Published by Adrian Vogel · Reading time: approx. 5 minutes
Most people don't underestimate what they own. They underestimate how hard it is to find the right piece of information at the right moment.
After a burglary, the police don't ask what your bicycle was worth. They ask for the frame number. With a stolen smartphone, it's the IMEI that counts. And with your insurer, what shapes a claim is often not the size of the sum but whether you can hand over an orderly list within a few days.
That's what digital inventory management is about: not a list of possessions, but order, findability, and a traceable history.
Note: How much a claim actually pays out, and how far documented and undocumented household contents diverge, is covered separately in our article "When the House Burns Down and Nothing Is Documented". This piece deliberately leaves payout amounts aside.
A Claim Is an Appointment, Not a State
People tend to picture a loss as a state in which they will "at some point" gather their paperwork. In reality it is a chain of deadlines that starts running immediately.
After a burglary, the German insurance industry's model conditions (GDV, VHB 2022) oblige you to submit a list of the missing items to the police and to your insurer without undue delay. That is not a fixed deadline, but the courts draw a narrow corridor: the Higher Regional Court of Celle regularly treats considerably more than two weeks as too late (8 U 190/14), the Higher Regional Court of Cologne treated seven weeks as clearly too late (9 U 82/07), and the Regional Court of Oldenburg held a 40 percent reduction in benefits justified where the list came around a month after the offence (13 O 3064/09). The reason is the investigation: the sooner the list exists, the sooner anyone can search for the goods.
During a move, damage that is not visible must be reported within 14 days, otherwise the claims lapse (§ 451f of the German Commercial Code, HGB); against consumers that only applies if they were told about the form and the deadline no later than on delivery. For bicycle theft, the model conditions require a report without undue delay plus evidence that the bike has not turned up again within three weeks. And it keeps going even after the payout: if a missing item resurfaces, section A 24 of the VHB 2022 gives you two weeks to hand it to the insurer, or to repay the compensation and keep it.
The VHB are non-binding model conditions issued by the GDV. Your specific policy may differ — reading your own terms is not replaced by this overview.
Order Means Structure, Not Completeness
The most common reason an inventory never comes into being: the ambition to record everything. That is neither necessary nor realistic. Start rough, with a walk-through room by room, on video or as a series of photos. Germany's consumer advice centres recommend exactly that at regular intervals.
Then prioritise, but not by value alone. The more useful question is: where will identification later hinge on a number I can still read off the item today? Electronics, bicycles, vehicles, watches and collectibles therefore go first. Give things context, meaning rooms, categories, what belongs to what, and the policy that covers them. That is the difference between a list and a set of belongings you can filter when it counts. And update on triggers rather than on a schedule: a new purchase, a move, a change of insurer, an inheritance.
How long the initial capture takes, we cannot say credibly; we are not aware of any robust surveys. Only one thing is reliable: it takes longer once you are in the middle of a claim.
The Number You Can No Longer Read Off
After a theft the item is gone, and with it the type plate, the sticker, the stamped number. What remains is what you noted down beforehand. The police put it plainly: without a serial number, a recovered item often cannot be returned, not even when it is identified as stolen.
The bicycle shows the scale of the problem. The German cyclists' association ADFC reports a consistently low clearance rate for bicycle theft of just 10 to 15 percent. More seriously: around 90 percent of all recovered bikes never find their way back to their owner despite having a frame number, because the owner cannot describe the bike unambiguously or never noted the number down. There is no central register, and manufacturers stamp frame numbers without a uniform system, duplicates included. The 2024 German police crime statistics recorded 245,868 two-wheeler thefts.
With a smartphone it is the IMEI. The 15-digit number appears when you dial *#06#, and you need it for the police report.
And then there is the till receipt. Thermal paper fades; according to specialists, sometimes completely within a few weeks or months. For statutory warranty rights, some other proof of the place and time of purchase, a bank statement for instance, is generally enough. Under a voluntary manufacturer's guarantee, by contrast, the guarantor may insist on the original receipt. Photographing the receipt right at the till sidesteps both problems.
Since When Has This Existed?
The hardest question in a claim is rarely "what did you have?" but "since when has this documentation existed?". A list that visibly came into being only after the event has a different character from one that has grown over years.
Photo metadata alone won't help much. Digital photographs are subject to the court's free evaluation of evidence (§§ 286, 371 of the German Code of Civil Procedure, ZPO), and the case law gives EXIF data no elevated weight because it is easily altered. Qualified timestamps under the eIDAS Regulation (Art. 41(2)) are a different category, with a statutory presumption behind them. In practice, though, the overall picture usually decides: a record that has grown over time, consistent receipts, bank statements that match the purchases. That is why a change history is worth more than one perfect individual entry.
And the most banal point is the most important one: documentation kept in the same house burns with it. The consumer advice centre of North Rhine-Westphalia explicitly recommends keeping copies of your most important documents outside your home. A folder in the study does not meet that requirement.
What OWNY Takes Care Of
OWNAMIC is not a valuation service and not an insurance adviser. The app describes your belongings and asserts nothing about them that cannot be substantiated. OWNY, the assistant in OWNAMIC, reads out of a photo and a receipt what is actually written there: model, serial number, purchase date, price. It does not appraise. Every detail stays labelled as documented, researched, estimated or assumed, warranty periods and evidence deadlines run along with you, and when you file a claim you export an orderly list instead of spending a night at the kitchen table with gaps in your memory. Your documentation does not sit where the damage happens.
For the sake of precision, which matters more here than marketing: OWNY signs documents with a simple electronic signature and keeps a change log. That is not a qualified timestamp within the meaning of the eIDAS Regulation. The practical value lies in a traceable history that has grown over time, not in a statutory presumption of proof.
Three things are worth doing whatever tool you use: note down individual numbers while the items are still there. Digitise receipts before the till slip fades. And keep your documentation somewhere that survives a loss in your own home.
Further reading: carrying tangible assets forward in your net worth – the Big Picture in OWNAMIC
Capture your first item in OWNAMIC — free of charge.
Sources and Classification
We label statements by the quality of their evidence. The following points are documented (primary source with a date): §§ 30, 31 of the German Insurance Contract Act (VVG); §§ 451e, 451f HGB; § 2314 of the German Civil Code (BGB); GDV model conditions VHB 2022 (sections A 18, A 19.4.1, A 24, together with the post-loss obligations in Part B); Higher Regional Court of Celle 8 U 190/14; Higher Regional Court of Cologne 9 U 82/07 and 9 U 12/17; Regional Court of Oldenburg 13 O 3064/09; eIDAS Regulation Art. 41(2); German police crime statistics 2024 (BKA, presented on 2 April 2025); GDV claims statistics 2024; ADFC on bicycle theft and coding; guidance from the German police crime prevention bodies of the federal states and the federation; consumer advice centre of North Rhine-Westphalia.
Researched (several concurring secondary sources): the reading of "without undue delay" as a period of a few days up to a maximum of one week in parts of the lower-court case law; the acceptance of scans and copies by insurers in practice; the evidence requirements under statutory warranty rights as against a voluntary manufacturer's guarantee.
Not reliably verifiable and therefore deliberately not claimed here: an average total value of household contents per household in euros, and a realistic time budget for the initial capture. The customary rule-of-thumb figure of around 650 euros per square metre is a guide value for determining the sum insured, not an empirically established value of what people own.
This article does not replace legal or insurance advice. Your individual policy terms are what count.