Intake and consignment
The intake process starts before there is an auction. Register the consignor, take in the goods, enrich the lot data, print labels, produce the consignor contract. By the time cataloguing starts the data is already in the system rather than in a spreadsheet on someone's desktop.
Lots and catalogue
Create lots individually or import them in bulk. Set starting bid, reserve and estimate range, assign categories, upload images and documents, and control what is visible. When the lots are complete, order the categories and the lots, then export XML for the printed catalogue.
Lots can inherit the auction's dates or carry their own start and closing times. Prices on unsold lots can be reduced across a whole auction at once by a percentage — a real tool for a real problem, rather than an afternoon of manual edits.
Bidders
Search and edit bidder profiles, control registration roles, and decide which auctions a bidder is eligible for. Private auctions work either by assigning a role, or by requiring each bidder to be individually approved. Staff can place absentee bids on a bidder's behalf.
Bulk mail runs from here too: build a list by auction, language, subscription type or last login, see the matching count before you send, and mail only the people it concerns.
Invoicing
Invoices are generated for buyers and consignors including commission, transport and other costs. Mails and reminders go out automatically. Search by invoice number, recipient or payment status, filter by date range, proforma, shipping or payment status, and export as PDF, Excel, or XML for bulk processing.
Exceptions can be applied at lot or bidder level, because in practice every auction house has some.
Translations
The public website, the Manager itself and the email templates are all translatable from one place. Set a default language, add others, and vary email text per language or region. This is why the platform works for auction houses selling across European markets in several languages at once.
What this covers in full
The full feature list →Lots on the full list →
- Add, edit and find lotsEnter the items, correct them, and find any of them again in a catalogue of thousands.
- Copy lots between auctionsMove unsold lots into next month's sale without typing them in again.
- Bulk processing across many lots at onceChange the category, the closing time or the fee on four hundred lots in one action.
- Nine-state lot approval workflowA lot travels from entered, to checked, to approved, to sold — and your staff always know which ones still need attention.
- Combination lots — bundle items, sell as oneSell forty chairs as a single lot when splitting them makes no sense.
- Competing lots — alternatives for one buyerOffer the same machine at two locations and let the buyer win only one of them, never both.
- Lot ordering and catalogue numberingDecide the order lots are sold in, and number them the way your catalogue expects.
- Lot numbers with suffixes, such as 5bSqueeze a late arrival in as lot 5b without renumbering everything after it.
- Quantity and quantity multiplierSell per item but bill per pallet — bid €4 a bottle, invoice for the case of twelve.
- CITES flagging for protected speciesMark ivory, tortoiseshell or exotic wood so the paperwork is right and the lot cannot ship where it shouldn't.
- Exclude a lot from bidding or from invoicingShow a lot for information only, or keep it off the invoice when it is settled separately.
- Highlight a lot as featuredPut your best pieces on the front page of the sale rather than burying them at lot 400.
- Registration required for a single lotAsk for ID or a deposit on the one €80,000 lot without gating the whole sale.
- Internal lot notes with attachmentsStaff leave notes on a lot — what the consignor said, why the estimate changed — that bidders never see.
- Links between lots and other entitiesPoint a bidder from this lot to the matching pair, the earlier volume, or the rest of the set.
- Lot tagsTag lots as 'provenance documented' or 'from the Smith estate' and let bidders filter on it.
- Roles granted on a single lotGive one specialist edit rights on a particular lot without opening the whole catalogue to them.
- Lot location separate from the auction locationThe sale is run from Amsterdam but this machine is collected in Rotterdam, and the lot page says so.
- Exceptions at lot level, overriding auction rulesCharge a different commission or a different VAT rate on one lot when the consignor's deal differs.
- Lot translations per languageEvery lot description reads properly in each language you sell in.
- Full-text indexed lot descriptionsA bidder searching for 'Meissen' finds it in the description, not only in the title.
- Lot view counter and access logSee which lots people are actually looking at, and tell the consignor before the sale closes.
- Individual closing time per lotLots close a minute apart rather than all at once, so the last hour is orderly instead of chaotic.
- Reduce prices — bulk percentage cut on unsold lotsDrop every lot that got no bids by 30% with one slider, and leave the ones with bids alone.
- Buy back lots for processingHandle the lots the consignor takes back, so they come off the sale cleanly and settle correctly.
Auction events on the full list →
- Create and edit auctionsSet up a new sale — name it, give it dates, decide how it runs — and change any of that later.
- Auction overview and managementSee every sale you have running, upcoming and finished on one screen instead of hunting through folders.
- Twelve configuration tabs per auctionEach sale gets its own settings for fees, terms, registration, dates and more, so a wine sale and a machinery sale can behave completely differently.
- Separate publication and removal datesPut the catalogue online two weeks before bidding opens, and take it down automatically a month after it closes.
- Reset dates — shift a whole auction's schedule at onceWhen a sale is postponed a week, move every date on it in one action instead of editing a thousand lots.
- Timezone per auctionA sale run for Hungarian bidders closes at 8pm Budapest time, not 8pm Amsterdam time.
- Currency and symbol per auction, 14 currenciesRun a sale in pounds for a UK consignment while everything else stays in euros.
- Highlight an auction as featuredPush your big spring sale to the top of the homepage while the routine weekly sales sit below it.
- Bid limit count per auctionCap how many lots one bidder can win in a single sale, so no one sweeps the whole catalogue.
- Auction translations across nine text typesThe same sale reads properly in Dutch, German and English — title, description, terms, all of it.
- Auction images and image setsGive each sale its own banner and gallery so the catalogue looks like an event, not a list.
- Files attached to an auction for downloadAttach the terms of sale, a viewing schedule or a valuation report for bidders to download.
- Default field templates for new auctionsYour standard sale setup is saved once, so creating the next one takes minutes instead of an afternoon.
- Store and location assignmentSay which warehouse a sale is run from, so bidders know where to collect before they bid.