Itemized receipt
A receipt that lists every item bought, with its price and the tax charged, rather than only a total.
In short
- Card slips and bank statements show a total. They do not show what was bought.
- Expense policies often need line detail, for example to exclude alcohol or check a meal limit.
- Line detail also shows which items were taxed and at what rate.
An itemized receipt breaks a purchase down line by line: each product or service, the quantity, the unit price, any discount, the sales taxes and the total. It is the difference between knowing someone spent $140 at a restaurant and knowing it was three lunches, two coffees and a bottle of wine.
Why finance teams ask for it
Many expense policies reimburse some items and not others. Alcohol is the common case, but there are others: personal items on a hotel folio, a seat upgrade on a flight, a gift card bought on a corporate card. Without an itemized receipt, the approver either rejects the claim or approves spending they cannot see.
Card terminal slips, bank statements and card feeds all fall short. They prove a payment happened and for how much, but not what it paid for.
Tax detail
Mixed baskets are common. At a grocery store, basic groceries are zero-rated for GST/HST while snacks and household items are taxed. The itemized receipt shows which lines carried tax, which is what an accountant needs to claim the right input tax credit rather than guessing from the total.
How to get an itemized receipt
Ask at the time of purchase. Most point-of-sale systems can print or email one, and a restaurant will print the detailed bill on request instead of only the card slip. Online orders show the line items in the confirmation email and in the order history of your account. For a hotel stay, the itemized receipt is the folio, which the front desk can email at checkout.
Worked example
Splitting out the wine
A sales rep submits a $168.00 dinner receipt. Itemized, it shows $112.00 of food, a $38.00 bottle of wine and $18.00 of tax at 12%. Company policy excludes alcohol. The approver reimburses the food and its share of the tax, $125.44, and the rest is treated as personal. With only the card slip, that split would have been guesswork.