Bill of sale vs. receipt: what do you actually need for a private sale?

People treat these as two different documents, and for a $40,000 boat with a lawyer involved, they can be. For a private Marketplace or Craigslist deal, they’re two names for the same page:

• A bill of sale looks at the deal from the ownership side: seller X transfers item Y to buyer Z on this date, in this condition, as-is.
• A receipt looks at it from the money side: buyer Z paid $N to seller X on this date, by this method, for item Y.

Write one document with the item, the condition, the price, the date, the payment method, both names and both signatures, and you’ve produced both. That’s what Kvittla generates — and both parties get the identical PDF, so there’s never a “seller’s version” and a “buyer’s version” to argue about.

Here’s the piece most people miss. Under UCC §2-201 — the statute of frauds for sales of goods, adopted across the states — a contract for the sale of goods for $500 or more is generally not enforceable unless there’s a signed writing evidencing it. Below $500, a handshake deal is enforceable; at $500 and up, the writing is what courts look for.

A co-signed electronic receipt satisfies this. The ESIGN Act and UETA make electronic records and signatures legally equivalent to paper and ink, so an e-signed receipt is the signed writing §2-201 asks for. For a used phone, an e-bike, a guitar amp — anything at that price level — the two minutes of signing is the difference between an enforceable written contract and a memory contest.

• Date of sale. When the item and money changed hands.
• A specific description. Make, model, serial number or VIN/IMEI where one exists. “Laptop” settles nothing; “MacBook Air M2 2023, serial C02XYZ…” does.
• Condition and “as-is”. One honest line about condition, plus the standard private-sale framing: sold as-is, where-is, no warranties. Customary and fair — but remember it cannot excuse fraud, so describe the item truthfully.
• Price and payment method. “$650 via Venmo, transaction ref …” or “paid in cash at pickup”. Binding the receipt to a real payment is what makes it a receipt.
• Both parties’ names. Address or ID number optional — add them for higher-value deals.
• Both signatures. Co-signing is the whole point: one-sided notes prove little; a document both parties signed proves an agreement.
• The original listing as an attachment. A screenshot of the ad preserves the seller’s own description and asking price — strong evidence if “as described” is ever disputed.

Most states exempt occasional or casual sales between private parties from sales tax — the neighbor selling a couch isn’t a retailer and doesn’t collect tax. That’s why a private-party receipt carries a line noting that no sales tax was collected.

The flip side: for registered property like vehicles and boats, buyers typically owe use tax when they register the purchase with the state, usually calculated on the purchase price. The price on your bill of sale is what the DMV works from — one more reason to have the real number in writing and co-signed.

Vehicle transfers have their own official process: title transfer and registration through your state’s DMV. Many states publish official DMV bill-of-sale forms for this, and a few — Louisiana, Montana, Nebraska and West Virginia among them — require the vehicle bill of sale to be notarized.

A Kvittla receipt supplements that process; it never replaces it. Use the state’s form and process for the title, and use the co-signed receipt for what the DMV paperwork doesn’t capture: the agreed condition, the payment method and reference, the listing screenshot, and a tamper-evident record both parties hold in identical copies.