Disclaimer. Collectalia is not a legal, tax or insurance advice site. The information on this page is general and based on French legislation in force as of 09/11/2026: it may change, does not necessarily apply outside France and does not take your situation into account. Always have it checked by a notary, a lawyer, an accountant or your insurer before acting on it.
The essentials
- Museums of France have an obligation to keep an inventory and carry out a ten-year check (récolement), with specialist tools.
- Collectalia is aimed first at private foundations, corporate collections, small museums without official status, associations and artists’ houses.
- Condition reports, loans, movements, teamwork and a log of changes are all brought together there.
An art foundation, a corporate collection or a small association-run museum has the same needs as a large institution: knowing what it owns, where each piece is, in what condition, and who has changed it. It rarely has the same resources. This page honestly presents what general-purpose collection management software such as Collectalia can offer, and where its limits lie.
Museums of France and the ten-year check: a framework of its own
Museums of France must keep an inventory of their collections and carry out a check every ten years (récolement, article L451-2 of the Heritage Code). The third check campaign runs from 1 January 2026 to 31 December 2035. Specialist tools exist to meet this requirement.
Collectalia makes no claim of regulatory compliance for these institutions. If your museum holds the “musée de France” designation, rely on the tools and services provided for it. At most, Collectalia can serve as a complement for a collection that does not fall under the regulatory inventory.
Who Collectalia is designed for
- Private foundations that conserve, lend and promote a collection.
- Corporate collections spread across several sites, offices and storerooms.
- Small museums without official status and association-run museums, often run by volunteers.
- Friends’ associations, learned societies, local collections.
- Artists’ houses and studios, the archives of a body of work, preparation of a catalogue raisonné.
For these organisations, the problem is not the standard: it is dispersal. The inventory is in an old spreadsheet, the photos on a drive, the condition reports on paper, the loans in emails. When the person who knew everything leaves, the memory goes with them.
What Collectalia brings
- One entry per piece, with the fields specific to the category (painting, sculpture with edition, founder and foundry mark, print, book, object, coin…) and custom fields for your own numbering.
- High-resolution photos and documents: deeds of acquisition or donation, restoration reports, publications.
- Provenance and history, exhibitions, successive valuations and values.
- Dated condition reports, to track a work’s evolution over time; our guide to the condition report for a work of art details the method.
- Loans and movements: borrower, dates, place; precise location in a gallery, storeroom or storage unit.
- Insurance policies and renewal dates, with a reminder before the cancellation deadline.
- PDF reports and Excel exports (inventory, location, insurance), laid-out PDF catalogue, labels with QR code.
A collections check on your own scale
Even without a legal obligation, regularly checking that each piece is in its place and in the condition described remains good practice. With a location report printed or opened on a tablet, the team goes from room to room, checks, corrects the location or adds a condition report. The log keeps a record of every correction.
Working with several people
Curator, registrar, volunteers, scientific committee, visiting researchers: each is given a role (administrator, editor, read-only). Read-only access is free and unlimited, and insurance values can be hidden from those users. The log of changes and access shows who created or changed an entry, and when. An organisation that manages several separate collections can find out about the Pro plan (see the pricing).
Confidentiality and security
Data is hosted in France and backed up daily. Two-factor authentication can be required of the whole team. A full export of the space remains possible at any time, which avoids locking the inventory into a tool.
With Collectalia
A shared inventory for the whole team, with condition reports, loans, location and the history of every change. Designed for foundations, corporate collections and small organisations that want a serious tool without an IT infrastructure.
Disclaimer. Collectalia is not a legal, tax or insurance advice site. The information on this page is general and based on French legislation in force as of 09/11/2026: it may change, does not necessarily apply outside France and does not take your situation into account. Always have it checked by a notary, a lawyer, an accountant or your insurer before acting on it.