How to Read Your Wal-Mart Receipt When Using Coupons

At the left, we have my receipt from Wal-Mart on 7/30/11. I have highlighted some items mainly shampoo, body spray and dog treats. I then highlighted the correlating coupon for that item with the same color.

Let's start with the pink highlighted one, it's shampoo for $0.97. The coupon that goes with this item is also highlighted in pink. If you'll notice the numbers in the dead middle column are the bar code numbers. I underlined the first five numbers inside of the bar code; see graphic below.

                                                     
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The graphic to the left has no correlation what so ever to any of my purchases. I merely did a Google image search to find a bar code to explain the inside of the bar code, which I have highlighted in green.
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These 5 numbers on the inside of the bar code should match up to the first 5 numbers before the coupon's bar code. I believe they call this the family code.

You could match all of your coupons on your receipt to the items purchased if you wanted to make sure that the cashier at Wal-Mart (Target's really bad at this too!) scanned all of your coupons. Personally, I hand all of my coupons to the cashier individually at Wal-Mart & Target. This usually angers them but I have found these two stores untrustworthy when it comes to correctly scanning my coupons..

The same goes for all of the other highlighted parts of my receipt. If you have any questions, by all means comment below and I will try to answer them as efficiently as possible.

I am writing this blog post because another couponer wanted to try to match the coupons used on their receipt to the items purchased to make sure that the cashier scanned all of them. It's sad to say but Wal-Mart is notoriously shady when it comes to doing the right thing with coupons. So The Learning Road to Coupon Clipping & Saving this blog's for you!