Crowcery
Walmart receipts look simple, but they hide a few genuinely confusing habits: the same item printed three times in a row, a cryptic ST# OP# TE# TR# header, single tax letters that do not mean what you would guess, 12-digit codes that will not scan, and a purchase date that is nowhere labeled as a date. Here is the full decode.
A shortened mock-up of a real Walmart Canada receipt (identifying details altered). Every block is explained below, and the math reconciles to the cent.
| Field | Meaning |
|---|---|
| ST# | Store number (matches the STORE line above it). |
| OP# | Operator: the cashier's or self-checkout ID. |
| TE# | Terminal: which till or self-checkout machine. |
| TR# | Transaction number on that terminal. |
Together these four uniquely identify your purchase. If you ever deal with a return without the original card, this line is what customer service keys in.
Walmart does not use a quantity column for regular items. Buying two of something prints the line twice, identically: the two GERMN SALAM lines above are two salamis, not a printing error. Exceptions: identical-price produce can group as 6 AT 1 FOR $0.94 (six cucumbers), and weighed items print the scale math (0.755 kg @ $2.81 /kg) under the item name.
The single letter after each price is the item's tax class. Decoded from receipts we verified against the printed tax totals (Atlantic Canada; Walmart's letters can differ by province):
| Letter | What it means |
|---|---|
| D | Zero-rated basic groceries. No tax. |
| J | Fully taxable (HST here). Snacks, batteries, adult clothing, fees. |
| A | Also fully taxable; a second class Walmart lumps into the same HST line. |
| Z, Y | Children's clothing: only the 5% federal portion is charged. In NS, ON and PE the provincial part of the HST comes off at the till (a point-of-sale rebate), so kids' clothes are taxed at 5% while adult clothing pays the full rate. |
| G | GST only, 5%. |
| H | Careful: at Walmart, H is not the HST marker. On receipts we checked it appears on items like bottle deposits that do not feed the printed HST total. |
The full decode, including how one printed tax line covers several letters and the children's clothing rebate mechanics, is in the Walmart tax codes guide.
Check the example: the HST line is 14% of the J items ($34.98 + $2.28 + $14.97 + $0.40 = $52.63, and 14% of that is $7.37). The GST line is 5% of the Z item (the $5.00 kids' tee: $0.25). The D items were not taxed at all.
The long number on each line is derived from the product's UPC barcode, but on most lines Walmart prints the first 11 digits of the real UPC and then a literal 0 in place of the final check digit. So the printed number is usually one digit off from what is on the package, and typing it into a barcode lookup often finds nothing. Loose produce is different again: codes like 000000042350 are a 4-digit PLU code (4235) padded with zeros, not a UPC. And store-brand or clearance items can carry Walmart-internal numbers that exist in no public database.
Environmental handling fees print as their own line, like NS ECO FEE $0.40 J above (charged with the batteries). Note the J: on this receipt the eco fee itself was taxed. Bottle deposits also print as separate lines on receipts that have them.
There is no labeled date line. The purchase date and time appear as bare timestamps in the payment block near the bottom, like 04/11/26 14:59:14, and the order is month/day/year: that is April 11, 2026, not November 4. This US-style ordering trips people up on Canadian receipts, and there can be several timestamps within a few seconds of each other (one per card authorization step).
The format, spelled out: MM/DD/YY HH:MM:SS, two-digit year, 24-hour clock. Across the seven Walmart receipts in our sample with a readable timestamp (all Nova Scotia, 2023 to 2026), all seven use this order; two of them, 12/14/23 and 01/27/26, settle the question on their own because 14 and 27 cannot be months. Six print the date before the time; one older receipt prints the time first (12:20:22 04/11/23). Our receipts from other provinces are photos we have not transcribed, so we cannot say from our own sample whether the order is the same there, and we have not seen a four-digit year or a day-first date on any Walmart Canada receipt.
After the tenders (Walmart enumerates each one: gift card, then card, with CHANGE DUE last) come the card terminal codes, the store's GST/HST registration numbers, # ITEMS SOLD, and a long TC# number, which encodes the transaction for the barcode printed at the very bottom. A note on # ITEMS SOLD: how multi-quantity lines and fee lines are counted does not always match a naive count of the printed lines, so treat it as approximate.
TC# is the transaction code, printed in the footer just above the barcode. Our reading is that it is the human-readable form of that barcode: the number that identifies this one purchase, which is why it sits next to the code a scanner reads. On the two receipts in our sample where it is fully legible it is printed as five groups of four digits (TC# 4127 9053 6618 2280 7391, digits altered), and one of the two carries a single extra digit after the fifth group. It is not your card number, not the store number (that is ST#), and not the register (TE#) or the till sequence (TR#); those three are in the header, this one is in the footer. What Walmart accepts the number for (returns without the paper, online receipt lookup, warranty claims) we have not verified, so we do not claim it here.
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