How to Make a Home Inventory for Insurance

Making a home inventory before filing an insurance claim gives you the best chance of recovering from property damage or theft. A home inventory can assist you in understanding the worth of your personal property, making it easier to identify and replace what has been damaged or stolen.

You should keep a record of the names and model numbers of each piece of property, as well as the value of each piece, and if possible, a receipt.

It is relatively simple to create a household inventory for insurance purposes. There are numerous home inventory apps and software programs available to make the process easier. If you prefer, you can make a personal property inventory list by hand.

How to create a home inventory

If you suffer property damage and are forced to replace your belongings, you should be able to use your home inventory to provide comprehensive evidence of the value of your lost property to your insurer. Making lists of everything in your home is the best way to accomplish this.

Your household inventory should include the following items:

  • Each item's name and model
  • If available, the item's serial number
  • The item's description and function
  • The item's cost — with a receipt if you have one
  • Purchase location and date

Making a list of only your property's general characteristics is a bad idea. Your homeowners insurance provider is required to replace property damaged by covered perils with suitable alternatives; however, creating a home inventory with generic details may result in receiving subpar replacements.

  • If you were filing a claim for a broken TV, you could get a lower-quality model if you just told your insurer that your old one was a 40 or 50-inch flat-screen. Proof of the TV's brand, model, and extra features increases the chances of a satisfactory replacement.

The best home inventory software

Encircle was discovered to be the best home inventory software. Some homeowners insurance companies also provide downloadable home inventory forms to their customers. These lists are excellent alternatives to using a home inventory app.

Best free home inventory app: Encircle

Encircle provides everything you need to create a comprehensive home inventory list, including the ability to upload photos of your property to the app. Encircle also allows you to track an unlimited number of items for up to two properties at the same time, including lists for multiple rooms in your home.

The app has few disadvantages. Its cross-device capability enables you to access your account from your phone, laptop, and desktop computer — a feature that other competitors charge an upgrade fee for. You can also save your data as a spreadsheet or a PDF.

Best paid inventory app: Sortly

Although the home inventory app Sortly has a free version, the premium version is far more useful and well worth the $3.99 price. Sortly's services can be subscribed to and accessed on an unlimited number of devices for a lower fee than competitors.

Sortly's premium service enables customers to create home inventory lists with an unlimited number of items, as well as photos and videos. You can also design QR codes for your property. Stick your labels to the boxes you're using to store or move your property after you've printed them. You can scan these QR codes with Sortly's barcode scanner for home inventories to see what's inside the boxes.

Other home inventory apps

If you don't think Encircle or Sortly will work for you, there are other options to consider. You can create a home inventory with any of the following programs:

  • Nest Egg
  • MyStuff
  • Magic Home Inventory
  • Allstate's Digital Locker

Why do you need a home inventory for insurance?

Although your insurance company is required to provide you with suitable replacements for your ruined items, without a thorough home inventory, they may not necessarily replace your old items exactly.

A detailed home inventory increases the likelihood that you will be fully compensated after filing a homeowners insurance claim. When you suffer property damage and file a claim, your homeowners insurance provider will ask for proof of your losses.

Assume your house burns down and you lose a lot of your belongings. You put in a claim for a toaster, but all you remember about your old one is that it was black and could toast up to four slices of bread at once. Without additional information, the toaster you receive may be black and have four bread slots, but it may be inferior to your old toaster in unexpected ways.

Making a household inventory allows you to assess your insurance coverage. With a detailed home inventory and a $250,000 homeowners insurance policy, you'll be able to see when the value of your assets exceeds the policy's limit. When this happens, you'll know it's time to think about getting more insurance.