A lot has changed around here since I first started Southern Savers in 2008.  Not only do I have a few more gray hairs, but we’ve grown up and added a number of new features over the years.  I thought January would be a great time to go through some of those features for any of you getting back on the grocery savings train, or for everyone else that is new.

With all of these features I’m always open for suggestions on more things or changes to what we already have, so if something could be better email me at jenny@southernsavers.com.

First off you need to create an account to take full advantage of everything around here.  At the top of the site you’ll see buttons to login or create a new account, so start there.  After you create your account make sure you edit your profile to tell the system what stores you are willing to shop at and what newspaper you get.  Entering this information tailors your shopping lists to only show the coupons that came in your newspaper on your shopping lists, and also only returns your stores in the item search (more about that below).

Saving Your Shopping List
You can create one list for a store and save multiple lists of deals to it, you could even create a list to price match at another store and merge numerous lists all into one.

If you want to add your items to an existing list, then select a saved list you’ve already made from the drop down.  Want to make a new list?  Just type in whatever name makes you happy and click the “add to list” button.

Show Only Your Local Coupons
My favorite feature by far is using all of our regional coupon data (thanks to amazing volunteers) to change your list to only show the coupons you have in your paper!!  To make this feature work you need to make sure that you have a newspaper (or papers) selected in your profile.

Right now we have 27 newspapers covered weekly by volunteers.  If you don’t see your paper in the list, pick the city closest to you.  Another tip: look on the spine of your coupon insert and see if other cities are listed.  You may find that your insert is really the same as another area.  If you want your area covered all it takes is a consistent volunteer, just email me (jenny@southernsavers.com) and I’ll give you all the details.

Once you have a newspaper selected under your profile, now when you are looking at your shopping list select the box above and any coupon that wasn’t in your paper goes away.  How nice is that??  No more searching an insert only to find the coupons not there!!

 Savings Tracker
After you are done shopping, come home and enter a few numbers off your receipt.  Week by week you’ll see how much you’ve saved, plus a breakdown of what the savings was from sales and coupons.  If you are a social butterfly, you can also share that savings on Facebook and Twitter after you track it.

Item Search
While the goal is to only buy things when they are on sale and ever “need” anything… that doesn’t always happen.  Your best friend will be the item search.  Click on the blue button on the right hand side of the site and type in anything you need right now.  The search will show you every store that has that item or brand on sale this week.  This is another item that works best if you have entered into your profile what stores you shop at.  Without entering store information in your profile, the item search will show all deals for an item for any store on Southern Savers.

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