Absentee Bidding is a great money-making feature, but you need to plan ahead and make sure there are staff/volunteers available to ensure Absentee Bids will be placed appropriately.
When you elect to use absentee bidding for your live event, at the close of the auction unmet Maximum Bids from leading online bidders become Absentee Bids at your live event. You will be able to download the following information at the end of the auction online:
- Absentee Bid Sheets: Under Event > Print Materials. These provide printable sheets to distribute to volunteers and include item information, the current leading online bid, and the bidder's maximum (absentee) bid.
- Absentee Bidders Report: Under Report > Absentee Bidders. This report includes the item name and number, the leading bidder, their current leading bid, and their maximum (absentee) bid, in a tabular format. This report can be downloaded as a PDF or to Excel.
How it works during your event:
A member of your team will need to bid on behalf of your online participants up to their Absentee Bid amounts.
For a silent auction: Members of your auction team will need to write in bids for your Absentee Bidders on the bid sheets you have for each item.
For a gavel auction using an auctioneer: One of your auction team members should play the role of "Bid Clerk" and bid on behalf of the absent online bidder for each item up to the Absentee Bid.
Important: The online bidder is trusting you, the Auction Administrator, to represent them honestly during your event. Bids should be placed incrementally. We do not recommend the maximum (absentee) bid is applied automatically as the item's leading bid.
In the event of a tie bid (a guest writes in a bid at the same amount as the online bidder's maximum bid), the online bidder is considered the winner, since their bid was placed at an earlier time.
Read more: How to enable Absentee Bidding
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