Looking for some helpful auction resources? Check out our Auction Planner AND Virtual Auction Planner. They're packed with tips and checklists to help you plan every detail of your event. You can find more helpful resources on a variety of topics here.
Ready to host your best auction ever? We're here to help! Our auction and event management platform offers mobile bidding through Givi for your guests and a user-friendly control panel and Virtual Terminal for you!
Contents:
- Auction Setup
- Event Builder
- Adding and Managing Your Items
- Virtual Terminal: Check-in, Item Monitoring, and Checkout
- Communicating With & Thanking Your Guests and Donors
Check out this overview video to see a high-level tour of your auction control panel and auction Virtual Terminal!
Auction Setup
The first step to getting your auction set up is taking care of some basic settings like start and end dates, a fundraising goal, messages that will appear when your donors log in to Givi, and donation options. You can find all of those settings (and more!) in the Auction Settings article.
Before opening up registration, you'll want to be sure you've set up packages for your guests. Packages are the different registration options you'd like to offer your guests. For example, you could set up packages for single registrations or registration for a table of 8. If you'd like to offer discounts on your packages, check out this article on setting up promo codes. If you'd like to collect information from your guests during registration, such as what they'd like for dinner at your event, you'll want to learn how to set up custom fields.
You can add, remove, or change any of the donation amounts that appear on your auction registration page, as well as offer dedication options to your donors. You can even set up restrictions so your donors can choose where they'd like their donation directed.
You can also get ahead of the game by adding your sponsors and placing them in sponsor categories so they'll get the recognition they deserve on your registration page. You can learn more about configuring your sponsor widget in the Event Builder: Widgets article.
Event Builder
Your auction guests will register on a registration page you set up using the auction Event Builder. If you've ever used our peer-to-peer platform, you'll be super comfortable setting this up!
You can use drag-and-drop widgets to place content, images, videos, and more on your registration page.
You have a ton of options when it comes to customizing your registration page and associated pages! To learn how to change the language and appearance of your auction home page, donation page, receipt page, and more, read the Auction Event Builder: Pages article.
Adding and Managing Your Items
When you've configured your auction settings, it's time to add your auction items! You can learn about the default category types for auction items up for bid, store items, and donation items by reading this article about categories. You can add categories of your own, and even mark them as private so they only appear in the Virtual Terminal. Once you've set up your categories how you'd like, you're ready to add some items! You can do this one at a time, or you can use the Item Import to upload a formatted spreadsheet of items (don't worry — there's a template!). You'll also want to be sure you've added some search tags so your guests can easily filter and find the types of items they're looking for while they're bidding.
Virtual Terminal: Check-in, Item Monitoring, and Checkout
The Virtual Terminal is about to become your new best friend. You can handle check-in, item bids, registrations, donations, and checkout all from one place!
Make sure you've set up the messages you'd like your guests to see when they log in to Givi! You're probably on your A-game and already set them up when you were configuring your auction settings, but just in case you didn't, here's your friendly reminder.
When the big day arrives and you're ready to start the check-in process, you'll be using the Virtual Terminal to assist guests. They can get checked in on their own, or you can help them out by scanning their unique QR code. You can also update their payment method if they'd like to use something other than the method they entered during registration. The Virtual Terminal: Attendees article goes over all of this in detail.
You can also use the Virtual Terminal to monitor bidding activity on items. If you have a guest who is not comfortable bidding in the app, you can place bids for them in the Virtual Terminal, as well.
If you have an attendee that needs to register or would like to make a donation, you can do that in the Virtual Terminal too!
When you're ready to get your guests all checked out, you can read about initiating checkout, how to help guests paying with cash or check, and more in the Virtual Terminal: Checkout article.
If your volunteers are using the web Virtual Terminal for managing your auction on a computer, feel free to share this video with them:
Using the Virtual Terminal on a mobile device? Check out this article!
Communicating With & Thanking Your Guests and Donors
Need to get a message out to your auction guests? If they've enabled push notifications for Givi, you can write a custom message and push it out to your auction guests to let them know a certain group of items is now open for bidding, or that they've only got five minutes left to bid!
All of your auction receipts can be customized! You can change up the default language in your registration, donation, checkout, and refund receipts. You can even add conditional content to your receipts that will only appear if a registrant or donor performs a certain action, such as registering for a certain package or dedicating a donation to someone.