Our collection involves about 225 cultivars - mostly registered plus a few seedlings and NOIDs. I've been maintaining an Excel spreadsheet since we got started around 2001. It began simply as a list of what we had along with the basic AHS info that described it. As the collection grew, I added columns for: which bed it was in (primary sort sequence), what dates it bloomed, year initially planted and when it was last divided. Although I'm relatively comfortable with Excel, the fairly simple records I maintain only scratch the surface of Excel's capabilities.
I also do some genealogy record-keeping for my and my wife's families. I began doing these in Excel, but have subsequently been using the spreadsheet tool on Google's "Drive" (formerly "Docs") environment. That tool is much less sophisticated than Excel, but seems more than adequate for the types of daylily records I'm maintaining. Two advantages of the Google Drive spreadsheet vs Excel are: 1) no requirement to back up your data (Google does it) and 2) it's accessible anywhere (as long as you have Internet access).
To date, I don't keep photos of our plants in Excel. They're in a separate folder on our PC. Obvious issues: 1) periodic back ups required 2) no remote access.
Seems to me the ideal situation is to have access to a list of what you have. where it's planted, its basic descriptive info, and a photo of it accessible anywhere at any time - preferably on a tablet-style device (with Internet access).
