Home inventory

Questions people actually ask

Why do I need a home inventory?

Because after a fire, flood or burglary, your insurer pays for what you can document, and memory under stress is a terrible documentarian — most people cannot list a tenth of what one room held. An inventory made in an afternoon of walking the house turns the worst week of your life into paperwork instead of arguments. It is also the only way to know whether your coverage limit actually covers what you own.

What should I record for each item?

What claims settle on: the item, where it lives, brand, model, serial number, purchase date, what you paid, and what replacing it costs today. Serial numbers matter most for electronics and tools — they turn “a laptop” into a specific, payable line and help police identify recovered property. The quick-add row takes the essentials; open any item to fill in the rest.

What is Coverage C and how much personal property coverage do I have?

Coverage C is the personal-property section of a homeowners policy — typically set at 50–70% of your dwelling coverage, and about which most people know nothing until they claim. Find the number on your declarations page, enter it here, and the tool shows your documented total against it. If what you own exceeds the limit, that conversation with your insurer is worth having before the loss, not after.

What are special sub-limits?

Standard policies cap theft payouts in certain categories regardless of your overall limit — jewelry around $1,500 and firearms around $2,500 are typical, with figures varying by insurer. The tool flags categories where your documented value commonly outruns those caps. The fix is “scheduling” the item: a rider listing it specifically, usually requiring an appraisal — exactly the document this inventory prepares you to request.

Replacement cost or actual cash value — which do I record?

Record replacement cost: what buying the item new today costs, which is what a replacement-cost policy pays. Actual-cash-value policies subtract depreciation, and the adjuster computes that — you cannot, usefully. The tool prefers replacement cost and falls back to price paid, and marks items with neither so the schedule has no silent holes.

What about photos and receipts?

Keep them — in your own cloud folder, photographed room by room. This tool deliberately holds only the structured record: a list of your valuables with serial numbers is exactly the data that should never sit on someone else’s server, so it stays in your browser (or syncs to your own account if you sign in). Use each item’s notes field to say where its photos and receipts live, and export the CSV yearly to keep with them.