Guide / the home boundary
Free home inventory software: an honest redirect
Cataloguing your possessions for insurance is a real job — and a different one from running business stock. Here is what home inventory actually needs, the free options, and the boundary.
The straight answer
- Home inventory means cataloguing possessions — for insurance, estate planning or peace of mind. BSimple is not built for it and does not pretend to be.
- What the job actually needs: photos, purchase prices, serial numbers, rooms, and an export your insurer will accept.
- The free options that fit: a phone photo-roll spreadsheet, or dedicated home inventory apps — several genuinely free.
- BSimple is business software — stock you buy and sell — and this page is the honest signpost, not a disguised ad.
- The full picture: how the inventory record works is the hub page for everything above.
- 01The straight answer
- 02What home inventory actually needs
- 03The free options that fit
What home inventory actually needs
The job is proving what you owned, to an insurer, after the worst day. That shapes everything: photos matter more than quantities — condition and existence are the claims; serial numbers and receipts for the big items; rooms as the organising layer rather than warehouses; replacement value as the number, not cost; an export — spreadsheet or PDF — because the record has to survive the tool. Notice what is absent: no allocation, no reorder levels, no purchasing, no invoicing, no multi-user floor. Home inventory is a list with evidence, not a live operational record.
That is why a business inventory tool is the wrong shape here — and why BSimple will not stretch to catch this search. Businesses that searched this while actually thinking about equipment, assets or stock are the exception, and the last section is for them.
The free options that fit
The photo-roll spreadsheet: a phone camera, a sheet with item / room / value / serial / photo link. Genuinely free, genuinely adequate, and the photos live in cloud storage you already have. Dedicated home inventory apps: several offer genuinely free tiers for modest item counts, with room-by-room capture and report exports — check the export before the insurance claim, not after it. Your insurer's own tools: many offer a contents inventory as part of the policy — the format the claims team already trusts.
If you arrived here running a business — equipment on jobs, stock in a shed, tools on trucks — that is the job BSimple does: live multi-location stock, assets under customers with service history, invoicing to Xero or MYOB, from $180/month (AUD) with a free trial. The equipment-tracking pattern shows the asset side, and the inventory-for-free ladder covers the business free options.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can BSimple inventory my home contents?
It is the wrong tool: BSimple runs business stock — buying, selling, moving goods — not personal asset catalogues for insurance. A photo-roll spreadsheet or a dedicated home inventory app will serve you better, and cost less than a business plan.
What is the best free home inventory approach?
Room by room, photographing as you go, into a simple sheet: item, room, value, serial, photo link — with the export checked before you need it. Many insurers also provide their own templates, which is worth preferring for claims convenience.
We run a small business from home — which job is this?
Both, with different tools: personal contents for the insurance list, and business stock separately. If the business side has equipment on jobs or stock to sell, that is BSimple's territory — the trial tests it; the lounge room furniture does not belong in it.
Why does a business software page rank for home inventory?
Because keywords collide, and the honest answer to a collision is a signpost, not a disguise. This page exists to send the home-inventory searcher somewhere useful quickly — and to catch the business owner who typed the search while meaning their shed.
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