How to build a home inventory for your insurance (before you need it)

Most people discover what their insurer requires at the worst possible moment: standing in a burnt-out kitchen being asked to list everything that was in it, with values and proof of purchase.

A home inventory is the single most useful piece of admin you can do before a claim. It is also the one nobody does, because the traditional advice — build a spreadsheet, photograph every room, keep every receipt in a folder — is a weekend of work that goes stale within months.

What insurers actually ask for

Requirements vary by policy, but a claim handler will typically want, per item:

• What it is — brand and model, not "a TV"
• When you bought it — this drives depreciation and, on new-for-old policies, whether you are paid the replacement cost
• What you paid — a receipt, bank or card statement, or order confirmation email
• Evidence it existed — a photograph in situ is usually enough

Missing the receipt is not automatically fatal. Card statements, delivery confirmations, warranty registrations and even a clear photograph of the item in your home are commonly accepted. But every missing piece is friction in a process where friction costs you money.

The 80/20 version

You do not need to catalogue your cutlery. Insurers care about the items that would materially change a payout. In most homes that is fewer than forty things.

1. Walk each room and photograph it wide. One photo per room, showing the space as it is. This alone establishes what was there.
2. Photograph anything worth more than a few hundred euro individually. Appliances, electronics, tools, bikes, instruments, jewellery, furniture of real value.
3. Get the model number. The rating label on the back or underside of an appliance is the difference between "a washing machine" and a specific unit with a specific replacement cost.
4. Attach the proof. Receipt, invoice or order email, wherever you can find it. For anything bought online, your account order history is a goldmine.
5. Note high-value specifics. Serial numbers on bikes, laptops and cameras also help police recover stolen goods.

Keep it somewhere the fire cannot reach

A folder of receipts in the kitchen drawer is worthless in exactly the scenario it exists for. The inventory has to live off-site — cloud storage at minimum, and ideally somewhere you can export a clean list from on demand.

Check your limits while you are at it

Building the inventory usually surfaces two nasty surprises: single-item limits (many policies cap any one item at a few thousand euro unless specifically declared) and total contents cover that has not been updated since you moved in. Both are much cheaper to fix before a claim than after.

Keeping it current

The reason inventories fail is maintenance. A spreadsheet is accurate on the day you build it and wrong within a year. The trick is to make adding an item take seconds rather than minutes — capture it when it arrives, not in an annual audit that never happens.

Owned does this from a photograph: point your camera at the product and the receipt, and it identifies the brand, model and purchase date, stores the proof, tracks the current value and exports the whole lot as an insurance inventory whenever you need it.