The one artifact a customer holds, and the one document that can be produced when the app is down. Paper has no colour, no hover and no second screen. Everything the tone ladder does with hue, paper does with position, rule weight and words — so a comped line cannot be indigo, it has to say who approved it, in full.
Generated as a PDF, not printed from a web page. An editable financial record is a bad idea, and a screen printed through a browser is one. Both documents below are rendered server-side and printed from the file.
A split bill prints one per person, plus one for the whole table. Drawn at 80mm.
Every charge shows its basis. The rate and the block sit under the line in smaller type, so a customer can reconstruct the arithmetic instead of trusting it — and a counter asked "why 48?" has the answer already printed rather than remembered.
A comp names its approver in full, in a box. On a screen it could be a tone and a badge. On paper that box is the customer's only proof the free item was authorised, and the only thing stopping a counter writing items off to friends.
A zero is printed, not omitted. A missing line reads as a mistake; a stated zero reads as a rule.
A5, one side, two signatures. The one document that works when nothing else does.
Expected is the ledger's own balance, copied here. It is not re-added on this page. A signed document that disagrees with the screen it came from is worse than no document.
The variance reason is a free line, and it is on the paper. Forty pounds went out as a tip with no receipt. No dropdown would have had that option, and the truth beats a tidy category that is wrong.
Two signatures, because a handover with one is a handover nobody witnessed. The second line is whoever takes the drawer — usually the owner, sometimes the next shift.
The fingerprint is over the figures only, not the clock or the chrome, and it prints on every format. It tells you whether the spreadsheet in a manager's hand is the same day the counter signed. It is not a tamper seal and does not pretend to be.
A renderer never does arithmetic. Every total here was computed once, in one place, and written as a literal. A renderer that adds a column up is a second opinion about the drawer.
| # | Rule | Why |
|---|---|---|
P1 | One ink. No colour, no logo block, no code to scan. | Everything here has to survive a cheap printer and a year in a wallet. A design that needs colour to be understood fails on the only surface a customer keeps. |
P2 | Every charge shows its basis. | A customer who can reconstruct the arithmetic does not have to trust the machine. |
P3 | A comp or a discount names its approver in full, boxed. | It is the customer's only proof the free item was authorised. |
P4 | A zero is printed with its reason, never omitted. | A missing line reads as a mistake; a stated zero reads as a rule. |
P5 | Cashback prints its own rule on every receipt. | It is the sentence that stops the argument at the desk three weeks later. |
P6 | A split prints one receipt per person plus one for the table. | Four people each need to be able to leave with their own. |
P7 | Generated as a file and printed from it, never from a page. | An editable financial record is a bad idea. |
P8 | The renderer does no arithmetic, and every format carries the figures fingerprint. | One computation, many renderings. |
P9 | The day close carries two signature lines. | A handover with one signature is a handover nobody witnessed. |
`[DECISION]` The printer is still open, and it is the only thing on this page that is. Both documents are drawn at a working size — 80mm for the receipt, A5 for the day close — but every millimetre constant, the two-line item layout and the usable width all follow from the actual machine. One printer at the counter, or a second at the bar, also changes whether a bar order prints where it is made. Owner: operator. Nothing before this surface is blocked by it.
`[DECISION]` Cashback on a bar order — the two sources disagree, and the receipt is the one a customer can argue with. The ruled answer says cashback is redeemable against a visit bill or a subscription renewal, and not a bar order. Receipt copy drawn earlier in the design package says "session bill and bar only". The receipts above print the ruled version. Owner: operator.