Let It Shop: A Shopping List That Does The Math

Summary 8/10

A beautiful and handy shopping list app for Android that helps you calculate the value of your purchases.

• Let It Shop  |  
• Free  |  
• Jrk

As a frequent shopper, I often find myself buying more than what I really need — and spending more than I intended. That led me to look for an app that does the math as I do my purchases so I can stick to a strict budget and, at the same time, stop guessing how much I need to pay at the checkout counter.

Let It Shop proved to be just the app I was looking for. Below, I will show you how it stands out from all other shopping list apps I’ve tried so far.

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Let It Shop is not just an app for making lists, but it also lets you enter the price for each item, adding everything up and giving a total amount — all from an attractive user interface that is easy to understand.

Your First Shopping List

The app is designed so that data entry is as quick and easy as possible. To start adding items in a list, you simply need to tap in the text box where it says “I need to buy something”. Common items can be selected from a drop-down list, but it will let you enter anything that’s not on the list. This also opens up two more fields for adding item price and quantity. Preset units of measurements include pounds, ounces and kilograms.

Adding new items with price and quantity

You can tap the list icon beside the text field for a list of frequently used items. Then, you tick the items you want to add to your current list and tap the Add button below.

Pull up a list of frequently used items

Once you have all your items listed, the total is displayed on the bottom. Quickly tap on items to cross them off or hold them down to enable multiple selections. Multiple selections also show a total only for the selected items, in addition to moving them to another list.

Select multiple items and get their total

The total bar on the bottom can be tapped to switch to Cart view — which shows only the total amount of crossed off items.

Cart view shows separate total for crossed off items

You don’t necessarily have to add prices to each item right away. If you wish to add them at a later time, you can always tap the blank box to the right of the item name and enter the price and/or the quantity on the pop up window.

Multiple Lists

Another great feature is the ability to make different sets of lists and moving items between them. The app opens with a default list labeled Let It Shop. To make a new list, swipe the page to the left. You can then click the header to give your list a name. Once you have more than one list, moving items between them can be done by holding down one or several items and clicking the Move button on the bottom. To view your lists, simply swipe left or right. The phone’s Menu key lets you remove lists, or clear items off of it.

Creating a new list

Settings and Other Features

The app’s Settings menu is where you can change the currency and its symbol placement before or after the amount. You can also change the measurement unit from English to European, add new quantity units, and choose whether a new item goes on top or bottom of the list when added. There is also an option to keep the screen on when using the app, which overrides the screen timeout settings for your device.

Settings page

Let It Shop is ad-supported, but you can purchase an ad-free version from this page.

One Flaw

A lot of thought has been given to the creation of this app, but there are some simple features it seemed to have left out. For instance, there is no option to delete individual items when selecting them. You can either move them to another list, or edit them. The only way to delete an item would be to cross it off and choose to remove crossed off items from the Menu key. While this may be a viable workaround, it doesn’t seem to be an obvious solution.

Conclusion

Out of all the apps that offer item cost calculation, Let It Shop won me over. The interface is easy to navigate. It’s simple enough for me to work quickly in a bustling grocery store, and advanced enough to accomodate all my listing needs. I like the ease of being able to view separate lists by swiping — just like you would when using a notebook. I also like that it remembers frequently used items to cut down on repetitive typing.

It’s not perfect, and it does have a few weird quirks, but it is by far the most efficient shopping list app I’ve come across. I strongly recommend it to anyone who wants to track how much goes into their shopping, or those who want to make a list and stick to it. The app has been updated twice since I started using it, and I can see that both those updates have improved it considerably — both in terms of user interface and functionality. With more work, Let It Shop can emerge as one of the most usable, feature-rich shopping lists for Android.