Grocery King is an intuitive and powerful app to manage your everyday shopping lists. Grocery King offers an easy to use interface to quickly create shopping lists and help you save time and effort. The latest version of the app (version 5.1) is even more powerful with a larger item database, fresher interface and more intuitive features.
Features
create inventory specific to those retailers so that it's easier to
lookup and maintain the item catalog for the retailer. 
Grocery King contains thousands of everyday items and brands that are
pre-populated for you to pick and add to your shopping lists.
A typical grocery store contains around 12,000 to 20,000 items and Grocery King
contains more than double that inventory and all items are organized in
an easy & accessible manner.
again at the retailer.
lists. By Syncing/Sharing your shopping lists, your shopping list
changes are instantly visible to anyone syncing with you. Also, the
changes made by your friend/family member to their shopping lists are
instantly visible to you. We have designed the syncing mechanism to be
easy and simple, there is only one user id that needs to be created and
this group id is what you share among all your friends and family.Budget shopping: With Grocery King, you can now know how much your shopping will cost well ahead of time, so that
you can budget your shopping accordingly. The
app can total at the shopping list level or it can also total the cost
of all shopping lists. Also checked and list items are priced
separately so that you know how much the items on your shopping cart
will cost you at the checkout.
remembers the aisle order setting
for each store so that you do not have to redo this every time.
(%
value). Coupon amounts are automatically discounted from the totals
that are calculated and displayed on the shopping list view. Also the
presence of a coupon is clearly represented on the shopping lists so
that you don’t miss it.
User Guide
You can download the User Guide as a pdf copy for easy reading from your computer or for taking a print out -> Download PDF User Guide
Table Of Contents
- Home Screen
- Shopping Lists
- Adding Loyalty/Reward Card
- Shopping List
View
- Adding Items to Shopping List
- Adding/Creating new item
- Editing an Item
- Ordering Aisles
- Custom Aisles & Aisle Management
- Viewing Item's Price History
- Price comparison between retailers/lists
- Barcode Scanning
- Custom Aisles & Aisle Management
- E-Mailing your shopping lists
- Syncing & Sharing your shopping Lists
- Backup & Restore
- App Settings
- Terms & Privacy Policy
Main/Home View
Shopping Lists
Adding Loyalty/Reward Card
Shopping List View
- When the app is first started, the first screen that comes up is the home screen. The shopping lists are visible and they are under the tab "Shop".
- As seen in the snapshot above, There are three types of shopping
list and they are displayed in the same order: Generic list, Retailer list and Recipe
list. Each category of lists can hold multiple lists which are sorted by
name. The shopping list type is also indicated by icon type
or 
or 
representing generic , retailer and recipe
based shopping lists respectively - When the app is installed and started for the first time, it will have a generic pre-populated shopping list. It is a sample shopping list which can be saved for further use or deleted in not required for further use.
- Each list has a count indicator on the right side like this :
. This count
indicates the number of checked items out of the total number of items. For example 4/17
indicates that 4 items out of 17 items in the shopping list have been purchased or
checked. Similarly 0/19 means that none of the items from the shopping list have
been purchased. - There are two types of actions supported on each title of the list: Tapping and long press.
-
- Tapping on a list will take you to the detailed shopping list view displaying all the actual items(described in detail later).
- Long pressing( tap and hold a list item for 2-3 secs) on a list will bring up a menu with options to Edit/Delete a shopping list.
- The toolbar seen at the bottom to bring up things like Help System, Sync Settings, Create Shopping List & E-mail shopping lists.
- There are other tabs which are available for other functionalities like performing a search, picking up items to add in the shopping list from pre-existing inventory and scanning of barcodes and reward cards.
Shopping Lists
- Grocery King supports 3 types of shopping lists.
- Generic Shopping lists ( for representing lists like Party planning list, travel checklist or a todo list)
- Retailer Shopping lists are lists specific to your favorite retail stores. The list can be created for each store so that user's shopping can be more organized and is easy to manage.
- Recipe lists are lists that have all the ingredients that need to be shopped to prepare a particular dish/meal.
- To create a new shopping list, click on the icon at the bottom (third icon from left) to bring up a new dialog as shown below :
- Generic Shopping List : This is a general purpose shopping list that can represent anything from a party planning list, todo list to a travel itinerary list. Type in a name you want to give for the list and optionally you can also attach a custom icon to represent this list.
- Retailer Shopping List: This kind of shopping list is specific to a store/retailer. Tap on the "Retailer" button as shown below :
- If you select this type of list, you have further option to pick/search a retailer from a search window as shown below. To initiate a search, start typing the first few characters of the retailer and the app will search and display all retailers that match the text entered as shown below:
- Select the appropriate retailer from the search. If the retailer you are searching for does not come up, then type in the full retailer name and press on the first row having the green + icon. This should bring up a new edit dialog as shown below having more settings for the selected retailer.
- You can fetch the retailer icon by pressing on the "Fetch Icon" Button. If it's a custom retailer, you can attach your own icon from SD card or take a picture using your phone's camera.
- Clicking on the "Tap to find a location" button will open up a map view to display nearby locations of the selected retailer.
- You can also enter other details about the retailer like phone number, retailer website address and retailer flyer url's and save this information for quick access later.
- Recipe Shopping List : This type of shopping list is specific to all the ingredients that go into preparing a recipe. A recipe based shopping list also has information about the recipe like name, description, serving size, preparation time and recipe photos. To create a recipe based shopping list, tap on the Recipe button as shown below :
- A new edit dialog should popup as shown below. Enter details about the recipe like recipe name(mandatory) and optional fields like service size, preparation time, description and recipe website if any. You can also attach a recipe photo and an icon to represent the recipe.
- After filling all
the necessary information, the recipe edit dialog should look like the screenshot shown
below :
- Once a recipe based shopping list is created, you are taken back to the home screen. On the home screen, tapping on the recipe list item will bring up the recipe view as shown below
- As you can see from the above image, the recipe view contains 3 tabs. The ingredients tab is where you add all items required to prepare the recipe. Note that the items under ingredients tab can be moved to other shopping lists (say retailer shopping lists) from the context menu (will be explained later).
Adding Loyalty/Reward Card
- You can have your retailer's reward / loyalty card information stored within the app. To do this, from the home screen (Shop tab), tap on the retailer's shopping list. This should bring up a shopping list view as shown below :
- As you can see, a retailer's shopping list has 3 tabs on the top. Tap on the 3rd tab from the left which will bring up a new view as shown below, from which you can add your retailer's loyalty/reward card information.
- Tap on the menu buton on your phone. This should bring up a menu with 2 options. One option provides you the ability to scan the reward card barcode and have the app generate a high resolution image of the barcode that you can use at the retailer. The second option provides you the ability to manually enter the reward card information.
Shopping List View
- Shopping list view is a key place where all your shopping list items exists. From this view, you can perform operations like adding new items, placing items in cart, quick edit of quantity and photo and view item detail summary. You can also easily get to the shopping list's history and the favorites directly from this view.
- In the shopping list view, you will see all your items organized by aisles. When you go for shopping you can check off each item as you shop. When you check off an item, the item automatically gets removed and put into the "Checked Items" section of the shopping list.
- You can edit an item by either long tapping (tapping and holding an item for 3-5 seconds) or by tapping on the ">" symbol at the right end of the item.
- If you tap on an item, it will get checked. Marking an item as checked means that you have purchased the item at the store. Its like ticking off an item from your notepad.
- Once you are done with your shopping, you can clear all the checked items by tapping on the "clear" icon at the bottom (3rd from left). If you want all items including unchecked ones, then you can click on the menu button and select "Clear All". If you want any single item (checked or unchecked) to be removed from the list, then you can long press on that item and select "Remove Item From List" from the popup menu.
- All your cleared items are always available from the History view, so don't be afraid to clear off your items after you finish shopping. You can access your history by clicking on History icon at the bottom (4th from left).
- There are 4 ways to add items to a shopping list, 1. From Pick List, 2. By doing a Search, 3. By picking from Favorites, 4. By picking your previously shopped items from the history view.
- Pick List: To go to the "Pick" tab, you can navigate to it from the home screen or you can tap on the "Add" button in the shopping list view.
- In the "Pick" tab you will see the entire inventory of items all neatly categorized into different aisles/groupings. You can create your own custom aisles, rename the included ones, hide them for the selected retailer or delete your own custom aisle. These options are available either through a context menu (tap and hold an aisle to see more options) or by clicking on the phone's android menu button.
- You can drill down into an aisle by clicking on the aisles. For example, if you click on 'Vegetables' aisle, an item view will open up listing all the items related to 'Vegetables' as shown below : Select an aisle that you are interested in by tapping on it. That should bring up the "Item View", which represents all the items within an Aisle.
- Tapping an item will add that item to your shopping list (active shopping list) which will get highlighted by a yellow background and also a shopping list icon to the left. Note that if an item is already in the shopping list, you can remove that item from the list by tapping that item.
- You can also add an item to your favorites by tapping on the favorite icon (star) on the right end. If an item is already a favorite, you can tap on the star icon to remove the item from favorites.
- The Aisle's item view contains further sub categories that represents grouping within an aisle. Selecting a category will expand the view and all items under that category will become visible.
- You can change the active shopping list for this view to a different one by pulling/tapping the bottom bar as shown in the screenshot below. Once you select a different active shopping list, the item view will get refreshed to show if any items are present on that shopping list.
- Once you are done adding the items to the shopping list, you can go back to the Aisle View (by pressing the back button on your phone or by tapping on the Aisle icon on the top left corner) to pick more items from other aisles, or you can go to the active shopping list view by tapping on the list icon on the top right end. Once back in the shopping list view, you should be able to see all the new items that you added to the list.
- You can add new items or sub categories to this aisle via the menu options. To get to the menu options, tap on your phone' menu button and you will see something like this :
- You can also make changes to the existing item or an existing sub category via a context menu. This can be brought up by long tapping on any item or sub category. The below screenshot shows a context menu when a sub category is long tapped :
- Grocery King offers fast and convenient way to search for local inventory of items.
- Its super powerful and sophisticated and can pull out relevant search data via a live search engine.
- You can search for either brand items or generic items or both.
- The Aisle/Item view only displays generic items, so if you want to lookup brand items, then you will need to do a search. This is necessary since its impossible to display tens and thousands of items on a view and letting users pick from that long list. Searching is a convenient way to access the same.
- Huge item database, that has more items than a typical nationwide retailer.
- You can either type the brand or item name or speak.
- Once you start typing (need at least 3 characters to seed the search), the matching results show up automatically. You can see Item Name, Unit/Size, Aisle & Price (If Available).
- Items with a Yellow background means that the item is already in the active shopping list.
- You can add/remove an item to/from a shopping list by just tapping on the item row.
- You can also quickly edit an item by tapping on the ">" symbol on the right side of each row.
- If the item you are searching for is not found, then you can add the item into the app by tapping on the "+" button on the first row.
- Adding items to shopping list from "Favorites View"
-
- You can get to the Favorites view in a couple of ways. One is from the Shopping List View and second is from the Aisle View (Under Pick Tab).
- Favorites view contains all the items that you added as favorites.
- If background is yellow it means that the item is already in the active shoppping list selected. Tapping on a item row will add/remove an item to/from a shopping list.
- You can also change the active shopping list via the drawer at the bottom of the screen as shown in the following screenshot :
- You can get to the History view in a couple of ways. One is from the Shopping List View and second is from the Aisle View (Under Pick Tab).
- History view contains all the items that you previously cleared or checked out from your shopping lists. Note that the shopping list history displayed only applies to the active shopping list selected from the drawer at the bottom of the view.
- You can move an item to the active shopping list by tapping on the "+" button on the left of each row. You can also quickly add an item to favorites by tapping on the star icon on the right side.
- Fill in the Item name, choose an aisle/category where the item should be created in, choose a sub category under the aisle. The remaining fields are optional and are described as follows :
-
- Link Barcode : Tap on the "Scan" button if you want to associate/attach a barcode for the item. Upon tapping the button, the camera app will open up, simply hold the barcode of the item in front of the phone and place the barcode in the center of the rectangle. The barcode should get scanned successfully within a few seconds and the edit screen will get updated with the barcode information.
- Attach Photo : Tap on the "Capture" button if you want to attach a picture of the item. This should bring up the camera app, take a picture, once done you should see the picture show up right in the edit screen.
- Favorite : Tap on the star icon to add the item to Favorites.
- Item Size : You can type in a size for the item. For example, a shampoo bottle that is 24 ounces or say 500ml.
- Item Price : This specifies the global price for this product/item. When you add this item to any shopping list, this price will show up on the shopping list total price. You can override this for a specific retailer which will be described a little later in this user guide.
- Tax : You can select from 3 different tax values. Tap on the individual tax's check box to apply that tax value to the item. The value of Tax can be changed from the main settings of the app.
- Once you fill up all the necessary fields, you can either add (will create/add the item to db) or you can create & add to shopping list at the same time. Note that when you add to list, the item will get added to the active shopping list selected at that time.
Editing an existing item-
- Editing an item has the same fields as when you create/add a new item, except that the fields are pre-populated with the values that you entered while creating the item. One major difference is that if the item is already in the shopping list, then you see additional attributes at the bottom of the Edit Item view specific to the retailer/shopping list as shown in the screenshot below :
Re-Arranging/Re-Ordering Aisles: You can re-arrange the aisles on your shopping list to match that of your retailer's. Most of us have a particular order in which we do our regular shopping, for example shopping for produce first and then dairy etc. You can go to the aisle order view by clicking on menu button and selecting "Reorder Aisles". In this view, you can drag & drop the icon on the left to re-arrange the aisles. Once done, press the back button on your phone to go back to your shopping list and the view should automatically get updated with the new aisle ordering. Note that aisle ordering is specific to a shopping list. You can have different aisle ordering for different shopping lists.
- Tapping on "Reorder Aisles" from the Shopping List View menu should bring up the following view :
- Re-arrange the categories by dragging the icon on the left of each aisle/category up or down. This is the screenshot of how the ailses look with a custom ordering :
- Tap on the back button on your phone to go back to the Shopping list view. This action will automatically save the aisle ordering for the shopping list. The shopping list should now be re-arranged as shown in the screenshot below :
Custom Aisles and Aisle Management-
- With Grocery King you can create custom aisles/categories and associate aisles to specific shopping lists or retailers. This is especially useful when you want to see aisles/categories that are applicable to an active retailer/shopping list. For example, say you are creating a shopping list for a Hardware store, the default list of aisles in the app will not be applicable to the hardware store (for example Vegetables, Fruits, Dairy & Eggs... will not make sense). To deal with issue like this, Grocery King offers a way to hide/filter aisles based on the selected shopping list.
- There are a couple of ways to hide/filter aisles/categories for a selected shopping list. Firstly, if you do not have too many aisles to hide/display, then you can long touch on an aisle and pick "Hide Aisle" from the popup menu as shown below :
- Once you tap on "Hide Aisle", that aisle will be hidden for the selected active shopping list.
- If you have more than one aisle to hide or display, then you can tap on your phone's menu button and a popup menu should show up at the bottom as shown in the below screenshot :
- Tap on "Show/Hide Aisles", this should bring up a popup dialog as shown below :
- Check/uncheck aisles that you want to either to be seen or hidden for the selected retailer. Once done, tap on the "Save" button.
- For example, here is a screenshot of how the aisle view will look after the aisles are filltered :
Price Comparison and Tracking Price History-
- Grocery King app comes with built in nationwide prices for 1000's of items. You can also enter a retailer/store specific pricing for items. The advantage with entering a specific price value for a retailer is that the app has a built in functionality to do price comparison and also to track price history as it changes over a period of time.
- Price Comparison : Grocery King lets users add retailer specific prices for items in the shopping list. The prices an be entered during checkout time or you can enter it during your convenience from the shopping bill/recipt. Once you have entered the prices, the next time you shop, Grocery King will lookup your previous shopping history and indicate to you if any item is cheaper/expensive as compared the price purchased in the past from another retailer. Here is a screenshot of how this is gets represented on your shopping list :
- As you can see, the pricing information is color coded and displayed on the main shopping list view. Tap on ">" to go to the edit screen to see the detailed price comparison of this item's price history from all shopping lists.
Price History Tracking : Grocery king automatically tracks the items' price history as you shop. Everytime you shop at your retailer, just enter the price (in case it changed) during checkout and next time when you shop again for this same item, the app will let you know at what price the item was purchased in the past. See the screenshot below to see how the price history is displayed on the Edit Screen :
- You can e-mail all your shopping lists by going to the main shopping lists view (Under 'Shop' tab) and clicking on E-mail icon. Once you click on it, a new e-mail view will come up and your e-mail message is automatically composed. All important data like Aisle name, item name, checked/unchecked, quantity, price and note is included in the e-mail message. Also, if you have multiple shopping lists, then the e-mail message will contain items from all your shopping lists in a structured and well formatted format.
- You can further edit the message as necessary before sending the e-mail to your friends and family.
- With Grocery King, you can seamlessly sync or share your shopping lists.
- There is only one user id that needs to be created and this is the one that you share among all your friends and family.
- By Syncing/Sharing your shopping lists, your shopping list changes are instantly visible to anyone syncing with you. Also, the changes made by your friend/family member to their shopping lists are instantly visible to you.
- If you or any of your friends/family members do not yet have a user id, then you will need to register one. To register, you will need to enter a 6 character user id. Once you enter it, click on "Register/Link" button. This will register your account and generate a 12 character id based on the user id that you entered. This 12 character id is what you will need to share with your friends/family so that you can sync with them.
- If one of your friends/family members has already registered a user id, then you can use that 12 character group user id to link your shopping lists to theirs. Just enter the 12 character user id and tap on "Register/Link" and you should be all set.
- Note that for syncing to work, your phone needs to have constant internet access. Even though the app will sync/share data only when there are changes, you should be aware that the app will use data bandwidth over the internet whenever necessary.
- Once syncing is setup, all your shopping lists will sync or update automatically.
- Scan the item barcode by placing the barcode at the center of the laser (red line) within the rectangle as shown below :
- After barcode is scanned, Grocery King checks if the item has been scanned previously. If not, the app sends request to our online catalog of 1.3 million products and displays the result in an Edit Item Dialog. You can further make changes to the item details like aisle & sub category and tap on add to add the item into the database.
- If the item is not found on our online server, you can still fill in all the necessary details and create the item into the app.
- Once you are done scanning all the barcodes, you can see all your
items you created right under the "Scan" tab. You can then add/remove items to the
selected shopping list directly from the Scan view.
- Backup as the name suggests, backs up all user data related to the app on to your SD card or Phone memory. This includes shopping list data, custom items, item changes like tax, price, shopping list history, sync history, favorites and others.
- To Backup data, go to "Shop" tab and press the menu button on the phone. A menu should show up, tap on "Backup" to begin the backup process.
- Please do a backup on a regular basis so as not to lose this important data in case your phone or app crashes.
- Restore helps in restoring the user data from a backup file. Restore will bring back the application to a previous state as represented by the backup file.
- To Restore data, go to "Shop" tab and press the menu button on your phone. This should bring up a menu, tap on "Restore" to begin the restore process.
- Note that restore will bring back the user data from the last backup, so any changes to the app since the last backup will be lost.
- Also if you happen to get a new phone and install Grocery King on it, you can use the data related to grocery king thats present on the sd card to restore the user data on the newly installed version of Grocery King
- "Calculate Tax" is a global setting and if checked will ensure that tax component is included in calculating the final cost of your shopping list. This can further be overridden at the item level, which means that even though global tax is checked, you can individually disable tax calculation on an item to item basis. You can access this field by going to an item's edit dialog.
- Grocery King supports 3 different tax rates that can be configured to be either applied on an item individually or cumulatively.
- "List Sharing Polling Interval" is applicable only if you have list sharing/syncing enabled. List is shared/synced by default once every 30 seconds. You could change the value to a longer time period if you desire so.