Regular price

The regular price is the price of the non-gluten-free version of a product, entered by the user as a comparison value. It is the second half of the pair that makes an item part of the comparable basket; the gluten-free price is on the receipt, the regular price is what the household types in.

The figure can come from a few places. The clearest source is the shelf next door: the gluten-free pasta is $5.99, the regular pasta on the next shelf is $1.99, the user types $1.99. A second source is what the household used to buy before the diagnosis, if the brand is still on the market; this works better for staple items than for specialty ones. A third source is a national-average estimate the user keeps consistent across logs; less precise but defensible if applied evenly.

What the regular-price field is not is a guess. Items where the user is genuinely unsure can be logged without a regular price; they are tracked, they show up in the Items tab on Reports, and they are excluded from the GF premium calculation until a price is filled in. Better one honest comparable than a basket inflated by approximations.

If an item has no real non-gluten-free counterpart (xanthan gum, certified GF oats, specialty mixes), the right move is to flag it GF-Only rather than leave the regular-price field blank. The flag tells Gluten Hero to count the full price as a medical expense rather than asking for a comparable that does not exist; the math change is significant.

The Items tab on the Reports page surfaces unpriced items so the household can backfill them in bulk. The Insights tab BackfillNudge banner prompts when there are enough unpriced items to make the prompt worthwhile.

For the full concept walkthrough, read Building the gluten-free vs gluten control basket.