Art gallery inventory: when a spreadsheet is no longer enough

Saturday, and a collector writes. She saw a small blue painting at the fair, cannot remember the artist’s name, and wants to know whether it is still available and how much. You open the spreadsheet that holds your art gallery inventory: not the file at the gallery, the copy you made on the laptop before the fair. The line is there, the price too, but the status column still says “available”, and you are not sure your partner did not mention it to someone on Thursday. The photo is on your phone, somewhere between two openings.

Nothing serious. You will find the answer, in ten minutes or in two hours. But this is exactly the moment when a spreadsheet, which served you well for years, starts costing more than it brings in. Here is how to tell, what to look for instead, and how to move without losing a month.

Why almost every art gallery inventory starts in a spreadsheet

Because it makes sense. At first there are twenty works, two artists and one person who keeps the file. Excel is already on the computer, costs nothing extra and takes any column you care to add. You put in the title, the medium, the dimensions, the price, the artist’s name, and you get on with things.

The trouble does not arrive all at once. It comes with the second person who edits the file, with the first fair, with works left on consignment by an artist, with the website that has to be kept up to date on the side. Every new need adds a column, a tab or a second file. Three or four years later, the gallery no longer keeps one inventory, it keeps several, and none of them is quite right.

Five signs your spreadsheet is costing you sales

• It exists in several versions. “Stock 2024”, “Stock 2024 updated”, “Stock fair”. If you have to ask someone which one is right, none of them really is.

• Availability is wrong somewhere. A work sold at the booth stays on the website for a week, or a collector is offered a piece reserved for someone else the day before. This is the most expensive mistake, because people outside the gallery can see it.

• The images live somewhere else. In a shared folder, in emails, on the photographer’s phone. Before you can send a proposal, you first have to find the right photo at the right resolution.

• Consignments are tracked from memory. Who left what with you, since when, on what terms, and when the work has to go back. A spreadsheet can record it; it will never remind you.

• You type the same information in three places. In the file, on the invoice, in the stock register some countries require by law. Every copy is a chance to get it wrong, and that register does not forgive crossings out.

If two of these five sound familiar, it is not a question of personal discipline. The tool has stopped keeping up.

What software should do for an art gallery inventory

Every piece of software promises an “inventory”. The real question is what happens around each artwork record.

A work should exist only once. Its record holds the provenance, the medium, the dimensions, the price, good images, the certificates and its history: who did what, and when. Everything else starts from that record: the proposal you send a collector, the invoice, the page on your website, the line in the register, the shipment. Change the price and it changes everywhere. Sell the work and it disappears everywhere at the same moment.

Three situations specific to the art market deserve a close look, because general business tools handle them badly:

• Editions and multiples. A photograph printed in an edition of eight is not one work but eight objects, each with its own number, its own status and sometimes its own price.

• Consignments. The work is in your stock without belonging to you, and the record has to say so clearly, with the date it came in and what you agreed with the artist.

• Availability. Available, reserved, sold: one status, visible to the whole team, and carried through to the website without anyone having to think about it.

Moving from Excel to software without losing a month

The most common fear is moving what you already have: ten years of rows, columns whose meaning changed along the way, photos named “IMG_4087”. In practice, the move can be prepared in a morning if you take it in the right order.

1. Make a copy of your file, and work on the copy.

2. Keep one row per work, or per copy when it is an edition.

3. Check that each column means one thing only: a price, not “4,500 or 4,000 for Mrs D.”.

4. If you can, rename the photos with the work’s reference. It is what saves the most time later.

5. Import the available works first, the ones that pay the bills this season. The history can follow.

A good tool shows you, before saving anything, how it has read each column, and lets you undo if you do not like the result. For a few weeks, keep the old file open alongside. It stops mattering the day you realise you have not opened it in ten days.

Questions to ask before you choose

Before you sign, ask these questions, and ask to see the answer on screen rather than hear it:

• Can the import be previewed and undone?

• How are editions, numbered copies and consignments handled?

• Does a sold work disappear by itself from the website and from proposals already sent?

• Where is the data hosted, and what do I take with me if I leave?

• Do the register and the invoice start from the same record, or do I have to type things again?

To compare the main gallery software on facts, price, languages, hosting and compliance, we have gathered the sources in our comparison of gallery management software. If you already use Artlogic, the page MARMALADE or Artlogic explains how a move works.

What MARMALADE actually does

We built MARMALADE around this idea of a single record. The import takes your Excel or CSV files, previews them field by field, flags duplicates and can be undone in one click. On a real case, 49 works and 373 images came in within fifteen minutes, deduplicated and checked. After that, the same record serves the proposal, the invoice, the website and the register.

The simplest thing is to try it with your own works. The trial lasts 30 days, with no card during the trial, and your current file does not need to be perfect to get started.

First published on 13 October 2026, updated on 20 October 2026.