The bag is not your customer's accountant
Why is it that 95% of businesses will automatically put your receipt in your bag? Of the remaining 5%, 4% will ask you if you want it in the bag. The other 1% doesn’t even give you a receipt unless you specifically ask for one.
Honestly, this “receipt in the bag” mentality utterly burns me up. And I’ll tell you why. As a musician, I am a business. Every year at tax time, I file a T2032, a Statement of Professional Activities, with my income tax return. In case the Canada Revenue Agency wants to audit my return at some point, I have to hang on to all my receipts for a maximum of six years in order to back up the expense claims I make on that statement. And in order to simplify my reporting of those expenses, I have to keep detailed accounting records. If I allow a receipt to remain in the bag, then what if I inadvertently leave one such bag on the bus or something? There goes whatever proof that I bought whatever the bag contains. If the receipt in question happens to be partly for personal stuff and partly for stuff I bought for my business, then I can’t even break down what amounts go where.
When it comes time to compile the raw data from those receipts for the general journal, it does not make sense to me to pull out multiple receipts from multiple bags. Those bags are not a logical place to go looking for those receipts when the receipts can be placed in one central location to begin with--in my case, my wallet. Those bags are not going to do that accounting work for you--hence my axiom, “The bag is not my accountant.”
Now, I may not be making enough money to justify a ten-, twenty- or even thirty store shopping spree in a given day, but think about other people who do--the more stores a person shops at, the more receipts he’s going to have to dig out of bags. In today’s world, where people don’t seem to have a lot of time for certain things to begin with, does it make logistical sense for a business to ask the customer to take that additional time?
Some people need the receipts as tools to help them manage their household finances. One user maintains his banking records on Excel and reconciles those records to monthly budget spreadsheets. If the cashier puts his receipt in the bag, then “it falls out [of] the bag, or I forget it’s in there and it gets recycled along with the bag. It doesn’t get entered on my spreadsheet and then I end up thinking I have more money than I actually do.”
I’ve read that some people don’t want the receipt at all, but this isn’t a good attitude to have. A recent article called “Carelessness Can Cost You” quotes a recent survey as establishing that while Americans may be concerned about someone stealing their credit card, chequing account or debit card numbers, fully 28% of them are careless with receipts. Nearly 13% of those surveyed throw the receipt away without tearing it up or shredding it. Another 13% leave the receipt in the bag they got with the purchase. I would imagine the statistics to be similar for Canadians.
A Constant Chatter web site makes an excellent point: If you leave the receipt in the bag with the items, you increase the chance that a thief will pick up your bag when you’re not looking, and then go to the store himself and try to claim a refund. If you paid cash, you’re out of luck. The December 4, 2000 edition of the Saint Paul Pioneer Press of Saint Paul, Minnesota noted an example of this very kind of theft: in this case, the item stolen was a TV. If you paid via credit card, the thief would then know your credit card number, or most of it anyway, and sooner or later you would notice some charges on your credit card statement for stuff you didn’t purchase.
Nor can receipts be useful as just evidence you bought something and of how much it cost you. If someone accuses you of being somewhere at a certain time and you know you were shopping somewhere else at that time, you can pull out the receipt and present it as proof. If you don’t have that receipt, again you’re out of luck.
Bottom line is, you wouldn’t leave your ID in a shopping bag, would you? So why treat the receipt any differently? Why should store workers encourage their customers to treat the receipt any differently? Who are the store workers to assume they don’t have any self-employed people, household finance managers and so on among their customer base? A lot of the time they never know who among their customers is a business and who isn’t, or who manages their finances and who doesn’t. If you’re a store clerk, I feel it’s better to assume a person, particularly if he’s only an occasional visitor to your store, is a business unless you know for sure he isn’t.
This brings me to another thing I’m not crazy about when it comes to shopping. If I pay by debit card, 99% of the time I get a slip indicating the total amount that I spent, and I don’t get an itemized receipt unless I specifically ask for one. I shouldn’t have to ask--I should get both of them automatically. Again, what if, in the same transaction, I’m buying both personal stuff and stuff for my business? Or what if I’m buying things for my business that happen to fall into different expense categories on the T2032? Or what if I were eligible to claim GST rebates and the debit slip didn’t include the tax breakdowns? How can I then know what the breakdowns are if all I get is a debit slip and no itemized receipt? Or what if you’re one of two customers in line that are buying different combinations of things, and each combination happens to cost the same total amount? How can the store then tell the two transactions apart if their receipt summary system doesn’t show the specific items?
In business, there’s a saying: “The customer is always right.” This means that the customer has the right to draw the line when it comes to certain issues, and that it’s the business’ responsibility to make sure that line is not crossed. Having said that, I feel that business owners ought to learn what their customers want and always act in accordance with their wishes. I believe that to do otherwise demonstrates a lack of respect for the customer, not to mention poor customer service.
A satisfied customer is a repeat customer. Dissatisfied customers will not come back. And in the end, aren’t keeping customers and keeping the sales flowing what being in business is all about?
Honestly, this “receipt in the bag” mentality utterly burns me up. And I’ll tell you why. As a musician, I am a business. Every year at tax time, I file a T2032, a Statement of Professional Activities, with my income tax return. In case the Canada Revenue Agency wants to audit my return at some point, I have to hang on to all my receipts for a maximum of six years in order to back up the expense claims I make on that statement. And in order to simplify my reporting of those expenses, I have to keep detailed accounting records. If I allow a receipt to remain in the bag, then what if I inadvertently leave one such bag on the bus or something? There goes whatever proof that I bought whatever the bag contains. If the receipt in question happens to be partly for personal stuff and partly for stuff I bought for my business, then I can’t even break down what amounts go where.
When it comes time to compile the raw data from those receipts for the general journal, it does not make sense to me to pull out multiple receipts from multiple bags. Those bags are not a logical place to go looking for those receipts when the receipts can be placed in one central location to begin with--in my case, my wallet. Those bags are not going to do that accounting work for you--hence my axiom, “The bag is not my accountant.”
Now, I may not be making enough money to justify a ten-, twenty- or even thirty store shopping spree in a given day, but think about other people who do--the more stores a person shops at, the more receipts he’s going to have to dig out of bags. In today’s world, where people don’t seem to have a lot of time for certain things to begin with, does it make logistical sense for a business to ask the customer to take that additional time?
Some people need the receipts as tools to help them manage their household finances. One user maintains his banking records on Excel and reconciles those records to monthly budget spreadsheets. If the cashier puts his receipt in the bag, then “it falls out [of] the bag, or I forget it’s in there and it gets recycled along with the bag. It doesn’t get entered on my spreadsheet and then I end up thinking I have more money than I actually do.”
I’ve read that some people don’t want the receipt at all, but this isn’t a good attitude to have. A recent article called “Carelessness Can Cost You” quotes a recent survey as establishing that while Americans may be concerned about someone stealing their credit card, chequing account or debit card numbers, fully 28% of them are careless with receipts. Nearly 13% of those surveyed throw the receipt away without tearing it up or shredding it. Another 13% leave the receipt in the bag they got with the purchase. I would imagine the statistics to be similar for Canadians.
A Constant Chatter web site makes an excellent point: If you leave the receipt in the bag with the items, you increase the chance that a thief will pick up your bag when you’re not looking, and then go to the store himself and try to claim a refund. If you paid cash, you’re out of luck. The December 4, 2000 edition of the Saint Paul Pioneer Press of Saint Paul, Minnesota noted an example of this very kind of theft: in this case, the item stolen was a TV. If you paid via credit card, the thief would then know your credit card number, or most of it anyway, and sooner or later you would notice some charges on your credit card statement for stuff you didn’t purchase.
Nor can receipts be useful as just evidence you bought something and of how much it cost you. If someone accuses you of being somewhere at a certain time and you know you were shopping somewhere else at that time, you can pull out the receipt and present it as proof. If you don’t have that receipt, again you’re out of luck.
Bottom line is, you wouldn’t leave your ID in a shopping bag, would you? So why treat the receipt any differently? Why should store workers encourage their customers to treat the receipt any differently? Who are the store workers to assume they don’t have any self-employed people, household finance managers and so on among their customer base? A lot of the time they never know who among their customers is a business and who isn’t, or who manages their finances and who doesn’t. If you’re a store clerk, I feel it’s better to assume a person, particularly if he’s only an occasional visitor to your store, is a business unless you know for sure he isn’t.
This brings me to another thing I’m not crazy about when it comes to shopping. If I pay by debit card, 99% of the time I get a slip indicating the total amount that I spent, and I don’t get an itemized receipt unless I specifically ask for one. I shouldn’t have to ask--I should get both of them automatically. Again, what if, in the same transaction, I’m buying both personal stuff and stuff for my business? Or what if I’m buying things for my business that happen to fall into different expense categories on the T2032? Or what if I were eligible to claim GST rebates and the debit slip didn’t include the tax breakdowns? How can I then know what the breakdowns are if all I get is a debit slip and no itemized receipt? Or what if you’re one of two customers in line that are buying different combinations of things, and each combination happens to cost the same total amount? How can the store then tell the two transactions apart if their receipt summary system doesn’t show the specific items?
In business, there’s a saying: “The customer is always right.” This means that the customer has the right to draw the line when it comes to certain issues, and that it’s the business’ responsibility to make sure that line is not crossed. Having said that, I feel that business owners ought to learn what their customers want and always act in accordance with their wishes. I believe that to do otherwise demonstrates a lack of respect for the customer, not to mention poor customer service.
A satisfied customer is a repeat customer. Dissatisfied customers will not come back. And in the end, aren’t keeping customers and keeping the sales flowing what being in business is all about?
posted by Jamie at 12:10 AM
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