How to inventory your artwork, with a free template

What is an art inventory?

An art inventory is a complete, private record of your work, with one entry per piece. Each entry says what the work is (title, year, medium, dimensions, images), where it is now, and what has happened to it: where it has been shown, who has had it on consignment, and who bought it and for how much.

It is not the same thing as a portfolio. A portfolio is a selection, made for other people to look at. An inventory is everything, including work you would never show, and most of it is for your eyes only.

Artists usually start one when a specific question becomes hard to answer:

• A gallery asks for available works under a certain size, with images and prices, by tomorrow.
• A piece comes back from a show and you are not sure whether anything else is still out.
• An insurer, an accountant or a grant application asks what you hold and what it is worth.
• A collector or curator asks where a work has been exhibited.
• You want your records to make sense to someone else: an assistant now, or your estate later.

What should you record for each artwork?

Record the essentials for every work, even if they are all you ever record. These are the details that appear on a wall label, a price list, a consignment list or a certificate of authenticity, and they are hard to reconstruct once a work has left the studio.

Then the details that change

The second group changes over the life of a work. Keeping it current is what turns a list of works into an inventory.

What should an art inventory template include?

An art inventory template is a spreadsheet with one row per artwork and one column for each of the fields above. You can build it in a few minutes, or start from ours: download the free art inventory template (a CSV file that opens in Excel, Google Sheets and Numbers, with three example rows to replace).

The template has these columns, in this order:

1. Inventory number, Title, Year, Medium
2. Height, Width, Depth and Unit, in separate columns so the sheet can be sorted by size
3. Edition and Signature
4. Status and Location
5. Retail price and Currency
6. Consigned to, Consignment start and Commission %
7. Date sold, Sale price and Sold to
8. Exhibitions, Image files and Notes

A few habits keep a spreadsheet inventory usable as it grows:

• One row per work, in one sheet. Do not split years or series across tabs, or you lose the ability to filter everything at once.
• Pick the words for status once (for example Available, Consigned, Sold, Not for sale) and use only those.
• Write dates as year-month-day (2026-03-01) so that sorting works.
• Keep numbers as numbers: 4800 in the price column, with the currency in the next column.
• Put the inventory number in each image’s file name, and list the file names in the row.

How do you number your artwork?

An inventory number is a short code that belongs to one work and never changes. Titles repeat, and “Untitled, 2024” can describe a dozen pieces; a number cannot. Written on the work and in its record, it is what lets anyone match the object to the entry.

The simplest scheme that holds up is the year followed by a running number:

• 2026-001, 2026-002, 2026-003 and so on, in the order works are finished.
• Add a letter for the parts of one work: 2026-014a and 2026-014b for a diptych.
• For an edition, number the edition and note which one this is: 2026-020, 3/10.

Three rules matter more than the format. Never reuse a number. Never change one after it has been given out. And write it on the work: in pencil on the stretcher bar or the back of the sheet, or on a label fixed to the backing board. Avoid ink and marker on the back of a canvas or a sheet of paper, where they can show through to the front over time.

How do you inventory a studio full of existing work?

The backlog is what stops most artists from starting. Do not try to do it in one go, and do not start with the oldest work. Start with what is easiest to get right and work outwards.

1. Choose one place for the inventory. A spreadsheet or an inventory database will both do (more on that below). What does not work is half of it in a notebook and half in the photos on your phone.
2. Start with the work in the studio. It is in front of you, so everything can be checked. Go rack by rack or shelf by shelf, so you always know what has been done.
3. Handle each piece once. Photograph it, measure it, write down the essentials, give it a number, and mark the number on the back before you put it down.
4. Then the work that is out. List everything at galleries, on loan or in storage. Ask each gallery for its current consignment list and compare it with yours.
5. Then the work that has sold. Rebuild it from invoices, emails, old price lists, exhibition checklists and your own photographs. Gaps are fine: an entry with a title, a year and “sold, buyer unknown” is still worth having.
6. Work backwards in batches. One year or one series per session, most recent first, because recent work is what people ask about.

Expect a few minutes per work when it is in front of you and already photographed, and longer for anything you have to track down. A regular hour a week gets through a backlog sooner than waiting for a free week that never comes.

What photographs should you keep for each work?

Inventory photographs are records first. They need to show the work accurately and be easy to find, in that order.

• One straight-on image of the whole work, evenly lit and cropped to its edges.
• The back, the signature, and any labels or inscriptions.
• Details, and every side of anything three-dimensional.
• Installation views whenever the work is shown.

Keep the full-resolution original as well as the smaller copy you send to people, and put the inventory number in each file name (2026-014_front.tif) so that a file can be identified without opening it.

How do you keep track of your artwork once it is inventoried?

An inventory goes out of date one skipped update at a time. The fix is to tie each update to the event that causes it.

Then check the whole inventory against reality once or twice a year. Walk the studio with the list of everything recorded as being there. Send each gallery the list of what you believe it holds and ask it to confirm. The mistakes worth finding are works marked available that sold months ago, and consignments that ended without the work coming home.

The exhibition records do double duty: they are the source for the exhibition sections of your artist CV.

Should you use a spreadsheet or art inventory software?

A spreadsheet is a reasonable place to start. It costs nothing, you already know how to use it, and one row per work covers the essentials. For a few dozen works that mostly stay in the studio, it may be all you need.

It starts to strain once works have a history. A painting that has been in four exhibitions, consigned twice and then sold does not fit in one row: either the row grows a column for every event, or the history moves to separate sheets that have to be kept in step by hand. Images are the other limit, since a spreadsheet was not made to hold several large photographs per row.

Art inventory software is a database built around those relationships. ArtieDB is art inventory software and a portfolio website for working artists. In it, a work’s record holds its images, medium, dimensions, status, location and private notes. Exhibitions, consignments and sales are entered once and linked to the works involved, and a work’s status changes on its own when you record a sale or a consignment. The parts you choose appear on a public portfolio, while prices, buyers, locations and notes stay private.

Whichever you choose, the method in this guide is the same. The tool matters less than having one record per work and updating it when something happens.