Print Online Receipts to PDF

by Jason Faulkner on May 13, 2007 | 2 comments

Whenever you purchase something online, you pretty much always get a “print this page for your records” type page. While it is always good to have a record of your order, 99% of the time if you print the page it is worthless. Instead consider printing the page to a PDF and then deleting it when it is no longer needed.

If you don’t have software capable of printing to PDF, just download PDFCreator (it’s free) and you will instantly have the capability. This way you can save a tree and if you ever do need the confirmation record, it is conveniently stored on your computer.

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Bill Bright
I am really confused by this tip. You say, “99% of the time if you print the page it is worthless.” Huh? I buy on-line all the time, purchasing from various vendors several times a week. I would have to say that 99.9% of the time, I get a print out with the date, time, transaction number, part numbers, quantities, total order costs, phone numbers, etc. Works for me. My wife orders different products from different vendors nearly as much as I do and she gets good printouts.
I just asked several co-workers, got one comment about the the printouts being pretty plain looking, but not “worthless” by any means.
What are you calling “worthless”? I would suggest you have something wrong or outdated with your computer or print set up.
-bb
http://132solutions.com jfaulkner
Bill,
Any respectable online retailer keeps an online history, which you can search, of any order you have placed with them. Additionally, you, typically receive an email receipt and a packing slip (on tangible items) with your order. Because of this, I don’t see any case where you would need a confirmation number unless something doesn’t properly go through. So there is value in having it (hence print to a temporary PDF), but 99% of the time you never look at it again.
Personally, I can’t think of the last time I ever looked at a “confirmation receipt” as I just archive the email receipt. Obviously, this isn’t the case for you, so you should simply ignore this tip.