Comments on: Home Contents Inventory Strategy

By: Lisa

Lisa — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 19:48:09 +0000

I’ve just finished a home inventory. Access 2007 has a template for Assets that is very simple to use. If you know how to manipulate Access, you can do custom reports and add your own fields. It also already has links for pictures.

A good scanned document organizing program that I found is called DocsVault.

By: jim

jim — Wed, 07 Dec 2005 18:29:12 +0000

I don’t think being tech-savvy has anything to do with someone doing a home inventory, sometimes it’s a matter of simply remembering and actually getting around to doing it. I don’t know if it would be a good business idea because the homeowner would have to give you extended access to their home for several hours as you rummage through their personal belongings, something they probably wouldn’t be comfortable doing.

Perhaps you’ve already considered that roadblock?

By: Beaker

Beaker — Wed, 07 Dec 2005 16:46:45 +0000

I realize many of us who are techno-savvy consider doing a home inventory, but how many of the “lay” public actually do one? Personally, I had a fire in my home 13 years ago and didn’t have an inventory. While I ultimately maxed out my renter’s policy without the inventory it was a huge hassle. Would peoplewith resources pay someone to do an inventory? I’m currently nurturing the idea of starting a business to do just that. Comments???

By: Matt

Matt — Wed, 14 Sep 2005 15:41:50 +0000

Check out the III’s software – it’s pretty thorough:
http://www.knowyourstuff.org/

By: Hello, Dollar!

Hello, Dollar! — Tue, 30 Aug 2005 18:16:42 +0000

Insurance and Inventoring

With all of the damage being caused by hurricane Katrina, I’ve been thinking about insurance and what it means to know you’re covered. If you ever experience a disaster or robbery that results in loss of your posessions or your…

By: Rob Lewis

Rob Lewis — Tue, 30 Aug 2005 15:53:22 +0000

Yeah, that’s a fair enough point Jim – probably ok to do for insurance purposes mentioned above (where no personal details are scanned), but not bank records etc. I have recently been thinking about home scanning solutions, to see if there’s a quick and easy way to index scanned documents on my local, haven’t seen anything that would be reasonably easy to do yet.

Rob.

By: jim

jim — Tue, 30 Aug 2005 15:32:41 +0000

Good point about the fire, I’ll keep the photos/files offsite or even just sitting in my web hosting account. Zipped up it wouldn’t be too big (not enough to put a dent into the gigs the hosts give nowadays)

Rob – the only concern I would have with storing important documents with an online service, even if the transmission itself was secure, was if the data was compromised at their site. It’s like when the credit cards use tape backup and the tapes fall off the back of the truck…

By: Rob Lewis

Rob Lewis — Tue, 30 Aug 2005 14:31:11 +0000

Hmmm… I’m thinking some sort of online storage system for digital images is required…

Why not upload all of the digital photos and receipts to Flickr, mark them as private (unless you want the whole world to see what you’ve bought). You can tag them with keywords or add them to a group, to make finding them easier in the future.

You might need a Flickr Pro account, but I think it would be worth the money. I’ve also been thinking about scanning in important documents (statements etc) and uploading them to Flickr (or maybe a similar service if I could find it), but not sure whether that would be wise / secure. It would be nice to have all my statements etc scanned in, dated and searchable though.

By: Tony

Tony — Tue, 30 Aug 2005 13:57:11 +0000

I agree with Nickel. Though your advice is good and I’ve done pretty much the same thing it’s absolutely essential that you keep those pictures offsite.

By: nickel

nickel — Mon, 29 Aug 2005 18:45:10 +0000

Where do you store your inventory pictures? If your house burns down, and the pictures go with it, then you’re pretty much out of luck.