Shopping Sessions
Maximize Your Shopping With Heima's Shopping Sessions
A Shopping Session is a tracked record of a single grocery run. Every time you tap Start Shopping on a grocery list, Heima begins recording what you pick up, which store you're in, and when the trip happened. When you're done, you can attach a receipt, match it to your items, and even move everything straight into your storage lists — all from one place.
Shopping Sessions are part of Insights and require a Heima subscription.
Starting a Session
Open any grocery list and tap the Start Shopping button at the bottom of the screen. A prompt will ask you to select a store.
Selecting a Store
Heima uses your device location to find grocery stores within roughly 250 metres. Tap the store you're heading into.
If no nearby stores are found, or if location services are unavailable, you can tap Don't Select Store to start the session anyway — without a location attached.
Tip: Selecting the correct store enables smart item sorting, which orders your list in the layout of that specific store. See the Shopping List guide for details.
Once a store is selected, the session starts immediately and the list switches to shopping mode.
Shopping Mode
While a session is active, your grocery list switches to a grouped, category-sorted view. Items are organised in the order you'll encounter them in the store, so you move through your list from entrance to checkout without backtracking.
Picking Items
Tap an item to mark it as picked. For items with a quantity greater than one, a dialog appears asking how much you actually picked — useful if you could only find part of what you needed.
Tap a picked item again to unmark it.
Shake your phone to undo the last picked item if you tapped one by mistake.
Sorting Options
While shopping, tap the sort icon in the top-right corner to change how items are grouped:
| Mode | Description |
|---|---|
| Smart Sort | Sorted by store layout, learned from real shopping patterns. |
| Simple Sort | Alphabetical by category. |
| Manual Order | The order you arranged items yourself in edit mode. |
| No Categories | A flat list with no groupings. |
Ending a Session
Tap End Shopping when you're done. A short celebration animation plays.
If you have a club card registered for the store you visited, it is displayed automatically so you can scan it at the register before you leave.
Viewing Past Sessions
All past sessions are stored in Insights → Shopping Trips. The list is sorted newest first and shows for each trip:
- Who started the session
- Date and time
- Store name
- Number of items picked
At the top of the page, a summary card shows:
- Total number of trips
- Total items purchased across all trips
- Average items per trip
Session Detail
Tap any session in the list to open the detail view.
Overview
The top section shows three key facts at a glance:
- Items — total number of items picked during the trip
- Store — where the trip took place
- Status — Open (still in progress) or Completed
Picked Items
Below the overview is a numbered list of everything picked during the trip, with the product name, description, quantity, and unit for each item.
Uploading a Receipt
Attaching a receipt is the key step that makes spending data accurate across all of Insights. Without a receipt, Heima can track what you bought but not how much you spent.
If no receipt has been uploaded yet, tap the Upload Receipt section and photograph or select your receipt from your camera roll or files. Both images and PDF files are supported.
Heima extracts the line items from the receipt automatically. This usually takes only a moment.
Matching Receipt Lines
Once a receipt is uploaded, each line needs to be linked to the corresponding picked item. Heima attempts this automatically, but you can review and correct the results.
Tap Match Receipt Lines (available in the session detail and in the top-right menu) to open the matching view.
The Matching View
A progress bar at the top shows how many of your receipt lines have been matched so far. Below it, filter tabs let you focus on specific subsets:
| Filter | Shows |
|---|---|
| All | Every line from the receipt |
| Unmatched | Lines not yet linked to a picked item |
| Direct | High-confidence automatic matches |
| Learned | Lower-confidence suggestions from previous patterns |
Each receipt line card shows:
- The text extracted from the receipt
- Quantity and price (where available)
- A colour-coded match status badge (Direct, Learned, or Unmatched)
- Which picked item it's currently matched to, or a suggestion if one exists
Accepting and Editing Matches
Accept a suggestion — if Heima has suggested a match and it looks right, tap Accept to confirm it.
Change a match — tap Match (or Change if already matched) to open a list of your picked items and choose the correct one manually.
Add a missing pick — if a receipt line doesn't correspond to any item on your list (perhaps you grabbed something extra in the store), tap Add Missing Pick to search for the product and add it as a new pick.
Clear a match — tap Clear Match on any matched line to remove the link and start over.
All changes are saved immediately. If a save fails, the previous state is restored automatically.
Adding Picked Items to Storage
After a shopping trip you can move everything you bought directly into your storage lists — freezer, refrigerator, pantry, and so on. Tap Add to Storage List from the top-right menu in the session detail.
Step 1 — Choose Storage Lists
If you haven't set up any storage lists yet, this step lets you create them quickly. Tap any of the quick-create buttons to add a Freezer, Refrigerator, Pantry, or Other list in one tap.
If you already have storage lists, this step is skipped automatically.
Step 2 — Assign Items
For each picked item you'll see:
- Item name and quantity
- Storage temperature range (if the product has this data, e.g. "–18°C to 0°C")
- Recommended storage list — Heima suggests the right location based on the product's temperature requirements and your previous patterns
- A dropdown to choose which storage list to actually put it in
- An expiry date field — pre-filled based on the product's typical shelf life from the day you bought it
- Skip — exclude this item from the storage update
Adjust any assignments, then tap Done. A progress dialog counts through each item as it's saved.
Tip: Shelf life and temperature data comes from Heima's product database. The more you scan barcodes when adding items to your list, the more accurate these suggestions become.
Adding Picked Items to a Grocery List
If you want to repeat a shopping trip or carry items over to your next list, tap Add to Grocery List from the top-right menu. A dialog lets you choose which list to add the items to, and you can select or deselect individual items before confirming.
Tips for Getting the Most Out of Sessions
- Always select a store when starting — it unlocks smart sorting and populates your session with location data.
- Upload the receipt while you're still in the store or in the car, before it gets crumpled or lost.
- Review receipt matching after every trip — the more corrections you make, the better Heima gets at matching automatically in the future.
- Use the storage wizard after big weekly shops to keep your pantry tracking accurate and get timely reminders before items expire.
- Check the Sessions list in Insights periodically to spot spending trends — the overview page uses session data to power all the charts and store rankings.
