Grab Your Phone! The Box Tops for Education Program is Going Digital

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Lucky Charms cereal with new Box tops for Educaition label

No more baggies and scissors! Box Tops are going high tech!

The Box Tops for Education program is going digital with a new mobile app which will allow parents to scan their store receipt and earn money for their kiddo’s school!

woman holding lots of Box Tops for Education in baggie

To earn Box Tops, just purchase products with the new Box Tops label, scan your receipt with the new Box Tops app (for iTunes or Google Play) and earn 10¢ per participating product.

After the receipt is scanned, money will automatically be added to your school’s earnings online. Note that your receipts must be scanned within 14 days of purchase but you can scan 50 receipts per day, per registered account.

The mobile app will also allow you to track your contributions as well as your school’s running total. Pretty cool!

man holding cell phone with Box Tops for Education logo on the screen

Here’s how it works:

  • Download the new Box Tops App (iTunes or Google Play) – it’s free
  • Create a username and connect it to your child’s school
  • Scan your grocery store receipt
  • Items with the new Box Tops label will be automatically credited to your school

Prefer to shop online?

General Mills is currently working on the functionality of the app to accept electronic receipts for Box Tops redemption and hopes to have it up and running by the end of this summer.


Send the kiddos back to school in style with these cute Cat & Jack shoes!

Join The Discussion

Comments 119

  1. Paul

    Tried my first one – didn’t recognize Cocoa Puffs which was plain as day. Annoying.
    My mom had a fried who collected the boxtops for my daughter – can’t do that anymore.
    So far I’m not a fan.

  2. Barb

    I would rather just cut them off. I had a long receipt and it was really difficult to scan. Not sure it even worked since it kept telling me to start again. Probably will delete the app and just not participate in the program

  3. Ryan

    Seems like the whole point of this new app is to not pay out anything. Won’t scan my receipt. So now we get nothing. Awesome.

    • Hannah

      I don’t like this idea, you have 14 days to scan your receipt but the box tops don’t expire so say I am busy and can’t now those box tops are no good. Plus not everyone wants more apps on their phones and not everyone has a phone. Don’t like this idea. It should be an option. Like they still put the box tops on the products you can either scan or clip.

  4. Cheryl Bergeron

    I’m not a fan. I know alot of products stopped having box tops in recent years and now this, it seems like they want to end it completely. Also, my child’s school gives incentives to the class with the most each month. There is no way to track that now.

  5. mel

    Can we still send in boxtops that we have already collected before this went digital.
    I agree with comments above.

  6. Valerie

    I dont like it! Too many rules….scan your receipt, scan the box tops, all within 14 days. I believe this means parents will find it too time consuming and just not do it! This will mean less box tops for our schools!

  7. Susannah Brink

    I downloaded the app and read the privacy agreement. Oh my goodness, I’m allowing them to track everything I do… the websites I visit, the purchases I make, my behavioral patterns… so I had to decline. It’s abnormally invasive. I enjoyed clipping box tops and the kids loved to glue them to a sheet and proudly bring them to school, so this takes the fun right out of it. I believe this is a bad idea that will produce a decline in box tops for our schools.

    • sarah

      ditto! i tried to send my opinion to general mills (btfe.com) about this and the comment page didnt even work (imagine that). data mining & privacy invasion at its finest and im tired of it all. i will donate DIRECTLY to the schools or PTA from now on & encourage everyone to do the same. i honestly think the program is just a tax writeoff for general mills & nothing innocent or genuine about it.

  8. Barbara

    I do not like this at all. The kids are taken out of the process all together. I live in a different town than my grandkids. So I save the box tops for them and they know where I keep them. So when they visit they always count them and are over joyed at how many they get for their school.

  9. Scott

    I opt for digital receipts which don’t scan very well. Guess we are done with box tops.

  10. TFletch

    I won’t be participating, and neither will my parents or their friends. I’m not willing to share my purchase history so I can be targeted with marketing campaigns and my parents are older and don’t use smart phones. I agree with others who’ve stated this is being done purposely to reduce participation; it’s working.

  11. Regina Francis

    I have the same feeling as most of these comments that I’m seeing. I DON’T LIKE THIS! What was so hard about cutting them off the product container? Why change something that works well. With this kind of effort as busy as we already are, I won’t bother. And since both of my kids are soon to be out of school, you’re doing nothing but hurting the schools. I have been continuing to contribute these to my kid’s schools even though they are done with school. Have some empathy for busy parents. What was require before worked just fine. If you’re going to try to update to a digital option, make it an option and not a requirement. Don’t put time restrictions that didn’t exist with the process before. Receipts are lost all the time, and they have poor printing that (as I’ve seen in other comments) will make it difficult to impossible to scan. This is just annoying. We have enough to worry about and you’re taking away our satisfaction to help the public school programs that are so messed up and inadequate in this country. Oh well. And all my time spent on these comments was probably a waste too.

  12. Anita

    I have 3 plus pages full of coupons I have collected. What shall I do with them?

    • celticmommie

      Anita, they are still being collected 🙂

  13. Brenda Clark

    Totally ridiculous, I have 3 grandkids that save these & love getting them from me in the mail. Now you have spoiled it for them & DO NOT post your generic comment like you have on facebook.

  14. Nat

    This is just dirty.
    Lets face it, this just a way for company to not have to spend as much on donations anymore and still pretend like they’re doing good. “Oh its not our fault schools don’t get as much money anymore, it’s the parents for not going PAPERLESS!” (Even though the same amount of paper is still being used)
    They get to charge that extra .10 cents on each box with the now added benefit of knowing that not all parents are going to be scanning their recipes. Not to mention a lot of stores are going recipe-less and this just takes the fun out of it for the kids. No kids wants digital points on their parents phone. They want something they can see and turn in.
    Looks like I’m going back to the generic brands. I’m not paying more if there is no benefit to it. I’ll just donate directly to the school.

  15. Natalie

    Does this work yet with digital receipts? I can’t figure that out.

    • Amber (Hip Sidekick)

      It looks like right now, this requires an image of a physical receipt. Hope this helps!

  16. Angela Vincent

    I think this can work if BTFE or someone can find incentives or contest out there that may get parents to focus on scanning their receipts for the benefit of their children. We’ve had competitions between classes, ice cream parties, spinning wheels for prizes, etc. We are totally blank on contests or incentives for students who do participate. They should be rewarded for their participation. If anyone has suggestions please help.

  17. Lisa

    It is IMPOSSIBLE to scan long receipts. Does not work. Waste of time. I will no longer participate unless I come across a product that still reflects an actual box top stamp to “clip”.

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