Pushpins Helps Your Grocery Shopping Experience With Coupons, Lists, And Nutrition
Pushpins - Coupons, Lists, & Nutrition (Free) by Pushpins, Inc. is a full-featured shopping list app for your iPhone.
The holidays are coming up very soon, and that means more large dinners. So how about an app that will make the entire experience easy? Pushpins will do that, and a whole lot more.
To use Pushpins, you will have to create an account for the service. You can view your profile with the assigned tab. This will keep track of all of your savings, store history, as well as storing your store saving cards. The other two main tabs are Lists and Stores.
With the Lists view, you can add multiple lists with a tap of the “+” button. Give the list a name, and you’re good to go; the list will show up in the main Lists view, and you’ll see a count of when the list was created and how many items are currently on it. To add items on a list, select it, and then start typing in product names in the search bar. Pushpins will give you real-time results as you type, providing the user with the option to add just the generic item to the list, or pick from more specific results (brand name, different types of products). If you’re already at a store or have the item in front of you, Pushpins can scan an item (powered by RedLaser). An item that is already in the Pushpins database will come with a photo; if not, you can add your own by viewing the item and then tapping on the flag button.
Tapping on an item will display other information, such as brand name, type, and category of product (if this information is applicable). The magic is with the bottom half of the screen, where users can view related coupons and even full nutritional information. However, the coupons view only seems to work from the Store tab, which we’ll get to later in this review. The nutritional information will only be shown if one has selected a specific product (meaning it won’t work on generic items).
By default, when a new item is added, the quantity is one. However, this quantity can be changed when you view an item – just tap on the - and + buttons underneath the product image. When an item has multiple amounts, a red badge appears on the image with the quantity amount.
The Stores view will present a list of stores closest to you. Once one store is tapped on, you will be “checked-in” to the store, and shopping history will be shown (how many items were bought and how much was saved), and you can just tap on the “Start” button at the top right or the large “Start Saving” button to move on to the next step.
While in a store, tapping on the “curl” in the top left corner will lift the page up, and give several options: import an existing list, and sort the list by aisle, alphabetically, or neither. Personally, I prefer sorting it by aisle, because these little stripes appear on the list that separate each item by where they would be found in the store. It’s more efficient than doing things alphabetically.
With an imported list, the checkboxes are rather large, and they can be checked off as you shop. Viewing an item will give you the same view as viewing it from the Lists tab, with the addition of seeing if the item is “checked” or “unchecked” to the left of the quantity count. The coupons feature works better in the Stores view, though it may not get you coupons for the particular item, but rather, “related” items. Not sure that I’d take some coupons for cereal while I’m looking for some good old orange juice, though.
If you are the type that wants to see what is being offered in coupons and work your trip around that, you can see what coupons are being offered with the “Coupons” view. From my testing of the app, I got a lot of blanks, but for some stores I managed to get a “View Popular Coupons” option, which will show me a [somewhat small] variety of coupons. Currently, the list of stores that are offering coupons within Pushpins is small, but in the App Store description, they will have about 5,000 stores with coupons in January.
When you are done shopping at the store, you can “checkout” from the store within the app, and you get a digital receipt, which I found to be pretty cool. This receipt will show you information such as address, date and time, coupons used, items on your list and the items that you got (with a checkmark next to them). The list can be copied for future use as well.
The only complaint I have is with the Lists section, where tapping on the tiny checkbox does nothing. Normally, I’d expect that tapping on a checkbox will mark the item as “complete” or something to that effect. I could not figure out how to cross an item off the list without importing the list into a store I’ve checked-in to. The app also crashed on me once, but that was after repeated checking out at stores.
If you want to make your grocery shopping experience a bit easier, then consider Pushpins. Not only can it actually help you save some money while you shop (even more so in the future), but it also looks pretty good while giving you useful information. The best part? It’s absolutely free to use, so give it a try.
