How to number your artwork, including the works you never numbered

What is an inventory number, and why isn't the title enough?

An inventory number is a short code that belongs to one work and to no other, for as long as the work exists. Titles get revised, and Untitled exists in twenty versions. The number stays the same through every sale, loan and reframing, so it is what still connects a photograph, a row in a list and the object in the rack ten years from now.

Museums call the same thing an accession number: the number a work receives when it enters a collection. The UK collections standard, Spectrum, defines its object number as "a unique number identifying an object or specimens, including any separated parts". An artist's inventory number does the same job before the work has left the studio.

Which numbering system should you use?

Any system works if it gives one number per work and never reuses one. They differ in how much a number tells you at a glance, and how easily it is mistyped.

Year and sequence: 2026.014

The year the work was finished, a full stop, and a running number that starts again each January: 2026.001, 2026.002, 2026.014. It tells you roughly when something was made, never runs out, and sorts correctly in any spreadsheet as long as the column is set to text (more on that below). Spectrum gives the same shape as an example, 1992.1234. Use three digits after the full stop if you finish fewer than a thousand works a year, and keep that width for every number.

Initials, year and medium: JD09DW27

The Joan Mitchell Foundation's Creating a Living Legacy programme suggests "your initials, the year the work was completed, the category of work … and a number for that individual work", with the example JD09DW27, the 27th drawing Jane Doe made in 2009. It suits a large output across several media. The cost is length, and a medium code you must keep consistent for decades.

A plain running number

1, 2, 3, in the order works are recorded. Enough for a small body of work, but it tells you nothing, and past a few hundred rows a typo in a bare number is hard to spot.

Whichever you choose, keep price, location and owner out of the number. All three change. The number must not. Spectrum says the same thing in museum terms: no classificatory elements, because they may change.

How do you number prints, editions and series?

An edition gets one inventory number for the image, and each impression carries its edition number with it: 2026.031 3/25 is the third print of twenty five. Artist's proofs, written AP, sit outside the numbered edition and take their own count, such as 2026.031 AP 1/3. The edition number tells a buyer which print they hold. The inventory number tells you which image it belongs to.

A series is different. Twelve paintings with the same title are twelve works, and each gets its own number. The series name belongs in its own column, never in the number.

Where do you write the number on the work?

On the work and in the record. The CALL guidance puts it plainly: "An inventory number should exist both on the artwork itself and in the artwork record."

Write it somewhere hidden, in something reversible. On a painting, that means the stretcher bar or a label on the back of the frame, never the canvas. On paper, a soft pencil such as 2B or 4B on the reverse, near a corner, with light pressure; this is the method the Western Australian Museum's labelling guidance gives for paper. For sculpture, a tie-on tag or a label on the underside. The same guidance advises against correction fluid, nail varnish and adhesive labels directly on the object, because each can damage it.

Then repeat it on invoices, consignment forms and loan records, as CALL also recommends.

Do sold and given-away works get a number too?

Yes, and they need it most. A work in your studio can be measured again tomorrow. A work in someone else's house cannot. Give it a number, record what you know, attach whatever photograph survives and note who has it. That record is the first link in its provenance, the chain of ownership it carries for the rest of its life.

How do you number a backlog that is already in a spreadsheet?

Most artists asking this already have a list, with some rows numbered, some numbered twice and some works missing. None of that means starting again. It is a sorting job, done in a copy of the file.

Sort first, number second

Sort the copy by year, then by what you know: works with a firm year first, then approximate years, then the undated. Number in that order. Two hundred rows takes an evening, because you are adding one column, not retyping the list.

Keep the old numbers in their own column

Earlier attempts at numbering are never deleted. They are written on the backs of works, on invoices and on gallery lists. Move them to a column called Old number, and add your new number beside them. Anyone who meets the old one later can still find the work.

Duplicates, gaps and works with no year

If two works share a number, the one that was recorded first keeps it and the other gets a new one. Note the change in the Old number column. Gaps stay gaps: if 2019.007 was destroyed or never existed, do not reuse the number. A work you cannot date takes your best year with c. in the year column, and is numbered within that year. A number with an approximate year beats no number.

Merging two lists without numbering twice

A gallery's list and your own will overlap. Match them on title, year and dimensions before numbering anything, and keep the gallery's stock number in the Old number column. Only the rows left over are new works.

Why does Excel turn 2026.010 into 2026.01?

Because it reads 2026.010 as a number, and as a number it equals 2026.01. Excel drops the trailing zero. With three digits after the full stop the damage is a list that no longer lines up. With unpadded numbers it is worse: 2026.1 and 2026.10, the first and the tenth work of the year, become the same value. Microsoft explains that Excel changes numbers like these "in order to allow formulas and math operations to work on them".

The fix is to set the column to text before typing: select the column, open Format Cells (Ctrl+1 on Windows), and choose Text on the Number tab. Microsoft notes this "will only affect numbers that are entered after the format is applied", so numbers already damaged have to be retyped. In Google Sheets it is Format, Number, Plain text. A CSV file opened by double-clicking goes through the same conversion, so open it through the import option and set that column to text there.

What happens to the number when you move your list?

The number is what holds a row, its photographs and the physical work together each time the list moves. Put it in image file names, as the image file naming guide suggests, so a file and its row always match. Put it on the work list you send with an application, where a jury or gallery can refer to it.

If you move the list into cataloguing software, including Samlio, keep the number in its own column and map it to the reference field when you import. In Samlio that field is called Reference / legacy ID. A number that travels in its own column arrives intact. A number buried in a notes cell has to be dug out by hand.

Starting from nothing, the artwork list template has an Inventory number column, and the guide to cataloguing your own artwork covers the other fields. If a deadline is what made you open the spreadsheet, the calendar of open calls and residencies shows what is open now.