A Home Inventory for Insurance Claims on iPhone: Receipts, Serial Numbers and a CSV in One App (Warranty Tracker)

The moment people discover they need a home inventory is the worst possible moment to build one: standing in a flat that has been burgled, or on the phone to an insurer who has just asked, politely, for proof of purchase for a laptop that no longer exists. Insurers are not being difficult. A claim is a list of items with values, and they need some evidence that you owned each item and roughly what it was worth. Most people have that evidence scattered across email receipts, a drawer of paper and photos from three phones ago, which is why so many claims end up smaller than they should be. This post is about keeping that evidence in one place on your iPhone, using Warranty Tracker & Receipt Log, an app that was built to track warranties but happens to record exactly what a home inventory needs.

What an insurer actually wants to see

Policies and claim handlers vary, so treat this as the common pattern rather than a rule: for each item of any real value, they want to know what it was (make and model), when you bought it, what you paid, and ideally some proof of ownership. A receipt is the gold standard. A photo of the item in your home, a serial number, a bank statement line or a product registration email are all accepted forms of supporting evidence in many cases. Small items are usually claimed as a lump; it is the laptop, the camera, the bike, the television and the engagement ring that need paperwork.

The practical problem is not knowing this; it is that the proof needs to exist before the loss, and it needs to survive the loss. A paper receipt in the drawer of a burgled flat is still there. A paper receipt in a flooded flat is not. An inventory that lives on your phone and in your phone backup survives both.

Why a warranty tracker is a good home inventory

The two jobs overlap almost completely. Warranty Tracker stores, for every item, the product name, the store, the price, the purchase date, a serial number, notes, and as many photos as you like: the receipt, the product itself, the sticker with the serial number. That is the insurer's list, item by item. The app adds a warranty length and an expiry countdown on top, with reminders before the warranty runs out, which is a useful side effect for the same expensive items you would be claiming for.

Two details make it fit the insurance use case specifically. The home screen shows the total value of everything still under warranty, which is a rough but immediate answer to "are we insured for enough?". And there is a CSV export: every item, every field, to a spreadsheet you can attach to a claim, hand to a broker, or keep in cloud storage as a second copy. The app is a one-time purchase of 0.99 US dollars, needs iOS 17 or later, works entirely offline, and has no account, no cloud and no analytics; your inventory never leaves the phone unless you export it. It is iPhone-only.

Building the inventory: a one-evening method

Do not try to catalogue the whole home. Walk through each room and add only the things you would actually claim for. For most households that is twenty to forty items, which is one evening with a cup of tea.

• Start with the expensive and the portable. Laptops, phones, tablets, cameras, headphones, watches, jewellery, bikes, instruments. These are what get stolen and what need proof.
• Add each item with its real name. "MacBook Air 13 M4 256 GB" rather than "laptop". Model names are what the insurer prices against.
• Photograph the serial number sticker, not just the receipt. Tap the item, add a photo, and get the serial or IMEI sticker in frame. A serial number is strong evidence of ownership and is what the police ask for too.
• Find the receipt wherever it is. Paper: photograph it. Email: take a screenshot of the order confirmation and add it as a photo. No receipt at all: add a photo of the item in your home and note the purchase date and price as best you remember; partial evidence beats none.
• Enter the price you paid and the date. The purchase date doubles as the warranty start, so set the warranty length while you are there and let the app remind you 30 and 7 days before it ends.
• Use the notes field for context. "Gift from parents, bought at John Lewis Oxford Street", "second-hand from eBay, seller receipt attached". Claims handlers read notes.

Keeping it alive without thinking about it

Inventories die of neglect, so attach the habit to the one moment you are already holding a receipt: the day you buy something. The add flow is built for that; name, store, price, date and a warranty chip take about twenty seconds, and you photograph the receipt before it goes in the bin. That single habit keeps the inventory current for free, and it is the habit the earlier post on keeping receipts and getting reminded before a warranty expires is about.

Twice a year, export the CSV. Share it to your cloud drive or email it to yourself. Now there is a copy of the inventory that does not depend on the phone, which matters because the phone is itself one of the things that gets stolen. The app's data is included in your normal iPhone backup as well, so a replacement phone restored from backup has the inventory and the photos.

When you have to make a claim

Open the app, filter or search for the items that were lost or damaged, and you have the claim list: names, dates, prices and serial numbers in one scrollable screen, with the receipt a tap away. Export the CSV, delete the rows that are not part of the claim, and attach it. For each item the handler queries, you can send the receipt photo and the serial-number photo at full resolution. For a police report after a theft, the serial numbers are the part they can actually use.

If something was still under warranty when it broke rather than when it was stolen, the same record serves a different purpose: the countdown tells you whether a repair is free before you ring the insurer at all, which is often the cheaper route and keeps your no-claims record intact.

What this app is not

Honesty about limits: Warranty Tracker is not an insurance app and it does not talk to your insurer. It will not value your items for you, estimate replacement costs or tell you whether you are under-insured in any precise way; the total it shows is what you paid, not what replacement would cost today. It also has no cloud sync, which is a privacy feature until you want the same inventory on two phones; the CSV export is the bridge. If you run a business and need depreciation schedules, you need accounting software. For a household that wants proof of ownership in one place, it is a very small, very cheap tool that does the job.

• Does the insurer accept a photo of a receipt? Commonly, yes; a legible photo or scan is generally treated like the paper. Check your own policy wording if you have a very high-value item.
• What if I have no receipts for older items? Photograph the item and its serial number now, and note the approximate date and price. Evidence that you own it today is still evidence.
• Can I store the inventory somewhere other than the phone? Export the CSV to your cloud drive or email. The receipt photos stay in the app and in your iPhone backup.
• Is there a subscription? No. One-time purchase, no account, no ads.