One common “trick” we see bidders try to pull is placing a bid in the final minutes of an auction to swoop in and win the item. To keep the fun (and fundraising) going, try using Extended Bidding in your next auction.

If a guest places a bid in the final minutes of your auction, the bidding will be extended for a few more minutes giving other guests the opportunity to place a higher bid. We generally suggest setting the extended bidding window for 3 minutes. However, you can set extended bidding to a maximum of 300 seconds or 5 minutes. Each time a new bid is placed during the extended bidding period additional time will be added to the auction ending time. 

Once the extended bidding period has passed without another bid being placed, the extension and bidding will end and the auction winner will be alerted.

You can enable the extended bidding feature Auction > Settings, then enable Extend Auction time (in seconds).

The auction is scheduled to end at 10:00 PM

The Extended Bidding Period is set to 3 minutes

1. BIDDER A is outbid and submits a new bid at 9:58

2.  Since there are less than 3 minutes left in the auction, bidding is extended by 3 minutes to 10:01

3. BIDDER B gets an outbid message reading:

“You have been outbid for item Example Item (EXI). The current bid is $970. You have 180 seconds to submit a new bid before bidding closes. Please bid at least $50 more than that to be the lead bidder. For example: EXI$1020”

4. BIDDER B submits a new bid at 10:01

5. BIDDER A gets an outbid message reading:

“You have been outbid for item Example Item (EXI). The current bid is $1,020. You have 180 seconds to submit a new bid before bidding closes. Please bid at least $50 more than that to be the lead bidder. For example: EXI$1070”

6. No new bids are submitted

7. Auction ends at 10:06 and BIDDER B is notified of their win & prompted to check out

As always, if you have any questions about extended bidding or any other Accelevents feature, please reach out to our team via chat.

PRO-TIP: If you want to end the extended period then just change the Extended Bidding Window to “0” on the Auction Settings page. This can be useful if the event is coming to an end but people are still bidding.