The list they ask for afterwards can only be made beforehand

United Policyholders surveyed households a year after the Los Angeles fires. Three numbers from that survey are worth knowing before you need them:

• 69% of households were underinsured.
• 55% received no personal-property benefits until they submitted an inventory.
• 66% had to itemize every destroyed item.

The second and third are the ones a record answers. Underinsurance is a conversation with your broker, and no software fixes it. We would rather say so than imply otherwise.

Photograph the rooms. Enter the appliances with their model and serial numbers. They are on a plate on the back or inside the door. Keep the receipts you still have. It is an afternoon, and it is the whole job.

When it is entered, the insurance report assembles it into the itemized list an adjuster asks for, from what you already saved. You are not writing anything new at the worst moment of your life; you are pressing print on something you finished months earlier.

Once your appliances are entered, we check them nightly against the CPSC recall database. Inspectors are charged for this and homeowners are quoted around $29.95 for a single report. The underlying government data is free and public, so ours is free too, for everyone, permanently.

This is not insurance advice, and it does not change what your policy covers. A documented inventory makes a claim easier to substantiate. It does not oblige an insurer to pay, and it will not raise a limit that was set too low. Read your declarations page. Then build the list.