Absentee & phone bids

The book, without the paper

Absentee bids are entered on the bidder's page, lot by lot. Selloff refuses amounts that are not on the sale's bid increments and proposes the closest valid amount, rejects bids below the starting price, and stops a bidder from entering a second bid that is lower than or equal to one they already placed. OR bids let a client bid on one lot or another.

Bids placed on your own website through the Selloff API, for example with the WordPress plugin, arrive in the same book with no re-keying. Bids from other platforms are brought in with bid import.

Phone bids and staff

Phone bids are entered by lot number, one per bidder and lot. Before the sale, Selloff groups them by bidder or by lot and distributes them among the staff members who will make the calls, warning about overlapping lot ranges. Each caller can be notified of their list, and the phone bid summary per session and the bidder sheets give them what they need in the room.

Confirmations and control

Clients receive a confirmation email for their absentee, phone and OR bids automatically. For extra control, a sale can require every bid entered manually, or imported, to be confirmed by another user; the dashboard lists the bidders whose bids are waiting for confirmation.

Ready for the auctioneer

The bid book lists all bids by lot, for the whole sale, one session or a range of lots. The bids overview shows for each lot the estimate, reserve, number of bids, current bid and maximum bid, and exports to Excel. On the day, the same bids are available in the auctioneer's console.