One dollar here, a couple of dollars there, and what was supposed to be an inexpensive trip to the grocery store ends up costing a small fortune.

It is not uncommon to hear about bargains, but taking advantage of them is a chore we have to schedule for. Most of us don’t have time to scour through the stack of flyers or click through online retail catalogues. What ends up happening is that we just show up at the store whenever we can with our little list and wing it.

Last month, Canadian startup Grocery Alerts launched a new app, Coupon Find Canada. The app supplies a database that allows user to search for items with a discount or spontaneously look up deals for stores they are already at.

“We want to keep it simple,” said Steven Zussino, founder of GroceryAlerts.ca. “We want to show all the different categories we have coupons for on the website; beverages, snacks. And then be able to show store coupons, so if you are at Save-On-Foods or Rexall or Bulk Barn or Shoppers Drug Mart, you can just click on the coupon and show it at the counter.”

Although digitized couponing is evolving, it is still suffering from some growing pains. The public still relies heavily on the printed material, because the virtual format is still so darn hard to read.

“I don’t mind reading books or magazines on mobile devices,” said Zussino, “but flyers you need to zoom in a lot, because they are so visual.”

That is why simplicity is the key for Zussino, who stripped back all the glitz and glamour of marketing and just stuck with the essential, which is to save you some money.

Grocery Alerts has been live since 2009 and has accumulated over 22,000 email subscribers and 120,000 readers each month. Providing coupons for stores and manufactures nationwide, Grocery Alert, with its new accessible app Coupon Find Canada are hoping to expand to a wider audience.

“Our audience tends to be mothers with large families,” explains Zussino. “Usually single people and younger people don’t use a lot of coupons. But I think things are changing with all those daily deals websites. It is interesting when people say they don’t use coupons, I always find good examples of things you buy on a daily bases that you can just print off and it is pretty easy to redeem. Four or five bucks doesn’t sound like a lot, but it adds up.”

Coupon Find Canada is currently offered for iOS at the app store and in the coming weeks it will be available at Google Play store and will be compatible with Blackberry and Androids smartphones.