Created my own grocery tracking app!

[ABK]

We live in a VERY high food-cost area, so groceries are a part of the budget that we are constantly fighting with. I have been unable to find a good app out there for tracking grocery prices that had all the features I wanted: free, cloud-based, with no ads, and tracks the price, unit price, store, date purchased, and whether or not I bought it on sale. I want to be able to quickly see if today's price on Item X is more or less than what I've paid before, and to be able to track prices over time.

So, using MementoDatabase, I built a very simple relational database app that does all of those things! I have no experience designing apps, but I do understand relational databases. The database isn't very pretty, but it works smoothly. It has two tables, one for items and one for purchase events, and I can add to both tables at once without duplicating items. I can also view all the past prices I've paid in chronological order to track trends.

Unfortunately I don't think I can share the empty configured db, but if you are looking for something similar and understand how tables work, you should go for it. Memento is pretty easy to use, and has a library of available preconfigured databases that one could modify, by the way. We are looking forward to seeing if this new tool helps us keep our food budget in a mustachian range.

[HAPPYINAZ]

Sounds cool!  I have been asking Safeway to provide its customers with this information as a downloadable spreadsheet.  They have a great app that lets you add discounts, and it's obvious they track all my purchases.  So I asked them to make it part of the app or just have all my purchase history available to me so I can track spending in perfect detail without having to hand enter it all in. 

[Ben Hogan]

I think I would like that, but then I wont know if I would itemize things onces I get the receipt. So far the easiest method for me is tracking cost per meal.

[MomCents]

Sounds cool, ABK.  I am going to look into Memento.  THanks for the info!  I am looking for an app that I don't know if exists.  Maybe creating my own database would be the best fit.  That is, unless anyone knows of something that exists for what I am looking for.

Basically, I want an app that tracks what food I have in the kitchen (it might be just too tedious to track, with my husband and I and two kids, but if I could track and see in a glance what I have on hand, I think menu planning would be easier, and food costs would come down).   Something where we could easily enter food items in when purchased, as well as log all food items we have on hand, and exit them out, when eaten.  Ideally you could tag them or categorize them in several ways to look at for meal planning purposes.  Maybe it's all too complicated and cumbersome to keep track of, I don't know....., but it would be my dream app for cooking, meal planning and shopping.....

ABK, with your home made database, can you scan bar codes for items, or do you have to enter them manually?

[jacksonvasey]

I use Trello.com, which is just a visual web app that lets you create 'cards' to track whatever you want.  You create whatever columns you want, and you can drag the cards around between columns.  Each card can have one or more photos associated with it, you can have a comment history on each card, a title, and a description.  You can also label the cards, and then filter the view to show only certain labels.

So I just use it for tracking what groceries I need by dragging it from the list of everything I've bought (so if I need something and don't have a card, I just create a new card for it).  I drag it to the column for the appropriate store.  I don't do much price tracking but I do a little, by just commenting on the card for say, rice, with the store and price.

I have a Trello board with a card for each of the meals we tend to eat, and a column for each day of the week.  So I can build meals for the week, and from there I go to the grocery board.  I usually do the meal and grocery planning on my PC web browser, and then use the phone app at the store, dragging grocery cards back to the pool once they're in the shopping cart.