Creating supermarkets allow you to customize your shopping list in many ways:
Before creating a supermarket, make sure you understand the difference between the articles that are stored in supermarkets and the grocery items that are stored in the main database.
You can create a supermarket by clicking on the + button of the mini-toolbar. You can also create a supermarket when importing supplier's data. In the supermarket information window that opens, you must input at the minimum a name for the new supermarket, select what you want to include: all the grocery items of the main database, the main grocery items, or create an empty supermarket. If you need to make a shopping lists in a different language than the main supermarket, you can also select a language.
The new supermarket appears in the Supermarkets section of the navigation column.
The supermarket information window opens when you create a new supermarket or when you click on the information button of the toolbar of the supermarket.
In the shopping list tab of the information window, you can select how to sort the articles in the shopping list: by aisles, alphabetical order, product ids, etc. You can also select which information you want to include in the shopping list, like brand, product size, quantity, price, etc.
You can also include an overhead cost, that is the cost to go to the supermarket or the cost to order from this supplier. The overhead cost will be used to compute the best value for you shopping list.
In the ordering information tab, you can specify an e-mail address and default e-mail message to send directly your orders to the supermarket or supplier.
The overhead cost, price information and ordering information tabs are only included in the Pro edition.
In the simplest case, you only want to create a supermarket to sort the shopping list by aisles. In this case, create a supermarket with all the items of the main database. Edit the supermarket, rename the category names with the aisle number. Then sort the supermarket by aisles by clicking on the sort button of the toolbar.
In the supermarket editor, you can:
You can also input the following information for the articles:
Important note about the article size, the selling unit and the price: The article size gives the size of one unit of the product. The selling unit must correspond to the article size. For example, the article size may be "6 x 500g" and the selling unit may be "pack". In this case, the shopping list will give the quantity to purchase in "pack" unit, each pack corresponding to 6 x 500 g. The price must correspond to one unit of the product, i.e. 6 x 500 g or one pack.
When the selling unit is known by the software, for example pound, it is possible to omit the article size, which would be "1 pound" in this case.
You import suppliers data by selecting "Import supermarket data" in the File menu. You can import data file in the following formats:
You can import the data in an existing supermarket and import it as a new supermarket.
You indicate to the software which data the columns of your file contain: article name, aisle, brand, etc. You can also ignore columns.
If you are importing for the first time, select to import as new articles. You can also select to match automatically the articles with the database of grocery items.
If you are updating the supplier data, select to update and select a column to match the original supermarket data with the data being imported. Usually, the product id and the barcode are a good choices for the matching column as they are unique. If they are not available, you can choose also the article name. When updating, you don't need to import all the data of all the columns again. You can only specified the columns you want to update, like the price column.
After importing the data, the new supermarket is opened in edit mode. You can save or discard the modifications.
When importing a supplier data for the first time, you may have to link manually the articles with the database of grocery items. This has only to be done the first time you import. You won't have to do it when updating the data.
To link an article to the main database, click on the pull-down menus of the DB Item column and select among the proposed choices. If you don't find an appropriate item, you can get another set of choices by typing a word in the field of the pull-down menu and clicking on the arrow again. By clicking on the + button next to the pull-down menu, you can also add a new grocery item to the database.
