https://ethereum.stackexchange.com/questions/5888/relationship-between-transaction-trie-and-receipts-trie provides a good summary:

> Transaction Receipts record the transaction **outcome**

Here is the https://ethereum.stackexchange.com/questions/6531/structure-of-a-transaction-receipt

    blockHash: String, 32 Bytes - hash of the block where this transaction was in.
    blockNumber: Number - block number where this transaction was in.
    transactionHash: String, 32 Bytes - hash of the transaction.
    transactionIndex: Number - integer of the transactions index position in the block.
    from: String, 20 Bytes - address of the sender.
    to: String, 20 Bytes - address of the receiver. null when its a contract creation transaction.
    cumulativeGasUsed: Number - The total amount of gas used when this transaction was executed in the block.
    gasUsed: Number - The amount of gas used by this specific transaction alone.
    status: String - '0x0' indicates transaction failure , '0x1' indicates transaction succeeded.
    contractAddress: String - 20 Bytes - The contract address created, if the transaction was a contract creation, otherwise null.
    logs: Array - Array of log objects, which this transaction generated.

Take a look at the last two properties.  A simple use of a receipt is to find out a new contract's `contractAddress`.  A more advanced used for a receipt is with https://ethereum.stackexchange.com/questions/16117/proving-the-existence-of-logs-to-the-blockchain

The status indicates if the transaction succeeded or not (ie. it ran out of gas)