Your Complete Guide on How to Use Ibotta

Disclaimer: Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. If you make a purchase using one of these links, I will earn a commission at no additional cost to you.

So you read my article about the three best couponing apps out to download and decided to give Ibotta a try. But now what?! You’re diving into the unknown world of rebate apps and you have no idea where to start!

That’s okay – that’s why I’m here. Follow this complete guide on how to use Ibotta before you head to the grocery store.

Getting started

After downloading the Ibotta app, the first thing you want to do is make an account with your email and a password.

Once you are in the account, go ahead and fill out the details it asks for like name and birth date.

If you enter code ABHYMGD, you earn $10 after redeeming your first receipt!

Ibotta does have a “How to Use Ibotta” guide of their own, so you can take a few minutes to look at that. To me, it was quite confusing so that’s why I decided to create a separate, step by step, guide.

Once your account is set up and you’ve (potentially) read through their guide – it’s time to get into the important stuff!

Choose your Favorites

You don’t have to choose favorites, but it is helpful if you continually shop at the same stores. By choosing favorites and adding them to your favorites bar (which I’ll explain later) you won’t have to dig for them every time you need to look for offers.

In order to search for retailers, you will go to the home screen and scroll down to the “Shop by Category” section.

Click “Grocery” to find your most frequently visited grocery stores.

You can sort the list by clicked the sorting button on the top right,

then changing it to sort alphabetically, forwards or backwards.

If you’re someone who does a lot of online shopping, go into the “online shopping” category and find your favorite online retailers, such as Chewy or HelloFresh.

For any store that does both brick and mortar as well as online shopping, you would be able to find them in both categories. If a retailer offers both physical and online shopping, such as CVS, both options will show up in your favorites bar and you will be asked how you are shopping every time you click on that retailer.

In order to add a retailer to your favorites bar, you will click the little heart on the right-hand side.

When the heart is red, that means it is now a part of your favorites.

So, what is this “favorites bar” that I keep mentioning? If you go back to your home screen, you will see all those retailers you just chose listed at the top of your screen, under the word “Favorites”.

And voila! All the places you normally shop at are right at your fingertips.

How to Find and Add offers

So, you’ve added all your favorites. Step 1 = complete!

But how do you actually get cash back from Ibotta? The first way is to redeem offers, but first you have to find and add them to your queue.

First step is to open the retailer you want by clicking the icon.

Then you will search through all the offers available for that store.

To add them to your queue, you just click the little plus sign on the bottom right of the offer.

If you need to know what offers you have added, click the three little lines in the bubble on the bottom right of your screen.

How to Read Offer Details

It is important that you read the fine print on an offer before you go and buy a bunch of products.

So let’s break it down:

• Amount back – The “$X.XX back” is the amount you would receive back per item.
• Limit X – Some offers will have a limit on how many offers you can redeem. Typically, if you don’t see the gray box that says “Limit X”, then you can only redeem the offer once.
• Must buy X – Some offers will say that you have to buy a certain number of items in order to receive the cash back.
• Offer valid on X – The offer will tell you exactly what products it is valid on. Sometimes, only certain sizes or flavors are available for the rebate.
• Check product barcode – This button allows you to open up your camera and scan the barcode on the item to check if it is available for the rebate. You will get a green check mark if it is available and a red X if it is not. (Note: I ALWAYS use this feature before I buy anything because I know I can miss something in the fine print)

How to Redeem Offers

In order to redeem offers, you need to submit your receipt to Ibotta. There are two ways to do this.

The first way is to click the retailer icon and then click submit receipt.

You can also click “redeem” from the home page and then choose which store you are redeeming a receipt from.

You will then take pictures of your receipt, making sure to capture the date, total, store, and all the items.

If you have a long receipt that can’t be captured in one picture, click the “Long Receipt? Add section” button and just keep taking pictures until you’ve captured the whole receipt. Ibotta will let you know when all the necessary information has been captured.

Ibotta will then search your receipt for any added offers and add the necessary cash back to your account.

If Ibotta does not find your offer but you know it’s there, you can easily add it by clicking “add more offers” and then selecting the offers you want. You will just have to scan the barcode of the items.

Once everything has been scanned and added, you will click “Redeem $X.XX for X offers” to have the cash back sent to your account. It could take a few hours, or days, to hit your account.

When you have earned cash back, you will get a notification in the top right corner of your home screen. The little bell will have a red number over it, which indicates a notification.

In my experience, Ibotta sometimes doesn’t like it when you try to add offers it didn’t find itself. If you do happen to notice that you were shorted cash back because of that, contact Ibotta Customer Support and they will respond within 24 hours. They have an excellent customer support team and I have always been extremely satisfied with the service.

Bonuses

Another way Ibotta offers cash back is in the form of bonuses. There are two types.

Brand bonuses

Brands will offer you a bonus for buying multiple, different products from that brand.
For example, if you buy one Cracker Barrel cheese block and one Cracker Barrel cheese snack, you can earn an extra bonus for buying two separate products from the same brand.

Both products have to have their own rebates in order to count for the bonus

Multiple Offer Bonuses

Ibotta will give you a bonus for redeeming multiple offers.
For example, if you redeem ten unique offers, you will get an extra $5.

Read the fine print. Sometimes you can buy gift cards to count towards these offers or redeem “any item” offers for them, but sometimes you can’t.

To find all available bonuses, click on the “Bonuses” tab on your home screen.

Gift Cards

Ibotta has a feature where you can get cash back for buying gift cards through the app. These gift cards can be used online or in store.

For example, you could earn 5% cash back for buying an Old Navy gift card. If you buy $100 Old Navy Gift card, you earn $5 back.

To see the full list of participating retailers, go to the “Gift Card” section under “Shop by Category” on your home screen.

Online Shopping

Ibotta will also give you cash back for shopping at certain online retailers. All you have to do is go to the “Online Shopping” section under “Shop by Category” on your home screen, click on the retailer you want, and click the “Shop” button at the bottom of the screen.

After hitting the “shop” button and being directed to the retailer website, do not go to any other website or app before completing your purchase. Once your purchase is complete, the retailer will communicate with Ibotta and you will earn cash back. Seeing this cash back usually takes a few days longer than redeeming normal offers.

Pro tip: You can combine your gift card purchase with an online shopping purchase. So, you buy a gift card and earn cash back from that transaction, then shop through Ibotta to purchase the item, use the purchased gift card, and receive cash back from that transaction. Double dipping!

How to Get your Cash

When you redeem offers, Ibotta will store your cash back in your Ibotta account. To move it out of that account, you have a few options:

1. PayPal – You can link your PayPal account and transfer the money into it.
2. Bank Account – You can link your bank account and transfer the money directly into it.
3. Gift Cards – You can redeem your Ibotta balance for gift cards.

To access your Ibotta account, you will go to “Account” on the bottom right-hand corner of your home screen.

Once you are in your account, you will see your account balance.

To move it out, click “withdraw earnings” and select the way in which you’d like to withdraw it. You will have to add your PayPal or bank account information if you choose to go that route.

It will usually take 24 to 48 hours for the cash to be transferred to your PayPal or bank account.

Ibotta is a great app that you can use anywhere as long as you have your phone and a connection. This means that you can earn cash back while sitting at your kid’s soccer game or on the way to the beach (as long as you’re not driving, of course).

Maybe you heard about Ibotta through my article, or maybe you heard a commercial for it somewhere. Either way, you decided to give it a try in order to enhance your savings, but you got lost in the world of the unknown.

By using this complete guide on how to use Ibotta, you have a starting point and a base knowledge in order to maximize your next grocery run.

With anything else, as you continuously use Ibotta, you will learn new things and get more efficient at the process.

Are there any tips and tricks you learned while using Ibotta? Even with all the years I’ve been using it, I’m sure I don’t know all the secrets. If there’s something you found that I left out of my guide, leave me a comment! I am always looking to improve my saving skills.

Thanks for reading my complete guide on how to use Ibotta!

Happy saving everyone!