Most inventories are easy to build and hard to live with. The awkward part isn't adding things, it's finding one specific object eighteen months later. This guide covers the handful of decisions that determine whether you can.
Before anything else, decide whether a thing is an individual item or a quantity. Almost every other problem in a messy inventory traces back to getting this wrong.
The test is one question: will I ever need to know which one?
If yes, each object gets its own item. That's the case when they have different serial numbers, sit in different rooms, sell for different prices, get lent out separately, or need their own photo. You can then track each one's history, location and value on its own.
If no, use one item with a quantity. Screws, batteries, printer paper, packing boxes. You care that you have forty, not which forty. You adjust the number up and down and never think about individual units.
This is a real trade-off, not a right answer, so it's worth knowing what you give up.
A useful middle path: if the objects are interchangeable today but might not be later, start with a quantity. Splitting one item into many later is easier than merging thirty into one.
This is the most common way an inventory goes wrong, and it happens gradually.
You start naming things by what they are. Then you add the material to tell them apart. Then an abbreviation because the names got long. Within a month you have four spellings of the same idea, and none of them can be filtered:
Those are four different names as far as any search is concerned. Put the class of thing in the category, where it's picked from a list rather than typed, stays spelled the same way, and can be filtered and totalled. The name is then free to describe the actual object.
If you have thirty items called "Christmas Ornament", the name has stopped working. You can't tell from a list which one is which, so you end up opening each one to find out. That's the exact task an inventory is supposed to remove.
Add whatever actually differs. Usually it's one of:
If nothing distinguishes them, that's a strong sign they should be one quantity item rather than thirty individual ones.
Abbreviations are fine. Two abbreviations for the same word are not. Once "Diamond Art", "Diamond Art.", "DA" and nothing at all are all in use, no search finds everything, and no report adds up.
If you're going to shorten something, shorten it the same way every time. Better still, make it a category so you're choosing it rather than typing it.
If you keep typing the same kind of information into names or descriptions, that's a custom field waiting to happen. Material, size, batch, shelf reference, who made it, what it cost to make.
The advantage is that a field can be searched, filtered, sorted and included in an export. The same information sitting inside a name can only be found by a text search that also matches things you didn't mean.
Don't create a field for something already built in, though. Purchase price, purchase date, location, quantity, manufacturer, model and serial number all have their own places. A duplicate custom field means two answers to the same question, and eventually they disagree.
For anything handmade, decorative or visually distinct, a photo is worth more than any naming scheme. You'll recognise the object instantly, where a name only ever approximates it. This is especially true when you have many similar pieces: a list of near-identical names is hard work, and a list of thumbnails is not.
Separate inventories are for things that never mix: home and business, or two properties. They're not for categories. If you find yourself moving items between inventories, or wanting a total across them, they should probably have been one inventory with categories.
Before adding a batch of items, ask:
None of this needs doing perfectly at the start. It's much easier to fix fifty items than five hundred, so it's worth a few minutes before a big import rather than after.
additem.to is free on iPhone - no account required, no item limit, no expiry. Categories, custom fields and photos are all included, so you can organise things properly from the start.
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