What is this item on my receipt? How to decode grocery receipt abbreviations

Three lines from real Walmart receipts:

EDGE1Q 10W30
VF D GM 2000
GE REG JEAN

The first is motor oil; 10W30 is the viscosity grade. The third is almost certainly a pair of jeans. The middle one I can’t read from the name at all, and that’s the normal situation. The product name on a receipt is written by the store’s system, for the store’s system, in however many characters the register allows.

Most lines can still be identified. The quickest way usually isn’t the name.

Start with the number on the line

Some chains print a product number on every line, and it’s worth more than the name.

• Walmart prints a twelve-digit barcode number between the name and the price. Type it into the search box on Walmart’s website or app, or into a search engine, and the product usually comes up.
• Costco prints its own item number, five to seven digits, to the left of the name: 878209 SPRING MIX. Searching Costco’s site with that number is often enough.

Many chains print no number at all. Then you have the name, the price and the rest of the receipt.

How the names get squeezed

The abbreviations aren’t random. A few patterns cover most of them.

• Vowels go first. IMPR MARGRNE, from a Kroger receipt, is Imperial margarine. KRGD IR BTR, from Fred Meyer, is Kerrygold Irish butter. Read them out loud and most come back.
• Brands shrink to a prefix, store brands most of all. GV at the start of a Walmart line is Great Value, Walmart’s own brand.
• Qualifiers become three letters. ORG is organic, as in Safeway’s 3 QTY ORG CILANT: three organic cilantro.
• Size and pack count survive if they fit. A Walgreens line reads RED BULL ENRGY DRNK CNS 8.4OZ 6PK: the name is chopped, but the can size and the six-pack are both there.

When the name won’t give it up

1. The price. Look for something plausible at that price on the store’s website or app.
2. The neighbors. Safeway prints section headings down the receipt, GROCERY, PRODUCE, REFRIG/FROZEN, so a line you can’t read under REFRIG/FROZEN was at least cold. On most receipts, items appear in the order they were scanned, so what’s printed next to a line was probably next to it on the belt.
3. The store’s own purchase history. If the trip was linked to your account, through a loyalty card, the store’s app or a saved payment card, the app may list the item under its full name. Whether in-store purchases show up there depends on the chain and on how you paid.
4. The service desk. With the receipt in hand, they can look the line up.

The letter at the end isn’t part of the name

The single letter on the right of a line is almost always a tax code. On the Walmart receipts I’ve read it’s X, N or Y. Costco puts its tax letter on the right too; the E some Costco receipts print on the left is something else. Kroger marks a sale item with SC in the left margin and prints the saving on its own line underneath.

You’ll find lists online giving each letter an exact meaning. I haven’t found a retailer that publishes one, and the letters change by chain and by state, so treat those lists as other shoppers’ observations rather than a key.

Why it gets harder the second time

Decoding one receipt is a small puzzle. The real problem comes months later, when you want to buy that margarine again and the only record of it was IMPR MARGRNE on a receipt that went out with the recycling.

Two other things make it worse over time. Stores change how they print an item, so last spring’s receipts and this week’s stop looking like the same product. And two stores print the same product two different ways, so nothing on the paper tells you they’re the same thing.

CartEncore keeps every line exactly as the store printed it and, next to it, what it understood the line to be: a margarine, a butter, a motor oil. If it reads a line wrong, you can see that and correct it. It doesn’t decide that two stores’ lines are the same product unless there’s evidence they are, so they stay two items until there is. That’s what turns a pile of receipts into a purchase history you can search.

How each big US chain prints its receipts: itemized grocery receipts, chain by chain →
When the line is readable but the price looks wrong: how to check your receipt →