Notifying Winners and Requesting Payment (Online Auctions)

Online Auctions, where participants are bidding from different locations, typically choose settings to fully automate the closing process:

1. At the specified closing time(s),  bidding is halted.
2. Automatic Close-out awards each online item by placing it in the high bidder's Cart/Order (this process can take 5-10 minutes).
3. Winning Bid notifications are emailed to the winners with a link and instructions to pay and how to pick up/arrange shipment of their items.  Bidders will receive a separate email notification for each item won, but the links provided for payment are to their cart where they can review and pay for all items together.
4. You also have the option of automating the emailing of Daily Payment Reminders until an order has been paid for.

You may not want the entire process automated:

If you prefer to review the high bids placed prior to awarding items, you can disable automatic close-out.   This will allow bidding to close as scheduled, but items will not be awarded until you turn automatic close-out on.

If you prefer to send a single notification to winners, you can disable the Winning Bid notifications and send invitations to Self Check-out instead.  

If you have Buy Now options in your online auction and want to allow supporters to pay for all purchases at the end, you'll want to wait to enable Daily Payment Reminders until all items have closed.

The default payment method for online transactions is Credit Card.  Since Cash/Check payments cannot be submitted online, use the Custom Payment option to allow buyers to indicate that they will be paying by cash/check, then provide instructions for them to do so.  Be aware that Self Check-out and Online Carts (below) can be setup with different payment options, so be sure to specify your desired payment methods in one or both settings pages.

 Note:  Once your site is set up with online credit card processing, it will be available for use anywhere on the site.  If it has not been set up yet, you can find instructions here.