What an adjuster actually asks for

There is no universal form. What an insurer asks for after a loss depends on the company, the policy, the country and what happened, and anybody who tells you otherwise is selling something.

What the requests do have in common is a shape. Underneath the different wordings sits the same job: turning “my things are gone” into a list of specific objects, each of which can be identified and priced by somebody who never saw them. This is what that list is made of, and why each part is on it.

The unit is one thing, on one line

Not “kitchen appliances”. Not “clothing”. One object, one line, described well enough to be told apart from a different object of the same kind.

This is the single most common gap in a list assembled after the fact. “TV” is a category. “55-inch LG OLED television, model OLED55C4, bought 2024” is an object. The first can be argued about indefinitely; the second is either right or wrong, and can be checked.

Grouping is fine where the things really are interchangeable and individually minor — everyday crockery, paperbacks, ordinary kitchen utensils. State the count and a total rather than pretending to a precision you do not have.

The fields, and what each one is for

Description. Plain words, no household shorthand. The person reading it has never been in your house.

Make and model. These do the identifying. A model number turns a description into a specific product with a specific price history, which is what makes the next field possible for somebody else to verify.

Serial or other unique number. This is what distinguishes your television from every other one of that model. It also matters if the thing is ever recovered — a stolen bicycle with a frame number is findable, and a stolen bicycle without one is a bicycle.

Age, or the date you bought it. The year is usually enough. Almost everything is valued with age in the calculation somewhere, so a list with no dates leaves the most consequential variable blank.

What you paid. The original price, not what you think it is worth today. Present-day worth is a calculation somebody else will do, and they will do it from the purchase price, the age and the condition.

Condition. Honestly. An overstated condition is the kind of detail that casts doubt on the entries around it.

Quantity, where you have grouped things.

The paper that supports a line

Each of these is ordinary evidence that the object existed and cost what you said, in roughly descending order of how much work it saves:

The receipt or invoice.
A card or bank statement line — often enough on its own, and you can usually still get one years later.
An order confirmation email, which most people have without realising.
A photograph of the thing, clear enough to read the badge.
The manual, warranty card or box, especially where somebody has written the serial number on it.
A valuation for jewellery, art and anything else that has one.

Nothing here is exotic. The reason lists fall apart is not that this evidence is hard to get — it is that it is hard to get after the thing it describes is gone.

Why the photograph of the room is the weak one

Wide shots of rooms are the most common photographs people have, and the least useful. Nothing in them is legible: not the badge, not the model, not the condition, often not even the size.

A photograph earns its place in a list when it identifies one object. Close enough to read the make. A second frame showing the serial plate if there is one. That is a different photograph from the one you take to show somebody your new sofa, and it takes about ten seconds longer.

Things that usually need more than one line

Some categories are individually valuable and hard to identify generically, so a single line rarely carries enough:

Jewellery and watches — piece by piece, with a photograph each, and any valuation or certificate you were given.
Art and prints — artist, title, size, provenance if you have it.
Collections — stamps, coins, records, models. A count and a total is a starting point; the valuable individual pieces still need their own lines.
Bicycles — frame number, and it is worth registering it separately.
Musical instruments — maker, model, serial, and any modifications.
Tools — the individually expensive ones on their own lines, the rest by the boxful.

Many policies also treat some of these differently from general contents. Whether yours does, and what that means, is a question for your insurer and your policy document — not for us.

If you have no inventory and something has already happened

This is a worse position than the one this site normally writes about, but it is not hopeless, and the work is mostly reconstruction:

Photographs you already have. Years of phone pictures were taken inside your home, and things are visible in the background of them. Search by date and by room.
Your own purchase history. Online retailer accounts keep orders indefinitely. Card and bank statements can usually be pulled back several years.
Email. Order confirmations, delivery notes, warranty registrations.
Manuals and boxes kept in a loft or a drawer that was not affected.
Other people’s photographs — anyone who visited and took pictures.
Walk the rooms in your head, one at a time, and write down what was in each. Do it early, and do it in writing; recall gets worse, and quickly.

Write down which items you are certain of and which you are reconstructing. Being explicit about the difference is both honest and, practically, more credible than a list that presents everything with equal confidence.

What we are not telling you

Nothing on this page is advice about cover, policies or settlements. We do not know what your insurer will accept, what your policy pays, or whether a particular item is covered at all — and a website that guessed at those on your behalf would be doing you harm.

The part we can be useful about is the record itself: what a list is made of, what supports each line, and how to have one before you need it. If you want to make one on paper, there is a printable room-by-room checklist. If you want the photographs, receipts and serial numbers held together and printed as one document at the end, that is what Roomkeep does.