Whether you are a member volunteer or acting as an administrator of the group hosting a fundraising event, there are certain "best practices" that can improve your experience with the software and ultimately lend to the success of the event. While you will hopefully find all of Silent Auction Pro's help topics informative, this particular section can help you avoid some missteps early on.

• Train auction assistants on how to handle the check-in, section close, and check-out phases of your auction. Access to the Silent Auction Pro™ software requires a reliable Internet connection and reliable computers. Before selecting your event location, verify the Internet accessibility and connectivity of that location.

All group members, assistants, and administrators should review these topics before using the software:

• General Guidelines
• Entering Contacts
• Entering Donations

Administrators should review these additional topics:

• Formatting with HTML
• Tracking Data and Items
• Creating Categories
• Using Contact Labels
• Creating Auction Items

Use proper spelling and capitalization for a professional look.

• Use conventional capitalization rules for proper nouns (i.e., John Doe, not john doe.)
• Do not use ALL CAPS AS THIS MAKES TEXT HARDER TO READ and is considered YELLING in written text.
• Check your spelling in description fields with the spell-check tools that come with Internet browsers like FireFox, Safari, and Google Chrome.
• Consider downloading and using a different browser if all you have is Internet Explorer (IE). IE does not currently provide spell check. FireFox is our recommended browser on the PC and Mac.

If you do not know how to do something in the software, consult the online help. The help topics cover the software in detail and often provide step-by-step instructions as well as tips and tricks.

• Practice and experiment in the demo group using demoadmin as your login and welcome as your password.

Collect and enter as much information as possible about each contact, including an email address and mobile phone number. While couples or members of the same household can bid with one bidder number and pay with a single invoice at an event, enter each person as a separate individual in the contact database.

• Capture individual email addresses and phone numbers for couples and households.
• Correspond to couples individually to help you in your marketing efforts (for reminders, soliciting donations, and so on).
• If you do not have an actual contact name for a business, use a first name combination that represents how you would address a thank-you letter. (For example, Community Supporter, Corporate Giving or Community Relations.). Enter the Company Name as the last name.

See the Contact help topic and associated subsections for more information.

When entering donations:

• Be informative in the Donation Title field and state what the item actually is. For gift certificates, include the company and value of the certificate. For example, "$50 Rose's Diner Gift Card."
• Do not enter a "Donor Specified Minimum Bid" unless the donor really did specify a minimum bid. Minimum bids can be specified by auction administrators when converting donations to auction items.
• If you have multiple winner items such as a bus trip to the zoo, read and understand the steps in Creating Fixed Price and Multiple Winner Auction Items before before entering these donations.
Multiple
• Donations that are entered into the software are each assigned a unique ID number that starts with the letter "D." Write the ID number on a colored sticker (such as D2 on a green circle sticker) and adhere the sticker to the item. If you do not have the donation in hand, place the sticker on it as soon as it arrives. Make sure to use stickers that do not easily come off.

See the Donations help topic and associated subsections for more information.

Because Silent Auction Pro is an Internet-based tool, you can use basic HTML tags to format customizable fields, such as the online ticket/bidding sign-up message or the text when writing letters and emails. Not all Internet browsers produce the same results, so it is advisable to test your pages using a variety of browsers. Most HTML tags require an opening and closing pair. For example: <p> followed by </p> would indicate the beginning and end of a paragraph.

• Use <br/> to create a single line break (or carriage return) and <p></p> for a double-spaced line break (or paragraph return).
• Use <b> to make a word bold, such as these three words and use </b> to end the bolded text.
• Use <i> to italicize these three words or use <u> to underline these three words. Likewise, remember to close the HTML tags with </i> or </u>.

Searching the Internet for "basic HTML" or "HTML tutorial" can direct you to useful resources for beginners. Use care when formatting with HTML to avoid formatting pitfalls.

Silent Auction Pro allows multiple members to track and manage contacts, tickets, donations, auction items, and other data. Properly tracking data and items is essential in making your event run smoothly.

• If you are using a spreadsheet to track donations, contacts, and so on, take the time to transfer the data to Silent Auction Pro and stop using the spreadsheet. Using two systems is prone to error and creates unnecessary work.
• Encourage members to manage their own contacts and donations. The idea of Silent Auction Pro as a multi-user environment is to distribute the workload.
• Auction items are assigned ID numbers that start with the letter "A." After bundling the auction items, put different colored ID stickers on each of the donations that make up that auction item (such as A42 on a yellow circle sticker). Do not place these stickers over the "D" stickers; both should be visible. Putting ID stickers on the items helps tremendously during the set up of your event as well as during the distribution phase after check-out.

Separating donations and auction items into categories helps to identify how well the different types of items did at your event and what kinds of donations to focus on obtaining for the next event.

• Do not create generic categories like "gift certificate." Gift certificate for what? Dining? Entertainment?

See the Item Categories help topic for more information.

Labeling contacts can help you target your letters and emails to specific groups of people. A contact who has donated to your event (managed through Silent Auction Pro) is marked "Previous Donor." Likewise, a contact who has attended your event is marked "Previous Attendee." These automatic labels are separate from the label functionality.

Do not create contact labels that are specific to one event; labels should be specific to the contact, not the event.

Examples of unnecessary labels:

• Donor
• Confirmed Donor
• Attendee

Examples of appropriate labels:

• Business Owner
• School Parent
• Church Member

When creating auction items, note the following:

• Auction item titles are derived from donation titles. Review and edit any donation titles before creating auction items to avoid having to fix titles in two places.

Create auction items in the following order:

1. Create any fixed price, multiple winner auction items first.
   • Reserve a block of numbers for the multiple winner items, like 500's, to easily distinguish them from single winner auction items.
   • When using the Auto-Increment Auction Item Numbers form, choose the correct starting ID number (such as 501).
2. Create any bundled auction items, where two or more donations are combined to form a single auction item.
   • Also use the bundling method when creating auction items that need specific placement at your event (such as against a wall or near an electrical outlet).
   • Deselect the Auto-Increment Auction Item Numbers checkbox to assign pre-defined or reserved auction item ID numbers.
3. Collectively convert the remaining single donations into single auction items (no bundling) using the Auto-create Auction Items method.
   • Do these by section or table number as that is the common denominator between them.
   • Turn on the Interleave option if you want the system to fill in the holes between existing auction item ID numbers.