Grocery Pal Frequently Asked Questions

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The only thing you need to do is to agree to our legal terms during installation. This allows you to use 70% of the functionality of the app.

Yes, you can use the app anonymously without an account. However, Grocery Pal offers the Premium account that gives you many extra features and benefits. Please see Grocery Pal Premium below for more information.

Yes, it's a free app.  With the free version, you get to use one shopping list and create as many items as you want. You can use Grocery Pal to visit local stores' websites to find weekly sales and bookmark them in your shopping list. Grocery Pal offers Premium, which is a paid monthly subscription that offers many added features you may find useful. We offer a 1-month free trial. Please see below for more information about the benefits of Grocery Pal Premium.

Yes, multiple users can sign in to an account to form a joint account. One key benefit of a joint account is the ability to share shopping lists and organize shopping trips for a household. Please see Grocery Pal Premium below for more information about Premium list sharing.

Press the Sales tab in the bottom tab bar and press + to access Store Search. Grocery Pal does search auto-complete to show the stores that match your keywords. We currently support over 200 supermarket and discount store brands in the U.S.

If you can't find your store, tap “Create Custom Store” to add your own store. You can bookmark a URL for a custom store and access its content in Sales.

Yes, you can. When you’re in a store’s weekly sales page and find something you like, press +  to go to the “Add Sales to List” view. You can then enter an optional title and the valid number of days, and press Save. The image capture of the sale item is now added to the current shopping list.  We recommend that you specify a valid number of days for all sales captures. This way the sales items can be automatically removed after they expire.  Also, when you browse the sales content of a store, use pinch-zoom to save enlarged images to list.

The images of the sale items are saved under the “Weekly Sales” category of your current shopping list. Each item in the category contains all the sales image captures of a specific store. You can capture sales content from your custom stores as well.  (See Custom Stores below.)

The refresh rate depends on each store brand and the time of the year. We see that most supermarkets update their weekly sales on Wednesday night, which run through the end of the week. 

The weekly sales content in Grocery Pal are directly from each store. So Yes, they are up-to-date.

To create a new list, press the Lists tab, press  +, enter a name, and then press Create.

When Grocery Pal is first installed, a default list named “My Shopping List” is automatically created for you. A Premium account is required if you want to create more than one list.

To add items, press + when you’re inside a list. There are several ways to add items:

• Add multiple items at once: This input method allows you to create multiple items simultaneously. You enter each item on a separate line and press Done to add them. You can also use voice dictation: Press the mic icon on the keyboard and say the items you want to add. Please say “new line” after each item so it starts on a new line.
• Add suggested items with aisle categories. Grocery Pal comes with 1.6M+ items pre-populated with aisle categories used by most supermarkets. You enter a keyword and Grocery Pal will show you auto-completed items that best match your keyword. You then select the item you want. When no suggestions appear, just press done to add the item you’ve entered.
• Scan barcode: You can create an item through barcode scan.  If the barcode doesn’t match a product, enter the product title to create it in your list.
• Take photo: You can create an item from taking a photo or selecting one from your Photo Library. Any item you create in the future that matches the title will pick up the photo image automatically.
• Select from History: Grocery Pal allows you to archive items that are in the checked-off state to History. This allows you to reuse items. You simply select items from History into the current list for your upcoming shopping trips. See History below for more information.
• Select from Favorites: This allows you to select items from Favorites (see below). Unlike previous versions of Grocery Pal, Favorites now contains all favorite items from all of your lists.
• Select from another list: This allows you to select items from any other lists.

Using photos is a great way for you or your family members to know exactly what to buy at the store. You can attach photos to items as follows:

• Creating new items by taking photos: As mentioned above, you can create an item by taking a photo or selecting one from your Photo Library and giving it a title. Any item you create in the future that matches this title will automatically pick up the photo.
• Attaching photos to existing items: In your shopping list view, press an item to go to its detail view, tap the camera icon under the item's name to attach a photo.  If an item already has a photo attached, re-attaching photos overrides the existing photo.

In a joint Premium account, any photo attachment change will be picked up by other members of your account instantly.

List items are organized either by aisle categories or in alphabetic order. The aisle category organization is useful when you plan to walk through the aisles of your store in a particular order. For example, if you always shop at a local store in the Produce section first, then the Dairy, Baby, Meat & Poultry, Frozen Foods aisles etc., you can organize your list aisle categories based on this order by selecting the 3-dot menu inside in the main list view, and select Change aisle flow. You can then change the aisle order by moving particular aisles up or down to reflect your shopping trip pattern.

If you prefer to see items alphabetically, select the 3-dot menu and choose Sort items alphabetically.

You can further organize your list items through item check-off and item-store association. Please see below for more information.

When you shop inside a store, you can press the round checkbox next to an item to cross it off (i.e. mark the item as checked off. We use check off and cross off interchangeably). You press the checkbox again to uncheck the item. Grocery Pal provides you with two methods to check items off the list:

Crossing off items: When you cross-off an item, a strike-through is displayed across the item to mark the item as being checked-off. By default, crossed-off items remain in your current list  for easy reference and comparison. However, if you don't want to see them in the list, you can hide them by going to 3-dot menu > Hide crossed off items. To show them again, choose Don't hide crossed off items.

You can toggle between the main list view and cross-off item view by pressing the icon to the far left of the bottom toolbar. In the cross-off item view, you can open the 3-dot menu (3 vertical dots) to archive all cross-off items into History.

Moving items to Shopping Cart: This is the legacy Shopping Cart we still support in Grocery Pal. You can turn it on by going to Me > Settings > Item check-off and select “Move to Cart”. Unlike item cross-off, Shopping Cart allows you to move all the items you have already picked out from your current main list view to Shopping Cart, and later “check them out” to History when you’re done shopping.

History allows you to archive list items for reuse.  As mentioned above, when you add items, you can select items archived in History into your list so you don’t have to re-create them.  Both cross-off items and items in Shopping Cart can be archived to History.

You can mark an item as Favorite as follows:

Use the swipe gesture: When you’re inside a list, use the swipe gesture on an item, select the Favorite star icon to add it to Favorites.

From an item detail: Press an item to enter its detail view, and then press the star icon at the bottom to mark it as Favorite.

From inside Favorites: Press the Favorites in the bottom tab bar to enter Favorites, and press + to add items directly to Favorites.  

Yes, you can create as many lists as you want in Grocery Pal (Premium required for creating multiple lists). You typically create different lists for different stores or occasions. You can switch among lists by selecting them in the Lists view.

You can use the method described below to organize items for different stores.

Yes, Grocery Pal allows you to associate items with stores. To change the store association of an item, go to the detail view of the item and select Store to change its store selection. Any Store is the default, which means the item is for all stores.

To filter items by store, tap either Any Store at the lower right or the 3-dot menu and select Sort items by store on the bottom toolbar and select your desired store. When a list is filtered by store, the default behavior is that items assigned to Any Store are also displayed. To show only items assigned to a store, go to Me > Settings > Sort by store and select Store Items Only.

Please note that when a store is selected for the current list, all items added to the list through the "+" button are automatically assigned to that store. To override this behavior, select Any Store or a different store.

You can use the Search function. Inside a list, press the Search icon on the top right hand corner to enter Search (the Search icon is at the lower left hand corner for Favorites). Enter your keywords to locate the matching items. To exit Search, either press the Search icon again or press Cancel next to the search editor.

Besides Search, you can use the methods described earlier to narrow the list view. For example, aisle categories and item-store association are among the few ways to find your items easily. 

You can recover deleted lists in Grocery Pal Premium. Go to Me > List Recovery, and select and submit the list you want to recover.  Then go to Lists Home to access that list. 

You won’t lose any of your lists if you have a Premium account. To restore your data, install Grocery Pal on your new device and then sign in to your account. All your lists, stores, custom aisles and stores will be restored to your new device. 

If you have been using Grocery Pal for FREE and really like the app, you should consider upgrading to Premium. This way your data is backed up and secure. Please go to Me > Sign up for Premium! to see the benefits of Grocery Pal Premium.

Grocery Pal Premium’s list sharing feature is a perfect solution for you: One of you can sign up for an Premium account, and the other (or any other members of your family; there is no limit to the number of users in a joint account) can sign in to the account or join through an invitation (see below on "How do I invite others to share lists with me."). Once you are in the same account, all lists are instantly shared among all account members:

• Lists
• Items
• Photos
• Weekly sales
• Local store selection
• Custom aisles & stores
• Aisle flow, including that of any custom stores and aisles
• Favorites
• History
• Shopping Cart

Any user in a joint account can change lists, create stores and aisles etc. Changes are automatically shared among all users of the account. (Invited users won't be able to delete lists or invite others to join.)

With both of you signed in to a Premium account, any time a list is changed by either of you, the other user will get the change instantly:

• If you wake up the Grocery Pal app, it automatically re-syncs everything, and you will see the change.
• If you’re already inside a list, leaving and re-entering the list or use of the pull-to-refresh gesture will re-sync the list. A pull-to-refresh in the Lists view will re-sync all lists in your account.
• If you launch Grocery Pal, it automatically refreshes as well.

As mentioned before, all photos attached to list items are shared among all users of a Premium account. This includes all photos you've attached to list items and your weekly sales image captures.

Custom stores: Sometimes you wish to include a store inside the Sales tab that you can’t find from Grocery Pal’s built-in stores. Grocery Pal allows you to do just that: Go to Lists > Settings gear icon > Custom stores, and you can create your own store and bookmark its web URL for easy access later. A custom store with a web URL can be accessed just like a built-in store. You can even capture images of the content and save them to a list for quick access later.

Custom aisles: Grocery Pal comes with many built-in aisle categories for you. But sometimes you need to create your own aisles. To do this, go to Lists > Settings gear icon > Custom aisles, and you can create as many custom aisles as you want and arrange them in any order you prefer.

Custom stores and aisles are only available to Premium users.

Yes. With Grocery Pal Premium, you can sign in to your account from different devices, and your shopping lists will be automatically synchronized among them.

Grocery Pal no longer supports web portal (running a browser on PC or Mac) for device sharing.  

Grocery Pal Premium is a monthly subscription that offers Grocery Pal users additional features not available in its free version. Premium is automatically renewed monthly. A 1-month free trial is available, subject to user eligibility check. 

To try it out, go to Me > Sign up for Premium!

(Only one member of a Premium account needs to subscribe to Premium. All other members automatically get the Premium membership when they sign in.)

List sharing

As indicated earlier, Premium allows users to share lists, item photos, stores, weekly sales captures and more. Since changes made by anyone of a Premium account are shared among all members of the account, it saves time and effort to organize shopping activities in a household or among friends. In addition, photos attached to items are backed up and saved on our server for Premium accounts, so anyone will be able to reuse them when creating items.

Unlimited sales image capture and sharing

Premium allows you to save the weekly sales information to your shopping lists and instantly make it available to other users of your account. This is a great way for the person who does the actual shopping to know exactly what the savings to use and where to find them.

Custom aisles and stores

When you can’t find the store you want, Premium allows you to create your own stores and bookmark their web URLs for easy access. Custom stores with a web URL can be accessed just like any built-in stores in Grocery Pal: Tap the Sales tab and select it to go to its website.

Grocery Pal Premium also enables you to create custom aisles so you can personalize list item organization the way you prefer. You can create as many aisles you like and arrange their flow however you want it.

Cloud backup, restore and recover

With Premium, all your list data is backed up on our secure servers.  When the time comes to switch devices, Premium lets you sign in to your Premium account and restore all your lists. Should you ever delete a list by accident, you can undo the deletion by recovering the list.

Cancel any time

Premium is automatically renewed monthly. However, you can cancel it anytime. To cancel Premium, go to iOS Settings > Your name (Apple ID) > Subscriptions > Grocery Pal > Cancel.

Go to Me > Sign up for Premium! > Get Started.  You may be eligible for our 1 month free trial if you haven't subscribed to Premium before.  If you subscribe to Premium with the 1 month free trial, you won’t get charged until the end of the free trial period.

Just one purchase. The Premium membership can be shared among all members of an account, so only one of you needs to subscribe.  Once your Premium account is created, the rest of the members can join.

Go to Lists > Invite icon on toolbar > Invite others to share lists > Invite.  Once the users you're inviting have received the email, they can click on the link in the email or go to "Join with invitation token" to join your account.

Grocery Pal only offers the Premium account membership. To sign up, go to Me > Sign up for Premium! > Get Started.  Once Premium is purchased, select Sign up to create your account.

You can reset your password:

• Go to Me > Account > Forgot password, and then enter the email address you used when you registered your account and then press Submit. 
• Check your email for your password reset token. (Check the spam folder if you didn’t see the email in your inbox.)
• Go to Me > Reset password, and copy & paste the token.
• Enter your new password and confirm.
• Press Reset.