Maintaining a Spreadsheet for Your Grocery Shopping

Considering that a fair amount of your monthly household spent is towards grocery shopping even a small savings each time you shop can add up to a reasonable amount on a yearly basis. Competition in today’s era means consumers have a number of brands to choose from. Besides a number of hypermarkets, supermarkets, convenience stores, small grocery stores etc. carry the same product at different prices.

Prices of various commodities, food stuff etc. keeps fluctuating and change frequently. As a result it is difficult to remember the price at which you purchased an item previously. Different stores offer different types of promotion and special schemes such as buy one get one free, additional discount on bulk purchases, special discounts if you buy two different products together. Occasionally such schemes are not necessarily beneficial. At times you may end up paying more for an item which is under promotion as a result of good marketing.

It is very beneficial to maintain a spreadsheet for the products you purchase regularly. The spreadsheet can serve as a database of the items you purchase and the minimum price at which you ever bought the item. It can help determine which store is giving the best price for a particular product. It can also help to compare various schemes and identify the best promotion available.

The spreadsheet would track the following information:

1)    Date of Purchase

2)    Item Purchased

3)    Purchased From (This would include the name of the store i.e. hypermarket, supermarket etc. from where the item was purchased at the lowest price)

4)    Quantity Purchased

5)    Purchase Price (This will be the minimum purchase price at which the item was ever purchased. If the item is purchased below this price, this information will be replaced with the new minimum purchase price)

6)    Average Purchase Price (Average Purchase Price will reflect the price at which this product is normally purchased. If the price varies the range can be given here. For instance $5 to $7)

7)    Nature of scheme, if any (Schemes such as Coupon available for the product, Buy One Get One Free, Discount on Bulk Purchase etc. can be given here)

8)    Remarks (This will give any additional information you wish to track such as any special schemes available at particular grocery outlets for Bulk Purchases etc.)

The above worksheet needs to be updated when the same item is purchased at a lower price to reflect the lowest price at which the item was ever purchased. Other advantage of maintaining this spreadsheet is it will enable to know the approximate monthly grocery expense. It will also serve as a grocery list which you can take before going to purchase grocery and this way you will avoid any impulse buying.