As I mentioned in my Coupon “High” trip to Shop ‘N Save a price book is a great way to know if a sale is really a good or super sale. Today’s Thursday Tutorial will help you create a Grocery Price Book that can save you 1000′s.
A price book is a basically list of the prices for item that you frequently buy or in other words your staples. You can choose to do this in a low-tech or high-tech way. The low-tech way would be a notebook and high-tech would be a spreadsheet. You need to find what works for you and something that is easy to transport with you. Either way, the heart of it is the product page.
Each product page tracks price information for a single staple product. Down the page, you’ll list the date, store, brand, size and price, and then calculate the unit price for that product. Over time, you’ll be able to identify the best regular price, recognize special sales, and track sales for that product.
Here’s a sample product page
As you can see the sale at Shop ‘N Save on 4/3 was not really a great price at 25 cents per ounce. In fact, the every day price at Sam’s was better at 19.5 cents. The best price was at Target when they had a had a Target coupon for Market Pantry cheese. By continuing to track the prices you can learn the sales cycle (how often the great deals will come along.) This will help you know how many you need to buy until the next great sale price comes along.
Where to Get the Data
Itemized grocery store receipts are a price book’s best friend. On them, you’ll find identified and itemized lists of products you buy and use. Each time you shop, come home and enter the items in your price book using your receipts.
Store ads – These are the sales prices so they work great for Price Books and many come right to your house in the mail. I added the Kraft Cheese from Shop ‘n Save using the grocery ad. Not only does it always tell you the price, but it also gives you the size. This is necessary to calculate the unit price
Online - I don’t usually buy cheese at Sam’s, but I was curious to see what the unit price was. I just went to Samsclub.com and entered my zip code and the item and the price at my store came up.
At the Store – Take your price book with you to the store, and if you see a deal, but don’t necessarily need it at that time, add it to your book. The benefit of getting the prices at the store, is many times the unit price will be right on the tag. This will also help you learn the sale cycle
Although this task may seem daunting, once your price book matures your item entries will slow. You will then only enter a new price if it is lower than your existing entries.
The most important thing a price book will reveal is a target price. This is a realistic, rock-bottom price goal for each item listed in your book. When you see the item at that price you know to stock up.
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My husband has an app on his iPod that tracks all this as well. We have an Aldi near us, amd use their prices as our baseline. For instance, I know their cereal runs about $1.79 a box. If I cannot get name brand cereal cheaper than that (even after sales and coupons) I just don’t get it. Aldi is a discount grocery store that sells primarily their own brand products.
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