Art Inventory Spreadsheet: What to Track, and 5 Signs You've Outgrown It

Most artists start their art inventory spreadsheet the same way. It's Sunday night, a gallery in Berry has just emailed asking what's still available, and you realise you're not completely sure. So you open a blank sheet, type "Title" in the first cell, and promise yourself you'll keep it up to date this time.

Sometimes that works for years. Often it doesn't. Below is what a good sheet actually needs, how to set it up so it survives a busy exhibition season, and the five signs that you've outgrown it.

Key takeaways

• A useful art inventory spreadsheet has one row per piece and about a dozen columns, starting with an inventory number.

• Status and location are the columns that matter most, and the ones that go stale fastest.

• Never delete a sold piece. Mark it sold and keep the row.

• Once you're working with more than one gallery or selling in more than one place, a spreadsheet starts costing you time and sales.

• The ATO generally expects business records to be kept for five years, so your inventory is part of your paperwork too.

What an art inventory spreadsheet should track

Keep it simple enough that you'll actually fill it in. These are the columns most working artists end up with, whatever they make.

Column What goes in it Example Inventory number A unique code you never reuse FS-2026-014 Title The name you'll use everywhere Waratah Jar Year When it was finished 2026 Medium and materials What it's made of Stoneware, gold lustre Dimensions Height, width, depth, with units 32 x 18 x 18 cm Weight Needed for freight quotes 2.4 kg Edition For prints, photos and casts 4/20 Retail price What a buyer pays A$320 Status Available, consigned, sold, returned, gifted Consigned Location Where it physically is today Gallery in Berry Date out / date back When it left and came home 3 Sep 2026 / – Sold to and date Buyer or gallery, and the sale date 12 Oct 2026 Notes Condition, framing, anything odd Small glaze run, base.

Give every piece a number.

This is the first column of any art inventory spreadsheet worth having. Titles repeat. Artists make three "Untitled (Blue)" in a year and then can't tell them apart on an invoice. A simple code fixes it: your initials, the year, and a running number. Write it on the back or base of the work in pencil, and use it on every label, sheet, and email.

The photo problem

Spreadsheets are bad at pictures. You can paste a thumbnail, but it bloats the file and never lines up with the row after you sort. Most people end up with a folder of photos called something like "IMG_4471" and no way to match them to a row. At the very least, name each photo file with the inventory number.

Setting it up so it lasts

The sheet itself takes an hour to build. Keeping an art inventory spreadsheet honest is the hard part, so a few habits help.

• One row per piece, always. Not one row per series or per exhibition.

• Use a dropdown for status. Typed statuses turn into "sold", "Sold!", "SOLD - paid" and "sld" within a month, and then sorting doesn't work.

• Never delete sold work. Change the status and keep the row. That history is your sales record and your CV.

• Update it the day something moves, not at the end of the month. Most mistakes happen in the gap, and November to January, with Christmas markets and summer open studios, is when the gap gets widest.

• Keep a backup somewhere that isn't the same laptop.

If you work across mediums, the details worth recording change from type to type. Our guide to the types of artwork covers what buyers ask for with each one, which tells you what to put in the notes column.

Tip: Before you send work to a gallery, sort your art inventory spreadsheet by status and print or save the "consigned" rows for that gallery. That's your consignment list. Ask the gallery to sign a copy, and you both have the same record of what arrived.

Five signs you've outgrown your art inventory spreadsheet

A spreadsheet is fine for a studio with twenty pieces and one outlet. It starts to crack as your practice grows. These are the signs.

1. You work with more than one gallery

With two or three galleries, every piece has a location that changes, and each gallery has its own commission and its own paperwork. One sheet with a "location" column can't show who has what, since when, or on what terms, without a lot of manual checking.

2. The same piece is listed in three places

It's on your Shopify store, it's been posted on Instagram, and it's sitting at a gallery in Hobart. When it sells at the gallery, you now have to remember to take it down everywhere else. Miss one and you've sold the same vase twice.

3. You can't answer "where is it?" in under a minute

A collector rings about a piece they saw last year. If finding out whether it's in the studio, on consignment or already sold means scrolling, cross-checking emails and ringing a gallery, the sheet isn't doing its job.

4. The commission maths lives in your head

Retail price, the gallery's cut, and what you actually take home are three different numbers. When they're scattered across formula cells, notes and old emails, mistakes creep in, especially at tax time.

5. You're retyping the same details over and over

The title, size and price go into the sheet, then into a consignment form, then into an invoice, then into a caption, then into your website. Five copies of the same facts, and they only need to disagree once to cause trouble.

Spreadsheet vs artwork inventory software

Job Art inventory spreadsheet ArtFlow Photos with each piece Separate folder, easy to mismatch Attached to the artwork record Where each piece is One column, updated by hand Piece history: created, consigned, dispatched, sold, returned Working with galleries Emails and separate forms Shared records with each connected gallery Consignment and invoices Retyped each time Generated from the same record Online shop and socials Copy and paste Publishes to Shopify, WooCommerce, Squarespace, Wix or Square, and drafts Facebook and Instagram posts Cost Free Free tier, Pro from A$6.99 a month

The spreadsheet wins on one thing: it's already open on your laptop. Everything else gets easier once each piece has a proper record that the rest of your admin reads from.

What the ATO expects you to keep

If you sell your work as a business, your inventory sits alongside your receipts and invoices as part of your records. The ATO's record-keeping rules for business generally ask for records to be kept for five years. A clean sales history, with dates, prices and who bought what, makes that a lot less painful. It's worth talking to your accountant about what your own practice needs, as this isn't tax advice.

For galleries, the terms themselves matter as much as the list. The Arts Law Centre has a consignment agreement for artists and galleries that covers commission, insurance and what happens if work is damaged. Our post on preparing work for an exhibition walks through the rest of the paperwork.

Moving on from the spreadsheet

You don't have to move everything in one weekend. Start with the rows in your art inventory spreadsheet that are currently out at galleries, because those are the ones most likely to go missing on paper. Then add new work as you finish it, and bring older pieces across when they next move. If you can get it done before the Christmas market rush, even better.

ArtFlow was built for exactly this. Each artwork is filed once, with its photos, size, medium, price, and history, and that one record feeds the gallery paperwork, the artwork's own page, your shop listings and your social posts. You can see how it works on the features page. And if you've been meaning to get a site up as well, that same record drives your artist website.

Questions artists ask about art inventory.

• What should an art inventory spreadsheet include? At minimum: an inventory number, title, year, medium, dimensions, price, status and current location. Add weight, edition, date out and back, buyer, and notes as your practice grows.

• Is there a free art inventory spreadsheet template? You can build one in Google Sheets or Excel from the columns in the table above in about an hour. If you'd rather skip the spreadsheet altogether, ArtFlow's free tier lets you catalogue up to 50 artworks.

• How should I number my artworks? Use your initials, the year, and a running number, like FS-2026-014. Never reuse a number, even if a piece is destroyed or given away.

• How long should artists keep sales records in Australia? The ATO generally asks businesses to keep records for five years. Check with your accountant for your own situation.

• When should I stop using a spreadsheet? When you're working with more than one gallery, selling in more than one place, or retyping the same details into forms and invoices. That's usually when mistakes and double sales start.

The short version

An art inventory spreadsheet is a good start. Give each piece a number, keep status and location honest, and never delete a sale. But once your work is spread across galleries, a shop, and Instagram, the sheet becomes one more thing to keep in sync. When you're ready for one record that does the syncing for you, start a free ArtFlow account and move your consigned pieces across first.