Flyer previews and start-day planning: use the early look without betting the shop on it
Yes, next week’s flyer can often be read before it starts, and no, that early look is not guaranteed for your store. Flipp’s own help centre puts upcoming flyers in a preview spot inside the app, describes them as sales that go live in-store in the next couple of days, and then adds the sentence planning guides leave out: upcoming flyers are not available for all stores on Flipp (s1, s2). Everything useful about previews sits between those two facts. What follows is a planning procedure built only on what the sources support, no universal start day, no promised preview lead time, and no stock guarantee.
Two flyers on the table at once
The preview’s value is comparison, not clairvoyance. For a few days each cycle, the current flyer and the upcoming flyer overlap as documents, and the household can price the same staples against both.
| Current flyer | Upcoming preview | |
|---|---|---|
| Status | Live in store now | Preview ads for sales going live in the next couple of days (s2) |
| Best use | This week’s shop, at prices that can be paid today | Hold-or-buy decisions: defer a full-price staple the preview shows on sale, or buy now if it does not (s1) |
| Date check | Confirm it has not entered its final days | Confirm the valid date at the top of the flyer before planning around it (s1) |
| Risk | Stock thins as the cycle ends | May update after first publication, and is not available for every store (s1, s3) |
Read the table as a division of labour. The current flyer decides what gets bought this week. The preview decides only two things: what waits, and what the start-day list looks like. A preview never decides what gets eaten this week, because its prices cannot be paid yet.
Where previews actually live
Flipp’s help centre gives the route exactly, in both of its browsing pages. Select the Browse tab, then click the Latest page; upcoming flyers appear toward the top of that page under “Upcoming,” with “New Today” and “New This Week” flyers further down (s1). The Browse view itself sorts flyers near your location into categories such as Groceries, Home and Garden, Electronics, and Pharmacy, and the Latest selection is where the most recently added ads sit alongside the preview ads (s2). The Favourites heart and the A, Z store list are the two shortcuts the same page offers when a regular store is hard to find (s2).
Dates need one deliberate check. If the valid date is not obvious, the words “new,” “preview,” or “until tomorrow” under the store name are the first clue, and clicking into the flyer shows the valid date at the top of the screen (s1). Planning from a preview whose dates were assumed rather than opened is the most common way the early look goes wrong.
The preview planning procedure
- Open the preview on planning day. Browse, then Latest, then the Upcoming section, for each regular store, accepting that some stores will simply not be there (s1, s2).
- Confirm the valid dates at the top of the flyer. Note the start date, and scan for any page-level or weekend dates inside that differ from the headline period (s1, s3).
- Make the hold-or-buy calls. For every staple on this week’s list, the preview answers one question: buy at this week’s price, or hold because the item appears in the upcoming flyer. Write the call on the list itself.
- Draft the start-day list with a fallback per anchor. Beside each preview item the trip depends on, write the substitute. A flyer is a promotional document, not a live inventory system, and “while quantities last” means stock is not promised (s3).
- Re-open the live flyer before travelling. A digital flyer may update after it is first published, so if the trip depends on one item, reopen the current official flyer before leaving and keep the substitute in mind (s3).
What success looks like: the current week’s list carries a written hold-or-buy call for every staple, the start-day list carries a fallback for every anchor item, and no trip is ever made on the strength of a preview that was not re-checked once live.
When there is no preview for your store
The missing preview is information too. Flipp states plainly that upcoming flyers are not available for all stores (s1), so a store absent from Upcoming is not a broken app or a missed setting, it is that store’s normal state in the app, and the planning procedure degrades gracefully: the current flyer still governs this week, the hold-or-buy calls simply cannot be made, and staples default to buy-at-need rather than buy-on-a-guess. What never fills the gap is a third-party promise about when a preview “usually” appears; this procedure uses the preview when it exists and plans honestly when it does not.
Start day itself then becomes an ordinary shopping day with a better list: anchors first, while the widest stock of the new cycle is on the shelf, fallbacks already written, and the rest of the basket filled at the current prices the flyer actually promises. The early look was never the saving. The decisions it allowed, made two days calmer than usual, are.
General information only, not financial advice. App steps and preview availability are from Flipp’s help centre, checked Nov 1, 2026, and can change with app updates; flyer dates and stock vary by store and region.
, Penny Hughes, Money Writer. Saving Desk