Costco Receipt: How to Find Yours (and Why You Should Save Them)

You don’t have to call Costco or wait in line to find a lost receipt. Every Costco purchase, in the warehouse or on Costco.com, is logged under your membership, ready to view or print. It takes two minutes.

Below is the walk-through. After that, what to do with your Costco receipts if you run a small business.

How to get a Costco receipt on your computer

Step 1: Access the website.

Access the Costco website at Costco.com.

Step 2: Log in to Costco.

Click on ‘sign in’ to the right of the search bar, enter your email, password, or verification code, and sign in to your account.

Step 3: Go to your account.

Once logged in, click ‘orders & returns’ in the upper right corner.

Step 4: Go to your purchase history.

Under orders & purchases, select ‘online’ or ‘in-warehouse’ and choose a time frame depending on where the purchase was made.

Step 5: Find the order and view the details.

Browse your purchase history to find the specific order you need. Click on ‘view order details’ next to the order.

Step 6: Click receipt details.

You should find an option to view the receipt within the order details, which you can review or download as needed.

How to get a Costco receipt on the app

Using the Costco app, you can also retrieve your receipt anytime and anywhere:

Step 1: Open the app and log in.

Launch the Costco app on your mobile device and tap the ‘account’ icon at the bottom of the screen.

Step 2: Go to your account.

Sign in to Costco.com with your email and password or verification code.

Step 3: Go to your purchase history.

Tap ‘orders and purchases.’

Step 4: Find the order and view the details.

Choose a date range and whether the order was made ‘online’ or ‘in-warehouse.’

Step 5: Click receipt details.

You can scroll through your orders to locate the one you need and click on ‘view receipt,’ which you can review or download as needed.

If you need a printed copy, the same ‘view order details’ page has a print button. Click it and your browser will open the print dialog.

If you’re running a small business, the IRS expects you to save your receipts

Most people land here needing one receipt: a counter return, a client reimbursement, or a charge they don’t recognize.

But if you run a small business, get paid via 1099, or file a Schedule C, the IRS has a rule about every business-related receipt: keep it for at least three years after you file the return that includes it.

That’s from IRS Publication 583. Three years is the default, though some situations stretch to six. The IRS doesn’t care that you bought from Costco; they care that you can prove the expense was real, what it was for, and that it was for business.

Say you run a small cleaning business and you made a Costco supply run last spring. You spent $600 on bulk paper towels, microfiber cloths, and cleaning chemicals for the next month of jobs, topped off the work van at the Costco gas pump on the way out, and grabbed a $1.50 hot dog combo at the food court before you drove off.

All of that is deductible. The $600 in supplies comes off in full. For the gas, the easiest method is the IRS mileage rate (72.5 cents per mile in 2026), so a 20-mile round trip is $14.50 deducted whether you filled up or not. And the $1.50 hot dog combo is half-deductible at tax time, because you were on a working trip.

In 2027 or 2028, if the IRS asks, you need to pull up those Costco receipts to prove it. “Let me log into Costco and find them” works most of the time. It stops working the day you can’t find the email. Or you switched memberships. Or you paid cash at the gas pump and never tied it to your account.

The problem isn’t one receipt today. It’s every receipt you might need three years from now.

Shoeboxed is the easy way to never lose another receipt

Snap a paper receipt with the Shoeboxed app, or mail us a shoebox of them and we scan them for you. If your receipts arrive by email, our Gmail Receipt Sync tool watches your inbox and pulls the receipt emails out automatically. We read each one for the store, the date, the total, and the expense category, then file it in your Shoeboxed account. Search by vendor or export the whole pile to your accountant at tax time. No more digging through Costco’s order history.

Since 2007, we’ve processed more than 400,000 Costco receipts. Most belong to small-business owners on bulk supply runs: cleaning crews stocking paper goods, realtors picking up gift baskets and wine for closing gifts, therapists and consultants restocking the home office with paper and printer ink, and 1099 contractors topping off the fuel tank on the way to the next job. We’ve seen what most people miss.

57% of those receipts get tagged “Groceries,” which buries everything underneath. The smaller bars are the real story: Auto / Fuel, Office Supplies, Meals / Entertainment, and Medical / Health. That’s the work van being fueled, the breakroom being stocked, the printer ink and desk lamp for a home-based therapist’s office, the prescription picked up at the in-store pharmacy. Every one is a deduction the “Groceries” tag hides.

Two tax deductions you’re probably missing on your Costco runs

Two more deductions sit next to every Costco run, and most small-business owners miss them: the drive there (mileage), and the home office where the supplies end up.

Home office

If you work from home even part of the week, a slice of your rent or mortgage, utilities, internet, and home insurance is deductible. Anytime you buy a desk, office chair, monitor, printer paper, or surge protector at Costco for that home office, those receipts are separate deductions on top of the home office deduction itself.

You may have heard claiming a home office is an audit red flag. That hasn’t been true for years. The IRS simplified the rule in 2013 with a method that pays $5 per square foot up to 300 square feet (Pub 587), no receipts required. Take the deduction. And the chair you bought at Costco for that home office is a separate line on Schedule C, not part of the home office deduction. Two deductions, not one.

If you’ve never run the math, take two minutes with our free home office deduction calculator. It pulls your home’s square footage from your address and estimates your annual savings. No signup, no email required. Just the number.

Mileage

If you drove to a Costco to grab bulk paper goods, cleaning supplies, or bottled water for the business, that’s deductible business mileage. If you drove to a UPS Store to drop off a Costco mail-order return, that’s also deductible.

The IRS lets you deduct those drives at the 2026 standard business mileage rate of $0.725 per mile.

If you drove to a charity to drop off donated items you bought at Costco, that drive is also deductible as charity mileage. The charity mileage rate is 14¢ per mile under IRS Publication 526. It’s a different rate than business mileage, but it counts.

The Shoeboxed app uses your phone’s location to keep a quiet record of every drive in the background. At the end of the day, it texts you the list. Reply which trips were business, medical, or charity, and we save a tax-ready mileage log inside your Shoeboxed account: date, miles, IRS rate, total. When tax time comes, the document your accountant needs is already done.

Meals

If you grabbed lunch at the Costco food court while you were there on a supply run, that meal can be 50% deductible as a business meal under IRS Publication 463, as long as it was during a business trip and you can show the business purpose. The receipt matters.

All your options for saving receipts, honestly

Shoeboxed isn’t the only way to do this. Here’s the honest comparison.

• Shoeboxed app. Snap a pic to log a receipt. The app also tracks your drives via GPS automatically. At the end of the day we text you the trip list, you reply which ones were business, medical, or charity, and we file the mileage receipt. You get both deductions in one app, plus a tax-ready export when you need it. This is the one I’d recommend to a friend. Full disclosure: I bought the company in 2025; I was a customer for years before that.
• Shoeboxed Magic Envelope. Mail us your shoebox of paper receipts; we scan, categorize, digitize. This is the original Shoeboxed service, built for people who still get paper receipts and want them digitized without doing it themselves.
• Email-to-Shoeboxed. Costco.com sends an order confirmation for every online purchase. Forward those to your unique Shoeboxed address and we’ll file the receipt automatically. For in-warehouse purchases, you can opt into digital receipts at checkout or snap the paper one with the Shoeboxed app the moment the cashier hands it to you.
• Paper folder or accordion file. It works, but thermal receipts fade in a year or two, paper gets lost, and good luck searching the pile when your accountant asks for a specific receipt from March 2024.
• Google Drive or Dropbox. Better than paper alone, worse than a tool built for receipts: no OCR, no categorization, no tax-ready export. You’re using a photo gallery as a filing cabinet.
• Photos on your phone. Fast and free, with the same trade-offs as Google Drive: your camera roll becomes a mess, and good luck finding the right receipt three years later.

A system you use beats a perfect one you don’t. If you’re a paper-folder person and you’ll stick to it, the paper folder is fine. Most people don’t stick with it. The Magic Envelope was invented for them.

Frequently asked questions

Can I look up a Costco receipt online without my paper copy?

Yes. Sign in to Costco.com, click “orders & returns” in the upper right, and choose “in-warehouse” or “online” plus a date range. Every purchase tied to your membership shows up there, including in-warehouse purchases. The membership number on the back of your card is the key.

Can Costco reprint an in-warehouse receipt I lost?

Yes. Bring your membership card to the warehouse you bought from and ask the membership counter to look up the transaction. They can pull the receipt off your member account and reprint it on the spot.

How long do I need to keep my Costco receipts?

If you deducted the purchase as a business expense, the IRS expects you to be able to show the receipt for at least three years after you filed the return (Pub 583). Some situations stretch to six years. For bulk supply runs, fuel, and food-court business meals, save every one.

Are Costco food-court meals deductible for my business?

Sometimes. A $1.50 hot dog combo you grab during a Costco supply run for the business can be 50% deductible as a business meal under IRS Publication 463, as long as it’s during a business trip and you can show the business purpose. The receipt matters and the trip purpose matters. Don’t try to deduct your family pizza run.

Does Costco Gas show up separately on my account?

It depends on how you paid. Used your membership card or Costco Anywhere Visa at the pump? The transaction is tied to your account and shows up in your purchase history as a fuel charge. Paid cash? The paper receipt is the only record. Scan it before you lose it.

Save the next one

The bigger win is saving the next receipt the moment you get it, so you never have to hunt again. The IRS expects small-business owners and 1099 contractors to keep these for three years. Saving them as they arrive beats hunting for them three years later.

Try Shoeboxed

Pick your platform. Both mobile apps come with a 7-day free trial. The web signup is a 30-day risk-free trial. If it doesn’t save you time, money, or both, you get your money back.

Or sign up online.

About the author. I’m Doug. I bought Shoeboxed in late 2025 with an SBA loan after fifteen years of running other people’s companies as CEO. I’d used Shoeboxed myself back in 2010 at a previous gig and called it magical even then. I use it daily now. Small business owners deserve every dollar they’re legally entitled to keep, which is why I bought Shoeboxed and work hard to make it better.