Free migration help for mausoleum, columbarium, and niche inventory.
Mausoleum Mapping Software

Map every crypt and niche as a grid, not a spreadsheet

Outdoor cemetery maps are drawn from a plat. A mausoleum is not — it is a building with floors, faces, and rows of niches, and forcing that into a flat map is why above-ground inventory so often ends up in a spreadsheet nobody trusts. CEMETERRA models mausoleums, columbaria, and ossuaries the way they are actually built.

StructureName each building, wall unit, or niche wall and assign it to a cemetery section.
FloorEvery structure holds multiple floors, each with its own independently sized grid.
CellEach position in the grid carries its own label and links to a real plot record.

Why mausoleums break ordinary cemetery mapping

Most cemetery software treats the map as the source of truth, which works until the inventory stops being flat.

A ground section is a plane. You can draw it from a scanned plat, trace the plot boundaries, and every grave sits at a point you can walk to. A mausoleum breaks all three assumptions at once. Fifty niches can occupy the same few square metres of floor plan, stacked six high and split across three levels, so a single map coordinate is no longer enough to identify anything. Draw that as polygons on a site map and you get an unreadable pile of overlapping shapes.

The result, in practice, is that above-ground inventory quietly leaves the system. The graves live in the cemetery software and the crypts live in a spreadsheet, and the two drift apart until nobody can answer a question as simple as how many niches are still available in the north wall. CEMETERRA avoids that split by giving structures their own shape — a grid — while keeping every occupied cell attached to the same plot record a ground grave would use.

Structures, not polygons

A mausoleum, columbarium, ossuary, or other structure is a named object assigned to a section — not a shape traced onto a site map.

Floors sized independently

A ground level with twelve rows and an upper level with six are stored separately, so you never pad a floor to match another.

Historical numbering preserved

Cell labels override grid position, so engraved numbering that does not run in sequence is reproduced rather than renumbered.

One record model throughout

An occupied niche links to a plot, so ownership, interments, documents, and reports behave exactly as they do for ground graves.

Above-ground inventory that reports like the rest of the cemetery

Plots in CEMETERRA carry a type, and above-ground positions are first-class members of that list.

Every plot is typed as ground, mausoleum, cremation niche, cremation garden, or natural. Because a mausoleum cell links to an ordinary plot, inventory and utilisation reporting can break results down by type without any separate above-ground reconciliation step. Asking how much unsold inventory remains returns niches and crypts alongside graves, in one answer, from one system.

Above-ground need CEMETERRA Map-only tools and spreadsheets
Representing stacked niches Row-by-column grid per floor, up to 100 × 100 positions. Overlapping polygons on a flat map, or rows in a separate file.
Multi-level structures Unlimited floors, each labelled and independently sized. Often a single layer, with levels encoded into the plot name by hand.
Non-sequential numbering Per-cell label override, independent of grid position. Renumbering to fit the tool, breaking the link to the physical building.
Ownership and interment records The same plot record used for ground graves. A parallel spreadsheet that drifts out of sync.
Setup effort Describe rows and columns — no survey or digitization project. Per-acre digitization pricing, or manual data entry.

Setting up a structure

Above-ground inventory is usually the fastest part of a cemetery to digitize, because a grid needs no coordinates.

1. Name the structure

Create the building, wall unit, or niche wall, choose its type, and assign the cemetery section it stands in.

2. Add the floors

Give each level a label your staff already use and set the number of rows and columns on that face.

3. Label the cells

Apply the numbering that is physically on the structure, so staff and families read the same identifiers.

4. Link the records

Attach plots to occupied cells. Everything unlinked stays visible as available inventory.

Mausoleum mapping questions

Can I map a mausoleum that has more than one floor?

Yes. A structure holds any number of floors, and each floor carries its own independent grid. You can label floors however your cemetery refers to them — Ground Level, Level 2, Garden Level — and each floor can be a different size, because a ground level with 12 rows and an upper level with 6 rows are stored separately rather than forced into one shared layout.

How large can a single niche wall or crypt face be?

Each floor supports a grid of up to 100 rows by 100 columns, which covers 10,000 positions on a single face. Most columbarium walls and mausoleum crypt faces are far smaller than that, so the practical limit is how you want to divide the structure into faces, not the software.

Do niche numbers have to follow the row and column position?

No. Every cell keeps its grid position for layout purposes but can carry its own label, such as A-1, N-114, or Tier 3 Left. This matters for older structures where the historical numbering does not run in a clean sequence, because you can reproduce the numbering that is physically engraved on the building instead of renumbering it to suit the software.

Is a mausoleum niche a separate kind of record from a grave?

Each occupied cell links to a normal plot record, and plots carry a type of ground, mausoleum, cremation niche, cremation garden, or natural. That means an above-ground niche uses the same ownership, interment, document, and reporting machinery as a ground grave, and inventory and utilisation reports can break results down by type.

Do I need a surveyor or a GIS project to map a mausoleum?

No. A mausoleum face is a grid rather than a survey problem, so you describe the structure by its rows and columns instead of digitizing coordinates. That is why above-ground inventory can usually be set up in an afternoon even when the outdoor cemetery map is still being drawn.

Pricing

Free, Standard, and Pro plans published openly — no per-acre charge.

Get your above-ground inventory out of the spreadsheet

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