Prove what you owned.

After a fire, a flood or a storm, an insurance claim comes down to one question: what was in the house, and what was it worth? Insurance Recorder keeps that record — room by room, with photographs and receipts — so the answer already exists when you need it.

A house with its rooms and belongings being catalogued to a phone

Why it matters before anything happens

A house on fire, with flames through the roof

Fire leaves nothing to list

A house fire destroys the evidence along with the contents. Nobody can walk a burnt room and remember what was in the cupboards, and a claim written from memory is smaller than the loss — almost always in the insurer's favour. A record made beforehand is the only version that survives.

A house half submerged, with papers floating away on the water

Floods take the paperwork first

Water reaches the basement and the filing cabinet before it reaches anything else. Receipts, warranties and manuals are usually the first casualties, and they are exactly what an adjuster asks for. Stored here, they are somewhere the water cannot go.

A house in a storm, with wind, rain and a bending tree

Storms give you minutes

A hurricane or wildfire evacuation is not the moment to photograph the living room. Everything you would want documented is documented already, and reachable from a phone in a hotel two provinces away.

A catalogued item with its photograph, make, model and price, under a magnifier

Claims reward specifics

"A television" is worth whatever the adjuster decides. A make, a model, a purchase date and a photograph is worth what you paid. The difference across a whole house is rarely small, and it is decided by what you can show, not by what you remember.

A live record, not a one-off inventory

Most household inventories are made once, saved somewhere, and quietly go out of date — which is why so few of them are any use by the time they are needed. This one is meant to be kept: add the appliance when it is delivered, photograph the bicycle when you buy it, and the record stays true to the house without ever being a project.

Because it lives on the server rather than on the hard drive in the hallway, it is still there when the house is not.

What you can keep

  • Several properties — a home, a rental, a parents' house you help manage
  • Rooms, so a claim can be walked through the way the house is
  • Photographs of each item, and of the room as a whole
  • Purchase price and currency, for the valuation conversation
  • Reports you can generate and hand to an insurer or adjuster
  • Shared access, for a partner, an executor, or a broker

Three things worth doing this week

  1. Photograph each room as it stands — wide shots first. Even with nothing itemised yet, a dated photograph of a full room settles arguments.
  2. Add the expensive and the boring: electronics, appliances, tools, jewellery, instruments. The boring items are the ones people forget and insurers price low.
  3. Share access with whoever would actually make the claim if you could not.
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