Advanced Settings & Configurations.

This setting automatically applies a spending cap to any bidder account that has no paid invoice history with you. A brand new bidder who has never paid an invoice will have this limit applied from the moment they are approved — they receive an automatic notification when they hit the cap and are prompted to contact your team.

The limit can be:

• Set globally here — applies automatically to all new accounts with no payment history.
• Overridden per bidder per auction — navigate to the bidder's User Registration record inside any auction and edit the limit directly from there. You can raise, lower, or remove it at any time including mid-sale.
• Set across a bidder's entire account — from their user profile, you can impose a limit that applies to all auctions rather than just one event.

Two related settings work together here. Both can be overridden at the individual auction level, so you can apply stricter rules to high-value sales without changing your global defaults.

Setting	What it does	Recommended
Require valid credit card	Blocks registration entirely unless the bidder submits a card. A $1 hold confirms the card is active and address-verified — the hold is not a charge.	Strongly recommended. Eliminates unvalidated registrations.
Auto-approve validated cards	Bidders who pass the $1 hold are automatically moved to Approved status without manual review.	Recommended for general sales. Disable for high-value or specialty sales where manual vetting is preferred.
Preferred Bidder auto-approve	Any bidder marked with a heart (Preferred) is auto-approved the moment you publish an auction — no action needed.	Always enable. Build your Preferred list aggressively from day one.

The $1 hold is a genuine validation — it checks that the card is active and that the billing address on the card matches the address on the bidder's account. It will decline cards that fail address verification. Bidders see a grey CC icon if validation fails; blue if it succeeds.

Bad bidder flags are network-wide: a flag you add is visible to all auction houses on the Bidsquare network when they vet that same bidder, and vice versa. This creates a collective fraud prevention layer that improves over time as more auction houses use it.

Alias Detection

Bidsquare runs a periodic scan (approximately monthly) to identify user accounts that appear to be aliases — the same person creating multiple accounts, often to get around bad bidder flags or bid limits. When an alias relationship is detected:

• The suspected alias account is flagged automatically with a "User Alias" flag added by Bidsquare.
• This flag appears on the bidder's profile during vetting. If you see a Bidsquare-added alias flag, it almost always means there's a matching account at another auction house with a non-payment or fraud flag.
• Alias detection is based on matching IP addresses and account patterns — not just name or email.

IP Address Tracking

The system records the IP address of every registered bidder. This is used in alias detection and can be reviewed manually on any user's profile when investigating suspicious registrations. It does not prevent bidders from registering but provides an additional data point for vetting.

When a bidder account that is less than 30 days old places bids totaling more than the threshold you set in a single auction, the primary staff email receives an automatic notification. Default threshold: $10,000.

This notification has two equally valuable use cases:

• Fraud check — a new account throwing around large bids with no history is worth investigating before the sale ends. You can pull their profile, check their address, and decide whether to maintain approval or pause their bidding.
• VIP opportunity — a brand new bidder spending heavily in their first auction may be exactly the person you want to reach out to for white-glove service, invitations, or direct marketing. This alert surfaces them instantly.

The alert goes to the primary email address on your account. If you find you're getting too many notifications — because your threshold is set too low or your sale attracted many new bidders — simply raise the threshold. Adding a zero to the default $10,000 makes it $100,000 and dramatically reduces noise.

Payment gateways are configured from your Payment Accounts tab in Settings. Your Demo environment does not process live transactions — gateway connections are added to Production only, and should be tested with a real transaction before your first sale.

Auto-charge is not automatic — the name is slightly misleading. Nothing ever charges a card without a staff member actively triggering it. What it enables is the ability to charge all eligible stored cards simultaneously from the Invoices list.

How it works

• Bidder opt-in — when a bidder registers online and provides a valid credit card, a pop-up asks them to agree to have their card charged for unpaid invoices. This opt-in is mandatory for auto-charge to apply to their invoice.
• Eligibility threshold — invoices above the Max Card Transaction Limit are excluded from auto-charge. Set this threshold thoughtfully (see next section).
• Triggering — from the Invoices list, select invoices and use Batch Actions → Auto-Charge CC. The system charges all eligible opted-in cards simultaneously. Invoices already paid are automatically skipped.
• Single-invoice charging — you can also charge one invoice at a time by opening it and using Record Payment → Charge Card on File.

Auto-charge requires a connected payment gateway that supports it. PayPal does not support auto-charge — it can only process payments through buyer-initiated clicks. Stripe, Authorize.net, Elevon, and Nuve all support auto-charge.

When an invoice total exceeds this threshold, the credit card payment option is removed from that buyer's invoice entirely — they can only pay by check, wire, or other non-card method. This has two practical benefits:

• Chargeback protection — high-value credit card transactions have higher chargeback risk, especially on items like jewelry, watches, and fine art. Removing the card option for large invoices shifts those payments to methods with far lower chargeback exposure.
• Processing fees — card processing fees (typically 2.5–3.5%) on a $50,000 invoice represent meaningful cost. Many auction houses find it economically rational to route large invoices to wire transfer.

Common threshold choices from auction houses in onboarding sessions: $5,000 (conservative), $10,000 (common for mid-range), $25,000+ (high-end houses or those with premium client bases who pay by card routinely).

Payment accounts are the named payment methods you select when manually recording a payment against a buyer invoice or a consignor settlement payout. Beyond the defaults (cash, check, wire), create custom types for any payment method your business uses. Each has an internal name (staff-facing) and a display name (visible on the invoice to the buyer).

Platform-Specific Payment Types

A best practice used by experienced auction houses: create a dedicated payment type for each third-party bidding platform. When recording payment for a LiveAuctioneers buyer, select LAPay. For Invaluable, select INVPay. This gives you a filterable record that makes platform reconciliation instant months later — you can filter all invoices by payment type to pull every LA-settled transaction with one click.

If you pay consignors by check, the system can print the consignor's name, billing address, payout amount, and check reference directly onto your existing bank check stock. This is configured in Print Check Settings, where you set the margin positions so the printed text aligns with your specific check layout.

Once configured, you can print checks in batch from the Settlements list: select settlements ready for payout → Batch Actions → Print Checks. The generated document prints directly onto your check stock with the consignor's billing address positioned to align with envelope windows for easy mailing.

Both buyer invoices and consignor settlements have a publicly visible note field that appears near the financial summary on the document. This setting defines the global default — what appears on every new invoice or settlement before any per-document customization. These fields support HTML, so you can add formatted lists, hyperlinks, bold text, and line breaks.

Common uses for the invoice default note: payment terms, shipping instructions, pickup deadlines, links to your shipping partner list, credit card surcharge disclosures. Common uses for the settlement default note: payout timelines, pickup charge policies, wire transfer instructions.

Bidsquare offers a direct API integration with QuickBooks Online as a paid add-on service. Contact your onboarding manager or support to set this up. The integration syncs transaction data from Bidsquare into QuickBooks automatically, eliminating manual data entry between systems.

If you are not using the API integration — or while you are evaluating it — the system provides two dedicated CSV reports that serve as manual QuickBooks import files:

• Invoice Journal — line-item detail of every financial transaction on every buyer invoice: hammer, buyer's premium, sales tax, additional charges, payments. Each change to an invoice appears as its own row. Designed specifically for QuickBooks import workflows.
• Settlement Journal — line-item detail of every consignor settlement deduction: hammer, commission, charges, net payout. Same structure as the Invoice Journal but for the consignor side.

Without a custom SMTP relay, all emails sent by the system (invoice notifications, registration confirmations, outbid alerts, reminders — upwards of 50 different template types) are sent from noreply@bidsquare.com rather than your own domain. Your branding and logo still appear, but the sending address is Bidsquare's, not yours. Connecting your own SMTP relay changes the sender address to your chosen email (e.g. invoices@yourauctionhouse.com).

Recommended Providers

To estimate how many emails per month you need in your plan: count your average registered bidders per auction × number of auctions per month × average emails per bidder lifecycle (approximately 8–12 across registration, approval, invoice, reminders, and post-sale). The SMTP Email Relay Setup guide includes a worked formula for this calculation.

Every email the system sends — password resets, registration confirmations, invoice delivery, payment reminders, outbid alerts, settlement notifications — has an editable template. There are 50+ templates across different trigger scenarios.

The default content is functional and has been used successfully by hundreds of auction houses. You are not required to customize any of them, but you can override individual templates for any scenario where you want to change the subject line, body copy, or formatting. Click Override on any template to open the editor — you will see dynamic variable tags (wrapped in curly braces or similar markup) that pull in real data: buyer name, lot number, hammer price, auction name, invoice total, and so on. The right-hand panel of the editor lists all available variables for that specific template.

Translation Tags

Many default email templates contain sections in Thai and Chinese alongside the English content. These are translation tags — they only appear to bidders whose My Account language is set to Thai or Chinese. English-language bidders will never see this text. You can safely leave these tags in place or remove them if you prefer cleaner templates and do not serve Thai or Chinese-speaking customers.

To add translations to other languages: the translation tag structure is covered in the Editing Email Templates guide. If you have the translated copy, you can add additional language blocks following the same tag pattern. No other languages are provided by default.

The system sends SMS reminders to bidders who have opted in. Templates are editable and support translation tags using the same structure as email templates. Current SMS capabilities:

• Auction closing reminder — notifies a registered bidder when their auction is approaching its end time.
• Lot reminder — notifies a bidder when a lot they have watched or bid on is a specified number of lots away from going into the ring (live auctions).

Two separate MailChimp connections are available, serving different purposes:

MailChimp Marketing (API)

Connecting your MailChimp marketing account via API enables two features on your bidder-facing website:

• MyAlerts — a page on your website where bidders enter keywords and opt in to receive notifications about items matching those keywords when they're published to your catalog.
• Interest Groups — bidders can opt in or out of specific mailing lists or interest groups you have set up in MailChimp (e.g. "Fine Art," "Jewelry," "Estate Sales"). Syncs directly with your MailChimp audience.

Contact your onboarding manager for the API setup documentation once your MailChimp account is active and your site is live.

MailChimp Transactional (SMTP)

A separate, paid add-on to your MailChimp marketing account. This is the SMTP relay service used for transactional system emails (invoices, confirmations, reminders). If you already have a paid MailChimp marketing account, this is the recommended SMTP choice — unified billing, consistent deliverability, and no additional third-party account to manage. See the SMTP section of this guide for full details.

The platform supports live audio/video streaming built directly into the Live Console. The stream uses WebRTC for sub-second latency — online bidders see the room and hear the auctioneer in near real-time. No third-party streaming service or external URL is required.

To enable this for your account, ask your onboarding manager to turn on the live video feature in your settings. Once enabled, it will be available in every auction's Live Console under the Audio / Video tab.

The Floor Screen is a large-format display intended for a room monitor or projector — it shows the current lot, current bid, and bidding activity in real time for in-person attendees. Open it from the Live Console in a separate browser tab and drag it to your extended display.

Multi-Currency Conversion

The Floor Screen can display the current bid converted into up to four currencies simultaneously alongside the base currency. Configure which currencies to show in Settings → Floor Screen Currency.

• Exchange rates are updated weekly by Bidsquare — the rate will always be current to within approximately one week.
• Multi-currency display is for the room screen only — it does not affect online bidder displays, invoices, or any financial documents. All billing and payment remains in your base currency.
• This is primarily used by international auction houses or houses that regularly attract a significant international in-room audience.

When sealed absentee bid mode is enabled, every auction runs as a blind bid sale — bidders submit their maximum bid but cannot see any other bidder's bid amount or whether they are currently winning. The system determines the winner at close using the submitted maximums, but no live bidding activity is displayed.

This is a niche format used by specialist auction houses. It is not a setting you would enable globally unless all of your sales run this way. More commonly, individual events are configured as sealed bid at the auction level rather than in global settings.

Two related but separate features sit in this area:

Request Condition Report

Adds a button to each lot page on your website that bidders can click to request a detailed condition report. The request is sent to your primary email address. Staff respond directly from email — there is no in-system response workflow. This is most useful for houses that provide condition reports on request rather than publishing them on the lot page.

Downloadable Condition Documents

Alternatively — or additionally — you can upload a PDF document (condition report, authenticity certificate, provenance document) directly to an individual item record. When a document is attached, a download button appears on that lot's page allowing bidders to access it without making a request. This is the preferred approach for specialty items where detailed condition documentation is a selling point.

Inquiry Form

An Inquire button on each lot page opens a modal form with a customizable category dropdown. You define the categories (Details about an item, Condition report, Registration question, More photos, I want to sell, etc.) and can add, remove, or rename them. All inquiry form submissions are routed to the primary staff email.

By default, when the hammer falls on a live auction lot, an automatic email goes to the winning online bidder saying they've won. The default email copy does include a disclaimer that results are provisional, but many auction houses disable this entirely for practical reasons:

• Clerking errors — if a lot is sold to the wrong bidder and needs to be corrected, the winner has already received a congratulatory email before the error is fixed.
• Confusion — some bidders take the email as a final invoice-equivalent and become confused when the actual invoice arrives later with different totals (after LA/Invaluable reconciliation, for example).

When you disable the winning bid notification, you can instead send a single end-of-sale winner summary manually — after you have corrected any clerking errors and are confident in the results. This summary lists all lots won by that buyer in one email rather than sending one per lot. Trigger it from the Consignment tab in the auction after the sale ends.

Site Settings covers a broad range of configuration options for your bidder-facing website. Most of these do not need to be set before your first auction but become relevant as you optimize your site over time.

SEO & Metadata

• Page title tags and meta descriptions — set per page type (auction listing, lot page, about page, etc.) to optimize how your site appears in Google search results.
• Keyword optimization — traditional keyword stuffing has minimal SEO impact in modern search engines, but title tags and structured descriptions remain relevant. Focus on clear, descriptive copy rather than keyword density.

Bidder Journey Configuration

• Credit card entry screen text — the copy bidders see when they are prompted to add a card during registration. Good opportunity to surface important disclaimers (e.g. explaining the $1 hold, or noting that their card may be charged for unpaid invoices under certain conditions).
• Sign-in page text — what bidders see when they go to log in. Can include a welcome message or instructions for new bidders.
• Registration pop-up — the copy in the auction registration flow, alongside your Terms & Conditions link.
• Bid confirmation disclaimer — the text that appears when a bidder clicks to confirm a bid. Used by some auction houses to include a brief "all bids are binding" reminder.
• Item field positioning — some field order and layout adjustments within the lot page can be made here without code changes.

Custom Static Pages

The Site Settings area is also where your static website content lives — About pages, FAQ pages, custom marketing pages. If you want to create pages outside of the auction catalog structure, this is where you build them. Access to this section for staff is configurable — discuss with your onboarding manager whether you want your team to manage page content independently or have changes channeled through your onboarding contact.

The default admin font is Clavica. If you prefer a different typeface, you can select from a set of alternatives in Settings. The change applies to the entire admin interface for all staff accounts — it is a system-wide setting, not per-user. Agree on a preference with your team before changing it.

A white-label bidding app is available under your auction house's own brand name on iOS (App Store) and Android (Google Play). Bidders download your branded app and bid using the same account they use on your website. All bidding, registration, My Account features, and invoice access are available through the app.

Requirements Before App Submission

• Your main website must be live first — the app cannot be submitted for App Store / Google Play approval until your bidder-facing website is launched and running.
• Privacy Policy — Apple and Google both require a valid privacy policy as a condition of app store submission. Enter the full text of your privacy policy in Settings → Auction Settings → Default Pre-Filled → Privacy Policy. Template generators (e.g. Termly, PrivacyPolicies.com) can produce GDPR/CCPA-compliant boilerplate if you do not have an existing policy.

Benefits

• Push notifications — bidders who have your app receive push notifications for sales they are registered for, driving more pre-bidding engagement and absentee bids before auction day.
• Increased engagement — app users tend to register earlier, bid more frequently, and return to more sales than web-only users. The branded app reinforces your identity on the bidder's home screen.

Contact your onboarding manager when ready to proceed — Bidsquare manages the app store submission and branding process.

Default email templates include translation tags for Thai and Chinese. These only appear to bidders whose My Account page has their country/language preference set to Thai or Chinese — all other bidders see the English version only. No other languages are provided by default.

To add a translation for another language: the translation tag format is covered in the Editing Email Templates guide. If you have the translated copy for a given email, you can add additional language blocks to any template following the same tag structure. This is an advanced customization — most auction houses leave the defaults in place.

If you do not serve Thai or Chinese-speaking customers and prefer cleaner templates, you can safely remove all translation tags from any template when editing it. Leave only the English content — it will display correctly for all users.

Beyond the four standard label types (barcode label, barcode + QR, QR code display label, combined label), a full custom label builder allows you to create any label format your warehouse or auction room requires.

Custom Label Sizes

Before creating a label, define its dimensions in Print Label Sizes. Preset Dymo roll sizes are built in — pick the matching Dymo size and you're ready to print. Avery sheet labels (multiple labels on an A4 sheet) aren't preset, but you can build any of them as a custom size: define the sheet dimensions, number of columns, and label spacing, give the size a name, and set whether it is a roll, sheet, or continuous feed. For the exact field values for the common Avery A4 formats (4-up through 65-up), see the Avery sheet dimensions in the Barcoding & Warehousing guide.

Building a Label

The visual editor uses a column-based layout. Add one, two, or three columns to the label canvas and place variable fields within each column. Available variables include:

• Item ID (barcode), Lot Number, Lot Title (truncated), Estimates (low/high), Starting Bid, Reference Number
• Consignment Number, Auction Name, Category, Condition
• Any custom fields you have created on items
• QR code (links to live lot page — permanent, not lot-number dependent)

You can include custom fields as label variables — for example, a "Department" custom field that prints the department name directly on intake labels, allowing warehouse staff to route items without scanning each one individually.