Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Macintosh, Freeware
Home Inventory: track your belongings, have peace of mind
by Todd Ritter Jul 23rd 2008 at 10:00AM
Home Inventory is a free program for Windows or Mac that lets you create a home inventory complete with product photo and receipt scan. A home inventory is an important protective measure for any home owner, renter, or insurance-policy holder as it can be invaluable in times of disaster to help prove to a claims adjuster that you really did have a 50" wall-mounted plasma TV.The program is easy to use: create rooms to organize your stuff and then add items to each room. For items, you can add information like purchase price/location, serial number, make, and model. You should also add a picture of the item in your house (not just from the manufacturer website), and a scanned receipt proving you paid for the item.
You can print your entire inventory room by room, export to .csv, or save to the Vault24 service (a secure, offiste backup service offered by the makers of Home Inventory). If, for instance, a fire takes your home (and you've been good and backed up your Home Inventory files offsite), you can make life easy for yourself and the insurance people by providing them a complete, organized inventory of all of your significant belongings.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
John said 10:53AM on 7-23-2008
This would have been a real boon when my house was struck by lightning.
It should be noted that many insurance companies also want an estimated cost to replace the item (not what it was worth, what it would cost to replace)..so this information may be good to track as well, though of course it may be rather dynamic.
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Anthony said 4:07PM on 7-23-2008
I beta-tested Home Ownersite (http://home.ownersite.com), which is from a company you highlighted here a while back for their car product, Ownersite.com. I prefer their web-based approach to the home inventory problem, as your inventory is always backed up. And, it does a lot more than just inventories, but it is not free. (nor is this product as you pay for the backup service) Of course, successful use of either product requires the initiative to actually compile the inventory! (which I admittedly have yet to complete beyond the big ticket electronics and jewelry)
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BobbiJo said 2:23PM on 7-24-2008
Anthony, you make a very important point about keeping it backed up. I have talked to hundreds of people who went to the effort of creating an inventory, which doesn't have to be as daunting of a task as you think, but then still have the CD or flash drive in a drawer in their house! I also just heard a victim from the California fires interviewed on the news. She had paid to have her inventory done by a professional, but never got around to sending the hard copy off-site. It was destroyed along with her house. That's a valuable lesson for all of us. Online tools are very efficient and easy to update.
Good luck with completing your's!
Bobbi Jo
http://www.anywherevault.com
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sodapop said 5:21PM on 7-24-2008
Can't you do this with an excel of Open Office spreadsheet?
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James said 12:42PM on 7-28-2008
Think of it as a "pretty" interface into a spreadsheet. I for one intend to try it, and maybe "back up" the output to the Google Docs spreadsheet app. It can take CSV as an input, then it lives in the cloud (for free!).