There are 4 elements to closing-out your online/mobile auction, which you should have setup prior to your event:
- Close Bidding (dictated by the online bidding groups you've set up)
- Award Items to high Bidders (controlled by your auto-award setting)
- Notify Winners and Requesting Payment
- Option to Bulk Process Credit Cards
During your event, the best place to confirm/edit your current settings and manage closing times is your Online Bidding Dashboard.
1. To Close or Extend Bidding:
Bidding will be be halted automatically at the closing time specified for the online bidding group (unless you have the extended bidding option enabled to capture last minute bids).
- If you need to adjust the closing date/time of a bidding group, use the edit icon next to the desired online bidding group - this will automatically update all of the items assigned to the group.
- If you need to adjust the closing times of some, but not all, items within a group, Go the Catalog and reassign items to another bidding group with the desired closing time. These edits can be done individually or via bulk item edits.
- If you need to extend bidding at the last moment - the fastest way to do so is to use the Extend Bidding link provided on the Online Bidding Dashboard - and choose a preset # of minutes to extend the bidding.
2. Award Items to High Bidders:
Items will not be awarded to winners until/unless Auto-Award is enabled.
The award process is NOT instantaneous - it requires a server refresh and can take 1-15 minutes to complete. Bidding will be halted at the specified time and the catalog tile banners will change from "Bid Now" to "Bidding Closed - Processing" during the award process.
If there is ANY chance you may want to extend bidding in the final moments, disable auto-award until you have officially closed bidding.
You can view (and manage) your auto-award setting on the Online Bidding Dashboard:
3. Notify Winners and Request Payment:
How you to choose to notify winners depends on the type of event and personal preference:
- Gala events with mobile bidding most often disable the automatic notifications and instead opt to notify winners via a single emailed invitation to self check out. Invitations to self check-out can also be sent to winners that are not present at the gala. Instructions for set up.
- Online Auctions, where bidders are geographically dispersed, generally opt to "Send an email notification when an item is awarded". This automated process will send a separate email notification for each item with a link to pay for all items in their cart. Instructions for set up.
- You also have an option of including a shopping cart icon on the mobile tool bar. Once items have been awarded, you can simply make announcements to the audience to click on the Cart icon on their phones to view and pay for their items. Some chairs prefer to always display the cart icon, others prefer to enable it once items are awarded (to discourage folks from paying from fixed price or buy now price purchases each time something lands in their cart).
You can verify/edit your settings and/or send invitations to self check-out from the online mobile dashboard:
Option to Bulk Process Credit Cards
Acorn, Plus, and Professional subscribers have the option to bulk process payments on orders with vaulted cards from the online bidding dashboard (see red button above), Auction Night Check-out or the Orders page.
Best practice is to give your guests an opportunity to review their carts and submit payment before resorting to bulk processing because:
- it's easier to correct errors in a cart before a payment is applied
- individual check-out provides an opportunity to "round up my bill" or make a Last Ask donation
- it allows guests to opt in (or out) of offsetting cc processing fees. Bulk processing will allow you to force the inclusion of offset fees - but it's an either/or decision - either everyone is charged offset fees or no one is.
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