Receipts are in our everyday lives. Most of them are thrown, some of them are stored. Some others are being used for tax declaration. While the usage of receipts can be various, they are of little use if you can not understand what is on the receipt in the first place. Greek receipts can be hard to understand, that’s why in this blog we will explain to you how to read and understand a receipt from Greece.
Legal background of Greek receipts
The legal authority of Greece (Εφορία/ Eforia) is responsible for making sure that every company complies to the law. Part of that is keeping their books and making sure there is a receipt for every transaction. Companies are more than often contain the same information in their receipts. Thus, information such as VAT Registration number, Tax Office, Date, etc is more than common to appear on the receipt. All of those details are relevant to the transaction and are essential if one wants to declare a VAT-Refund, for example. In some cases, the receipts can also contain information which is not relevant to the transaction.In that case, Greek receipts usually note what the start and the end of the official receipt is.
Below we have listed the Greek words that you should look for in a Greek receipt and their English translation, just so to make it easier for you. We also included a visual presentation of an average receipt to make it more simple for you to understand one.
- The first line always refers to “Start of the Receipt” – ‘ΦΟΡΟΛΟΓΙΚΗ ΑΠΟΔΕΙΞΗ ΕΝΑΡΞΗ’
- Next is the name of the Merchant and/or the chain they belong to. There is not a common word to help you identify that those words mean Merchant. So, you should be able to recognize the Merchant name only by the 2nd line of the receipt.
- Next up in the receipt is the location where the transaction is being recorded.
- The line right after, with the word ‘ΑΦΜ and ΔΟΥ’, refers to the VAT Registration Number and Tax Office respectively.
- Furthermore, there is a line with date and time, sometimes containing the words ‘Ημερομηνία’ and ‘Ωρα’. These words are most of the time used in abbreviations or moreover, they are not even mentioned. Therefore, be nuanced when you are searching for them.
- In big stores/services centers there might be a case that there is more than one cashier. In such an occasion, almost every time after the date and time you can see the word ‘Μηχανή’ among with a number, which refers to the cashier that held the transaction.
- Inside the lines made out of dots, you will find the line items that were purchased. Among with each individual value, you will find the specific VAT which was applied.
- ‘Συνολο’ refers to the total amount of the receipt.
- ‘Μετρητα’ is referring to the amount of money that the purchaser gave to the cashier.
- Next is ‘Ρεστα – Ευρο Μετρητα’. This states the change that the purchaser received from the transaction. Be thoughtful, because in retail receipts it could be the case that they are using other abbreviations or completely skip that part in the receipt.
- The line after contains the unique Receipt Number. In some cases, the daily Receipt Number is also in this area of the receipt.
- Lastly, you can see the Barcode and also the line ‘End of the Receipt’ – ‘Φορολογική Απόδειξη – Λήξη’.
How can Klippa assist you?
Klippa can process large volumes of documents with its OCR engine. All the relevant information that you need for a task can be easily extracted with our OCR. Processing Greek receipts with OCR is one of the use cases. If you have another case where you could save time by extracting information from a document, we are able to assist you. Klippa has out-of-the-box interfaces that you can use or an OCR API to implement in your application. Want to know more about our solutions? Book a demo or call us!
