Scan & Go

So I have something new to share Matt and I have tried out. We have been doing most of our shopping at Walmart. Normally, I prefer not to go there just because. I like smaller grocery stores, and if I could live at Target I would. So going to Walmart ruins this for me. Nevertheless, we still shop at Walmart. We usually go on Sundays and it is so busy and they NEVER have enough checkers. We would stand in line for over 10 minutes sometimes. It is ridiculous. So one day as we were impatiently waiting in line, we discussed how cool it would be if you could just scan your groceries on your smartphone and then just pay on your phone or as you walk out it could calculate everything you bought. We thought it was our idea was genius and would be our ticket to not working for the rest of our lives. Well apparently Walmart beat us to it because it already exists!!! So you can't just walk out, but everything else is basically the same. And seriously, we probably would have never actually made the app so thank you Walmart. Let me explain all the features to you.

List

We started just using the list feature which allows you to build your list and then check off items as you go. It is a big upgrade compared to my hand written list I prefer to write! And if you take extra time to type in the exact name of the product it can show you the price. You can also tag items as favorites for those weekly items so you can add them quickly-i.e. milk, orange juice, grape nuts and tortillas for us. According to the app store you can also speak or scan the items to make your favorites. I still type mine.

Store mode

Once you get to your store you click to enter store mode. 

Once you find the item you want, scan the item, 

put it in your reusable shopping bag, and you're done! It's so simple! It also keeps a running total so for all of your budgeting families, you can help keep yourself on track. Once you have all of your items you head to the self check out stations. You have to make sure there is a sign above the self checkout stand that says Scan & Go, I think all of the checkout stands at our store has them. However, also if you are using cash like we do (I know no one else will probably have to worry about this) make sure you pick a machine that accepts cash.

We could not get the weight machine to print out the receipt for the few produce items we bought so we still had to scan those in. However, the self check outs have become much more user friendly in scanning produce items.

Other features

There are multiple tabs on the app including a cart for online and it tracks your eReceipts. The eReceipts are nice because it keeps track of all the receipts in store so if I ever need to return anything, it will be right there.

Features we have not yet used

There are some other features that sound really cool, but we have not figured out how to use them yet. The app store says you can check to see if items are in stock in your store, find items by using aisle location, and find the price of item. They all sound great, but we haven't taken enough time to find these features yet.

 Nevertheless, we think it is great because it saves us significant time and helps us stay on budget. The only downfall is that I didn't use reusable shopping bags before so I sometimes forget to bring those into the store. But when I remember, it works great! The app store says there are currently Scan & Go stations in Arkansas, Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, Nebraska and Oklahoma so go check it out! Let me know what you think of it.

(Disclaimer: I stole all these pictures off Google images. Those were not our hands. Also we have no way of taking a picture of my smartphone.)