How to Run a Live Auction

Argenta can run the room on auction night, not just the bidding that happens beforehand. You give each guest a bidder number, call items from the stage, record each sale as the hammer falls, and then bill everyone in one pass at the end of the evening.

Your silent auction is unchanged. This is the live half sitting alongside it, and an auction can use both: guests bid online all week, the silent bidding closes, and the live items are called from the stage the same night.

Set the auction up for the night

Open the auction and go to its Details page. Five settings decide how the night behaves.

• Silent Bidding Close Date and Silent Bidding Close Time – when online bidding stops. An auction can close its silent bidding partway through the evening and keep going with the live items, so this does not have to be the end of the night.
• First Bidder Number – the number the first guest is given. Everyone after that is numbered up from it.
• Card Required For A Bidder Number – when this is on, every guest must register with a card before they can be given a bidder number, and you cannot add a walk-up guest at all. Turn it off if you expect people to arrive on the night without registering first.
• Charge Silent Winners At The Silent Close – on by default, which bills the silent winners as soon as silent bidding closes. Turn it OFF and their silent winnings are held unbilled instead, so Run Transactions can put them on the same single invoice as everything that guest won live. This setting only makes a difference on an auction that has live items; a purely silent auction always bills at the close.

Mark the items you will sell live

Open an item and tick Live Auction Item. That is the whole of it: the item stops being part of the online bidding and appears in the list you call from on the night.

A Fund A Need item is the other kind, and it is not really an item at all. It is the appeal where you ask the room to give at set amounts, so it has no single winner and the same guest can give to it more than once. Tick Fund A Need and a Giving Levels box appears. Type the amounts you plan to call, separated by commas, like 1000, 500, 250, 100. They become buttons on the live page so nobody is typing amounts while the room is moving. The order you type them in does not matter, because they are always shown highest first, and whoever is working the page can still enter an amount that is not on the list.

Give your guests bidder numbers

Go to Bidders in the auction menu. Search by name, email or bidder number, and click Add Guest to register someone who is already a constituent. The page shows each guest's Bidder Number, who they are under Person, when they were Registered, and how they intend to pay under Settles By.

Settles By is either Card on file or Invoice and pay link, and it decides what happens to that guest when you settle at the end of the night. A guest with a card on file is charged. A guest without one is emailed a link to pay.

Somebody who arrives without being registered is a walk-up. Use Add A Walk-Up Guest, type their name, and they are given the next bidder number so the night is not held up. A guest can only be registered once for an auction, so trying to add the same person twice is refused rather than quietly making a second row.

If Card Required For A Bidder Number is on for this auction, walk-ups are refused and Argenta tells you so: that guest has to register with a card, or you turn the requirement off on the auction’s Details page. It is worth deciding which way you want that before the doors open.

Record the sales as the hammer falls

Go to Live Auction in the auction menu. This is the page somebody works from during the event, and it is built to be used quickly.

Pick the item under Item Up Now, type the winning Bidder Number and the Amount, and click Sold. The sale drops into Sales Recorded underneath with a running Total. If you record the wrong thing, Undo Last takes back the sale you just entered.

When the item up now is a Fund A Need, the Giving Levels you typed appear as buttons. Click the level, type the bidder number, and record it. The same guest can give at the same level more than once, and both gifts are kept, because two people raising a paddle twice for the same amount are two real gifts rather than a duplicate.

The Settlement Board shows you where the room stands as you go. Tick Show every registered bidder to see the guests who have not bought anything yet as well.

Bill everyone at the end

When the calling is finished, click Run Transactions. Argenta tells you how much is about to be billed and asks you to confirm before anything happens.

Every guest gets one invoice for the whole night, covering everything they won and everything they gave. A guest with a card on file is charged it. A guest without one is emailed a link to pay. The Run Transactions Results panel then tells you how many were charged and for how much, how many were sent a pay link, and how many cards declined.

If anything needs your attention, a panel appears under the results listing the invoices to go and look at. Read it before anybody pays, because it is money that is still wrong.

It is safe to press Run Transactions more than once. Anything already billed is left alone, so a guest cannot be charged twice for the same win, and a sale recorded after your first run is picked up by the next one. This means you can settle the early leavers partway through the evening and run it again at the end for everybody else.

Who can do this

The Bidders and Live Auction pages are staff pages, and they are only available to a user with the Auction Manager permission or a Master Admin.