Monica Wyche - we just completed an event this past Saturday where we also finished the auction with raise the paddle. Here are the steps I used for both the Live Auction and Raise the Paddle, which worked great. I had pre-created the Live Auction items, and pre-created a Raise the Paddle "Template" as well. These were all marked as Private. All of these items used the same Auction times as our Silent Auction. Our Auction End Time was 8:30. Live Auction began at 8:30. As each Live Auction item was sold, I then "unhid listing", "Extend", clicked in on the item, entered the winning Bid Amount and Bidder # as a manual bid, then finally clicked "End Listing". Wait a minute or 2 and viola, the item is now sold, the bidder gets a notification they won the item, it gets added to their item list that they can pay for in one shot during the complete payment steps (as long as you don't have pay immediately turned on). The only additional step I had to do for the Raise the Paddle was to "duplicate" the template as the first step. Hope this helps.

Steven Otto Thank you!!! I will definitely do this. So, could bidders see the items at all before the live event? We want them to see the item ahead of time, to get excited for the live auction- only NOT be able to bid until it's time. Thank you for your feedback!

Monica Wyche This is controlled by whether you have the item Visibility set as Private or Public. We had an in person event and we had an actual auctioneer for our Live Auction items, so we didn't want people using the online system for their bidding. We wanted them participating in the Live Auction instead. I created the Live Auction items ahead of time, set them to Auction Style Selling Format and Visibility Private. As each Live Auction item was won, a runner brought me the winning bid and bidder. I then followed the steps above (unhide, extend, manually enter winning bid and bidder, end listing). The steps take about 3-5 minutes before the winning bidder receives the text saying congratulating them on winning. Followed these same steps for Donations. We are a non-profit so every penny raised counts.

While bidders could use the Donations link, if they won other items, the payment for the Donation and the payment for item(s) won are separate charges, each with credit card fees. We didn't want that to come out of our funds raised or have the bidder pay multiple swipe fees for different payments. Hope this makes sense! The system worked fantastic for us. The only issue we had was people didn't register as a bidder ahead of time. We hung sheets at the door so when they arrived, we had a couple people help them scan the QR code, click Auction, click Register as Bidder, then make sure they entered their card info and received the "Congratulations" splash screen. Worked great for 95% of the people that showed up without registering ahead of time.

Monica Wyche Ah, one other suggestion. To generate excitement ahead of time for the items, we had our "Event" schedule to start a week or 2 before the actual, in-person, event and end a week after the event. The Auction was set to the exact date/time of the actual auction. Then as long as you have item visibility set to public, people can see the items well before the event, but can't bid on them until the date/time of the auction. Hope this clarification helps.

Christopher Bryan: Do you know of a good workaround with Givebutter?

Cynthia Macfarlan: This is still an open request. Feel free to upvote so you'll get an email notification if/when the feature goes live!