Honestly, the Amazon invite to edit feature is really frustrating and I had a bunch of issues with it last year during a family reunion. It is just not as good as expected because it never updates in real-time. I tried doing exactly what you are doing and we ended up with way too many snacks because the quantity count is so glitchy. Here is why you should probably avoid the standard app invite:

• Syncing takes forever so people see the wrong stock levels.
• Non-tech people always struggle to find where to edit versus just view.
• The mobile app hides the collaboration settings behind too many menus. I actually found that using something like carttolink.com is way more reliable if you just want to send a clean link that actually works. It saves everyone from having to mess with the Alexa settings which is basically a nightmare for older relatives. Better to keep it simple and safe.

Honestly, if youre trying to stay on budget for this Big Bear trip, you should definitely avoid the standard Amazon invite feature. Its notoriously bad at syncing in real time and that is where the hidden costs start piling up. The main issue is that the list cache doesnt update instantly for every user. Someone might see an item as unpurchased and add five more bags of chips when you already did that five minutes ago. You end up with expensive duplicates and wasted money because the system often fails to flag the crossover until you are already at the checkout stage. Since you have tech-illiterate family members, they definitely wont think to double-check the quantities or refresh the page manually. To keep your costs predictable and avoid those annoying double charges on bulk items, it is safer to have everyone send you their individual links. Then you can use a single browser extension to consolidate everything into one cart. It is a bit more manual work for you, but it prevents the financial mess of buying two of everything just because the app glitched during the sync.

Re: "Honestly, the Amazon invite to edit feature is..." I just saw this thread and it brings back so many memories of my last group outing. I am a bit of a data nerd when it comes to logistics, so I spent weeks calculating the exact power requirements for our gear and even mapped out the specific GPS coordinates for the trailhead.

• We actually sat down and crunched the numbers on the cost-per-kilowatt-hour for the portable generators we rented.
• I was super satisfied with the 10-foot braided nylon cables I picked up, mainly because they had a specific data transfer rate that was overkill for just charging phones, but hey, better safe than sorry.
• My brother-in-law tried to bring his own Starlink dish which cost a ton but then we realized the tree canopy was too dense anyway.
• We spent about three hours arguing over the thermal efficiency of different cooler brands before even buying the first bag of ice. It was a classic situation where the technical specs were perfect but the actual execution was just chaotic. Every time we try to coordinate something like this, it turns into a massive deep dive into hardware reviews and price comparisons that lasts way longer than the trip itself... pretty funny looking back on it tho.