One evening, five steps,
and the middle one runs itself
This is the whole system. If you can type in a list and plug a laptop into a projector, you can run an auction night.
- 1
Add what you have
A title, a starting bid, and who donated it. A photo if you have one — for a room auction the thing itself is on the table.
It does not have to be art. A weekend in a cabin, a cake a month for a year, a signed shirt, two hours of gardening. If someone will bid on it, it is a lot.
- 2
Print the QR codes
One card per lot with a big QR code, the lot number, the title and the starting bid. Put it beside the item and the lot explains itself.
Forty small things side by side? Print a sheet of labels instead. Both come out of the same button.
- 3
People bid from their own phone
They point their camera at the code, type a name and an e-mail once, confirm with one click, and they can bid on everything that evening.
No account, no password, no app to install. And for the one guest with a flat battery, you take their bid from your own screen — the room sees it come in like any other.
- 4
The room watches the screen
Current lot, current bid, who is leading, the bids ticking in — and a countdown that takes over the screen at the end of each lot.
Put your goal for the evening on the wall and watch the bar climb. Rooms bid harder when they can see how close they are.
People who could not come? Paste in a YouTube or Vimeo live stream and they hear the auctioneer while they bid from their sofa, on the same lots at the same moment.
- 5
You settle up the same night
The moment the hammer falls, winners get an e-mail with what they owe and your payment link. Most people pay before they have left the building.
You get one printable sheet per buyer for the door, a results page with every lot and the total, and an export for the treasurer. Nothing to add up at midnight.
Now try it with your own hands
Reading is one thing. Build a rehearsal auction with three lots, print a code, and bid against a colleague — ten minutes, nothing charged, and every screen says it is practice.