A home inventory is only worth what it proves on the day you file a claim. This home inventory template for Google Sheets lives in your own Google Drive: it lists what you own room by room, links each item to its proof, and checks the whole thing against your own policy to show where you are short.
Your own copy in Google Drive, in one click
The download includes a link that makes your own copy of the workbook in Google Drive. It opens as a native Google Sheet, with every formula, dropdown and flag already working and nothing to upload or convert. Because it lives in your Drive, the record is not kept only in the house it describes, so it survives a fire or flood that takes the house and your computer.
The copy opens on a worked example: 46 example items for a fictional household, so you can watch every tab calculate before you touch it. There is no separate blank Google Sheet: when you are ready, clear the cream-shaded input cells, leaving the Valuation date as it is, and type your own. The Start Here guide lists exactly which cells those are.
Evidence one click from the item
The Inventory tab takes up to 250 items, entered room by room: room, item, category, quantity, brand, model, serial number, purchase date, price paid and replacement cost, which is what it would cost to buy new today. Separate Receipt?, Photo? and Appraisal? fields record the evidence.
The Photo / receipt link column can point straight at the photo or scanned receipt in your Drive, and a pasted link earns the item its proof points for where the evidence is kept. Keep those folders private: the Start Here guide explains why a file listing your valuables should never be shared with an “anyone with the link” setting.
A proof score, and what to fix first
Every row earns a proof score from 0 to 100 from its receipt, photo, serial number, evidence location or link, and an appraisal where the category expects one. Missing proof names what to add, Undocumented value turns the gap into dollars, and the fix-first rank orders every item by it. The Dashboard lists the Top 10 fix-first items.
Checked against your policy, not a generic one
On Policy & Coverage, type the personal property limit, the deductible and the settlement basis from your declarations page. The sheet shows coverage used, the gap versus your limit and an UNDERINSURED verdict when your list runs past it. The example lists $61,519 of belongings against a $60,000 limit: 103% used, a $1,519 gap.
Special limits work the same way. Many policies cap jewelry, silverware, business property and similar categories unless items are scheduled, and some caps apply only to certain causes of loss such as theft, so you type your own caps and the sheet totals each category against its cap, with the amount over and what to ask your agent. In the example, the jewelry runs $5,615 over its example $1,500 sub-limit.
Each item also gets an illustrative estimated actual cash value from the useful life and floor per category on Lists. Lists comes with example useful lives and floors, not an insurer’s table, so change them to yours. The estimate is not what an insurer will pay.
The claim schedule, printed from Sheets
After a loss, mark each lost or damaged item “Yes” on Inventory. The Claim Worksheet lists them as an adjuster schedule, for up to 250 claim lines, with serial numbers, ages, replacement value, estimated actual cash value and proof on hand, which notes a Link where you pasted one. The estimate block above it applies the special limits you entered and your deductible, and caps the result at your limit; check whether each special limit applies to this cause of loss.
To print it from Google Sheets, select from the top of the tab down to the last listed line and print the selected cells, or save that selection as a PDF. The Claim-Day Guide walks through this and the steps that come before it.
Room by room, and kept current
The Rooms tab lists 15 rooms with items, value, proof coverage and the date you last walked each one, flagged Verified, Re-verify or Never verified. Rename, add or remove rooms on the Rooms tab and categories on Lists; renaming does not change rows that already use the old name, and the List check column on Inventory flags every row still using it. The printable Room-by-Room Walkthrough Checklist covers 15 rooms with the commonly forgotten items in each.
Prefer Excel?
The same download carries the .xlsx as a worked example and a blank copy, for desktop Excel 2016 or later and Excel for Mac. The Excel listing is the same product: Home Inventory for Excel.
Want to start with a plain list first? The free Home Inventory Starter is a room-by-room list with replacement totals for each room and the whole home, opening on the same fictional example household. It is an Excel file that also opens in Google Sheets. No email, no signup.
