Merchants like Amazon.com will often fulfill a larger order in several shipments. Sometimes the items come from different locations, or one is ready before the others. Either way, this means the customer receives more than one box and sees separate charges on their credit card for each of those shipments.

The problem, of course, is that the credit card charges can be hard to reconcile against the original receipt for the full order. Sure, you can total them up, but what if you placed several orders at once and the mini-shipments overlap? You quickly lose the ability to do a quick, at-a-glance verification of the charges.

I propose an easy solution. When shipping part of an order, the merchant’s charge should show the total order amount in the notes. For example, a charge for $19 of a $48 order might say, “Shipment 1 of 3 for your order totaling $48”. This quickly conveys the progress of the shipments, and helps customers match up each charge with the original order receipt from the website.