I have been for the past week or so working on a side project to scratch my own itch. Budgeting can be a tedious task and sometime we are caught off-guard when we are out and about and just picking up one and two things in a shop. This can quickly escalate into a full on shopping spree and before you know it, you have blown your entire monthly shopping budget on a quick visit to the local supermarket.
The Problem
I have been going shopping at Costco for the past few months and every time I get to the til my budget normally doesn't match the amount of items I have added to my shopping trolley. This hasn't happened once or twice, it has happened so many times that I have lost count. Just before you start saying this only happens to people who don't have a shopping list (to-do list) at hand, that's not true as I have been more than prepared with a shopping list more than once and the til results still shock me.
The Analysis
In light of this I decided one day that it would be good if I could capture the pricing label of each item I pick and have a running calculation as I go on shopping, this way no surprises when I get to the til, I would know exactly the amount of money I am about to spend before I even get to the point of checking out. I mean we have this when we do online shopping so why not have this in the physical space too? Here in the UK where I am most of the major supermarkets have their own proprietary devices to scan as you shop, but these are specific to each supermarket and you don't own these so you have no way of reviewing (besides the receipt, which most of us throw away) what you have bought and even compare prices (not a feature as yet, but planned for the future especially since your device would already hold this data). On the other side, smaller supermarkets, wholesalers and even mini version of the major supermarkets don't have these devices. This led me to start working on something that is on a device you use in your everyday life, I mean it has all the technology it needs to get this app working.
The Solution
AI has come a long way and now we have the tools at hand to build out our dream solutions in a day(s)/week(s). I knew what problem I was trying to solve so this made it easier to have a chat with AI to outline the features I wanted. This has led to the Trolay web app, it requires no downloading of an app from the App Store or Play store, it works on most modern devices and the best thing of all is that your data is truly yours. I wanted this as a tool I would use on a daily basis, even if I pop into the shop and pick up just 3 items, I want to quickly launch the tool and get results before I get to the til. It might not be perfect at the moment but I and other have been testing it and it is a step in the right direction for the problem I'm trying to solve for myself and hopefully others too. I won't go into outlining all the features here as they are outlined on the website, but the ones I want to mention is that it works offline (for those shops where there is no internet signal), it doesn't require an account (although you can set one up using passkey if you want to use the sync and partner feature) and it has many more features which I will leave in the video below showcasing some of them.