How to Calculate Change From Purchases
- 1). Add up all of your purchases. For example, you might have a soda for $1.25, a candy bar for 50 cents and a pack of gum for $1.10. Add these figures to get $2.85.
- 2). Apply tax if necessary. For example, if the sales tax is 7 percent, divide 7 by 100 to get the decimal 0.07. Then multiply this figure by your subtotal from Step 1 to get 0.1995. Add this to your subtotal to get a final total of 3.0495. Because money is limited to two digits past the decimal, you may need to round off your total. In this case, you would round it to $3.05.
- 3). Subtract the total from the bill that you give the seller. For example, if you give the cashier a $5 bill, you would subtract $3.05 from $5.00 to get an answer of $1.95. This is the amount of change that you are due.
