You can catalogue an object in two minutes or in two days, and the difference between the two is roughly seven small fields. Most household inventories — the spreadsheets, the insurance lists, the photo folders — fill in the first one or two: a photo, maybe a price. The other five remain empty, and that's where the heritage gets lost.
Heriteo's object record is structured around seven anchors. None of them is exotic. Each takes a couple of minutes to fill in. Together they are the difference between "we had a clock" and "we had that clock."
The seven fields, and what each one rescues
1. Pictures
The most obvious field, and the one most people stop at. A single photo isn't enough — a future heir, an appraiser, or an insurer will all want to see the maker mark, the condition wear, and the back of the object. Heriteo lets you attach as many photos as you like to a single object, rate them by quality, and even keep unlinked pictures in a separate library for later association.
The discipline that makes the photos durable: three shots minimum — a wide shot, a maker-mark close-up, and a wear close-up. Ninety seconds per object, and the object's visual record is protected for decades.
2. Tags
A description is what an object looks like; a tag is what an object is. Tags are the fields that make a catalogue searchable, sortable, and connectable across a household. We covered the case for a structured tag system in our piece on smart albums — but the short version is that tags pay off the moment you have more than fifty objects, and pay off enormously the moment you have more than two hundred.
Two dimensions are usually enough to start: provenance ("Gift from Marie", "Bought in Italy", "Inherited") and category ("Furniture", "Jewellery", "Art"). A third — status ("For sale", "Reserved", "To restore") — earns its keep as soon as the household starts making decisions. For a step-by-step guide to designing and maintaining this system, see our how-to on tag groups.
3. Location (Property + Room)
An under-rated field. Heriteo lets you model a household as one or more properties, each with named rooms, and pin every object to a specific room. The benefit isn't just "where is it" — it's that an heir clearing out a parent's house can walk into the dining room, open the dining-room view in Heriteo, and see exactly what should be there. Discrepancies — what's missing, what's been moved — become visible. Move-day packing becomes a checklist. Insurance reviews become a one-property query.
4. Estimation
A monetary value, in the household's chosen currency, with a date and a note. Heriteo doesn't insist on a precise appraisal — it accepts a rough estimate, a range, or a formal valuation. The point is that some number is recorded, because the decisions downstream (insure, sell, equalise across heirs, leave to the foundation) are answered very differently for an object worth €50 than one worth €5,000.
The dashboard turns these estimates into a value distribution across the household — the small handful of high-value items, the long tail of modest pieces — which is the single most useful chart for an estate planning conversation.
5. Origin
Two or three sentences answering the question "where did this come from?" Bought, made, gifted, inherited, found. From whom, in what year, under what circumstances. The field is small; the loss when it isn't filled in is not.
Origin is the field that ties the object to the family story, and it is the one that drains away first when memory fades. A grandparent who buys a piece in 1972 and never writes down where they bought it is leaving behind, twenty years later, an object that no descendant can place. Two sentences in the right place at the right time prevent that loss permanently.
6. Stories
Where origin tells you where the object came from, stories tell you what happened to it. Heriteo treats stories as first-class records: you can attach multiple stories to a single object, type them by kind (a memory, the object's origins, who owned it, where it lived), and let any family member contribute their own.
The crucial design choice: stories are owned by the contributor, not by the catalogue. A daughter's memory of the dining table is hers; a brother's memory is his; both belong to the table. We covered the deeper case for narrative-as-inheritance in why your kids don't want your stuff — the field exists because it solves that problem head-on.
7. Condition
A six-grade snapshot — New, Like New, Excellent, Good, Fair, Poor — with optional notes and condition photos. We gave this field its own piece in six condition grades that change how heirs think about an inheritance; the short version is that condition turns soft estate decisions ("what should we do with the table?") into structured ones ("we have a Fair table that's Cherished — restoration is on the table").
Why all seven, not just three
The temptation, when starting a household catalogue, is to fill in the photo and the price and call it done. That's enough for an insurance claim. It is nowhere near enough for a family.
Each field plays a different downstream role. Pictures protect the object's identity. Tags make the catalogue searchable. Location makes physical reality and the catalogue stay synchronised. Estimation drives financial decisions. Origin and stories carry the heritage. Condition makes practical decisions concrete. Skip any of the seven and the object becomes harder to inherit — not legally, but humanly.
The good news: the fields don't have to be filled in all at once. A family can spend a week on photographs, a week on tags, a weekend on origins, a slow year on stories. Heriteo's dashboard shows progress per field across the catalogue, so the gaps are visible and the next step is always obvious. Our piece on what most administrative plans forget describes a sensible order of operations for working through them.
How a fully-filled object actually feels
Open the record for a fully-filled object in Heriteo and you don't see a row in a database. You see: a wide photo of a mantel clock; a close-up of the maker's mark on the back; tags Inherited from Marie, Clock, To restore; a location pinned to the dining room of the family home; an estimate of €1,400 entered in 2023 with a note "based on a similar piece sold at the village antique sale"; origin "Marie bought it at a flea market in Lyon in 1968, the year she met André"; three stories — one from Marie's daughter, one from a granddaughter, one from a great-grandchild who never met her; condition Good, with notes about the hands needing a clean.
That's no longer "a clock." It is a piece of family history that an heir can pick up twenty years from now and read. The object hasn't changed. The seven fields have done their work.
The "five most-asked-about" exercise
Write down the five objects in your house that come up most often in family conversation. The named ones. The ones cousins ask about. Fill in all seven fields for those five. You'll be done in an evening, and you'll have protected the most important pieces of the household record before doing anything else.
- Three photographs minimum: wide, maker mark, wear.
- At least two tags — one for provenance, one for category.
- A specific room, even if the object might move.
- An estimate, even rough — a range is better than nothing.
- Origin in two sentences while the storyteller is still around.
- One story from each family member who has one.
- An honest condition grade with a wear photo if applicable.
The seven fields describe a single object. For the method of working through a whole house of them, see our guide on how to inventory a home for estate planning.
Most family inventories are a row of names and prices. The seven fields are what make a catalogue something an heir actually wants to read. Fill them in for the objects that matter, and "just a clock" becomes that clock — which is the difference between an inventory and a heritage.