When going to the store, even if it is just to purchase a few items, you are often faced at the end of your shopping trip with a long, very long receipt.  Gone are the days of simple receipts with a barcode at the bottom, company logo at the top, and you items purchased in the middle.  Surveys, coupons, even company bios can be found causing your receipt to grow.

This is what a receipt should look like.

Whether this is a good choice for the company financially, well, I don’t know.  I do know that it is a hassle for consumers, most of which don’t even read their receipts.  However, I can crunch some numbers.

On Amazon.com, I can buy 50 85 ft rolls of receipt paper for $18.29, which is 4250 ft.  Now, if the average receipt length I print is two feet, then I can print 2150 receipts at a cost of .8¢ a piece.  If I print an average receipt length of 8 inches, then I can print 6381.38 receipts at a cost of .2¢ a piece.  Of course there are some variables that can be involved, but this is to be used a static comparison.  The averages are not a number from any sort of study, simply made up as a comparison.

That may not seem like much, but for a very large retailer, that is a lot of money per week spent on paper.  Which, of course, could be potential jobs.  Maybe not very many jobs, but still jobs none-the-less.

There is hope, however.  Apple, Inc. has been asking if you would like the receipt emailed to you instead of a paper one since 2005.  Many store are following suit.  Also, some stores are starting to reduce the length of their receipts.  Alas, the store that aren’t cutting back on receipt length, are still complaining of running out of paper and their printers breaking all the time.

Here is a bit I personally would like to see on my receipts; percentage of the total an item cost, so I can see where I am spending the most.  This wouldn’t require a longer receipt, just a little number in the white space next to the item price.