Home inventory questions, answered

A home inventory is a list of what you own, recorded in enough detail to prove you had each item and to put a value on it: what it is, the make and model, the serial number if it has one, when you bought it, what you paid, and a photograph. People make one so that, after a fire, theft or flood, they can hand their insurer a complete list instead of rebuilding it from memory.

Typing every item by hand is the slow part: three hundred items takes about seven hours, which is why most people stop after a room or two. Scanning barcodes and serial labels removes most of the typing. Starting with electronics, jewelry, tools and appliances covers the items most likely to matter in a claim.

For each item: what it is, the make and model, the serial number, where it is, when you bought it and what you paid, what it would cost to replace today, and a photograph of the item and of its label. Receipts, manuals and warranties help too, or a photo of each.

Insurers do not usually require one to sell you a policy, but a claim works the same way for a renter as for an owner: you list what you lost and show that you owned it. A landlord's policy covers the building, not your belongings, so a list made in advance is what makes that claim quick.

Actual cash value is what an item was worth at the time of the loss: roughly the cost to replace it minus depreciation for age and wear. Replacement cost is what it costs to buy a comparable new one today. A five-year-old television that would cost $900 to replace might be valued at only a few hundred dollars after depreciation. Many policies pay actual cash value for belongings unless replacement-cost coverage was added, so check which one yours pays.

Somewhere a fire cannot reach. A list kept only on a laptop in the house is lost with the house, so keep a copy elsewhere: cloud storage you control, an email to yourself, or a printed copy with a relative. Make sure you could get to it from a borrowed phone.

Add large purchases when you make them, and look over the whole list once a year, at your policy renewal. Compare the total with the personal property limit on your policy; that comparison is how many people find out they are underinsured.

No. Your inventory is stored on your phone in an encrypted database, and backups are encrypted on the device before they are uploaded, using a key we never receive. There is no page on this website that can show you your items, because we hold no readable copy of them.

Subscriptions and account settings, and telling you when your last backup ran and roughly how large it is. It will never display the contents of your inventory.

Barcodes and ordinary label text are read entirely on your phone at no cost. When a label defeats that — etched metal, glare, very small type — you can choose smart scan, which sends that single photograph to be read more carefully. The image is processed and not retained. It is opt-in each time, and there is a setting to disable it completely.

In your own iCloud or Google Drive, using your own storage. They are encrypted before they leave your phone, so the file is unreadable to Apple, to Google, and to us.

Restore from your backup on a new phone using your recovery key, which is shown once when you set up the app. Keep it somewhere safe — a password manager is ideal. We cannot recover it for you, and an app where we could would be an app where we could also read your inventory.

You keep them. Everything you entered stays readable and exportable indefinitely, including years later on the day you actually file a claim. What stops is adding new items, smart scan, warranty and maintenance reminders, and — the one that matters most — your backup updating. It freezes as it was on the day you cancelled, so anything you add afterwards exists only on your phone.

Yes. Adding, editing, browsing, scanning barcodes and labels, and producing PDFs all work with no signal. Only cloud backup and smart scan need a connection.

The proof-of-ownership PDF contains what adjusters typically ask for: photographs, serial numbers, purchase dates and prices, and service history. It is a record you have kept rather than an appraisal, and every insurer sets its own requirements, so it is worth asking yours what they want to see.

iPhone first. Android is planned, and the backup format is built so an inventory can move between the two using your recovery key.

A spreadsheet needs you to type everything, and most people stop after a room. The scanning is the difference, and so is what comes out at the end — a document built for a claim rather than a list built for you.