the cashier typed the weight in manually instead of using the scale.
A DEPOSIT line under a drink is the refundable container deposit, charged per bottle or can and grouped when the item line covered several units. On this receipt the deposits carry no H flag, so no sales tax was charged on them. Depending on your province you get some or all of it back when you return the container: see bottle deposits and eco fees by province.
A negative line under an item is a discount on that item. MEMBER PRICING is the PC Optimum member price: the item rang in at the shelf price ($4.99 for the glazed sesame bun above) and the member discount came off as its own -$1.49 line. Multi-buy promos print an annotation like $4.99 ea or 2/$8.00 KB instead. The full walkthrough of discount math, deposits included, is in our discounts and promo math guide.
SUBTOTAL is every item line plus deposits, minus discounts. The tax line shows its own math: H=HST 14% 7.50 @ 14.000% 1.05 means the H-flagged items added up to $7.50 and 14% of that is $1.05 (this example is from Nova Scotia; your province's rate and tax lines will differ). TOTAL is subtotal plus tax. Note the tax base ($7.50) is much smaller than the subtotal: most basic groceries are not taxed in Canada.
After the total comes the card terminal's record: tender type (Account: MASTERCARD), the masked card number (only the last digits are printed), an authorization number, and EMV technical codes you can ignore. One warning: the DateTime line inside this block is the payment terminal's own clock, printed as year/month/day with a two-digit year, and it can be minutes or more off.
The last dense line on the receipt is the authoritative transaction record:
Read it as: date (year/month/day), cashier's first name, store number, lane number, transaction number, time. If you ever need the exact purchase for a return or a price match, this line identifies it. PC Optimum points earned and redeemed print just above, as their own block.
Available in Canada; English-language receipts; not offered in Quebec. Or try the read-only demo first, no signup needed.
Superstore & Loblaws tax codes (H, MRJ, HMRJ)
How to read a Walmart Canada receipt
How to read a Costco receipt
Grocery receipt discounts and promo math