How do I keep an inventory of my art without abandoning it at piece 40?
Almost every artist inventory ends up in the same place. Not for lack of tools, but because it gets treated as one single project, with hundreds of accumulated pieces, and around the fortieth record it becomes clear how far away the end is.
This guide helps you set up an order so that does not happen. It works with a spreadsheet, a notebook or software.
What is the foundation of the catalogue?
It is the one decision you cannot undo later.
Pick a simple scheme (e.g. 2026-017, year and running number, for example) and put it in three places: the record, the image filename and the back of the piece. Never renumber.
Everything else migrates without much effort. Inconsistent numbers do not. To change them you would have to go back and touch every piece and every file.
Write your full name, the title, the year and the medium on the back as well. You can add your city if you have a common name. It sounds excessive until you see how many good works reach an auction with nobody able to say who made them.
How do I track the status of a piece?
The most common mistake is having a single column called "status" to reflect several aspects of the piece at once.
Where the piece is and where the sale stands are separate axes. A painting can be physically at a gallery and at the same time be available, reserved, or sold and not yet collected. With one column you end up guessing exactly when an enquiry arrives, which is the moment you cannot afford it.
Two separate columns solve 80 % of the problems of an inventory.
Do I need a separate table for editions?
Printmaking, photography, any multiple: you need the edition size, which numbers sold and which are artist's proofs. That does not fit in the row of the piece, it is an entirely separate table.
Almost everyone finds this out late, after selling 3/10 twice. That number also has to appear on the certificate of authenticity, and match the one you signed on the work.
What are the minimum fields?
These are enough to start. Everything else can be added later.
- Piece number
- Title
- Year
- Medium
- Dimensions (height × width, and depth where it applies)
- Price and currency
- Where it is
- Sale status
- Image filename
How do I catch up without giving up?
If you already have hundreds of pieces unrecorded, do not take it all on at once.
Enter every new piece the day you finish it. It is the only rule that matters long term: if new work always goes in, the backlog stops growing.
The backlog, in batches and oldest first, letting records stay incomplete on purpose. A row with title, year, dimensions and a phone photo is worth infinitely more than the perfect record you never made. A record can be improved later; remembering something you forgot cannot.
Photograph in batches, grouped by size. Setting up the lights once for twenty pieces is a completely different job from setting up twenty times, and that difference is usually what decides whether the backlog gets finished at all.
How do I keep backup copies?
Whatever you use, export everything to CSV (delimited text, Excel, and so on) every so often and store it with your backups. That export is your reference archive, while the software is the interface you happen to be using this decade.
It also makes the choice of tool reversible, and takes the pressure off: if moving costs you one export, choosing wrong costs you nothing. Before committing to any system, check that it lets you export and import.
What should I use?
A spreadsheet already does everything above, and for fewer than a hundred pieces it works well. The friction shows up when you need the photos to live next to the data, and that is where spreadsheets start fighting with your image folder.
Other Dedicated software in this category is mostly built for professional studios and galleries: it starts around USD 70 a month and none of it has a free plan.
Artium does what this guide describes (piece number, the two separate axes, editions, photos on the same record, CSV export, among others) and is built for the artist working alone. It is free up to 100 pieces and 60 € a year if you need more.
Artium came out of this exact problem, not out of a business idea. We built it for the studio of an artist who needed it solved for real, with work scattered across folders and no way to find anything. If any of this guide was useful, the app does all of it for you.
Whatever you choose: start this week with your first twenty pieces, not with all of them, and stop putting it off.