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Auction Item Categories: Setting Minimum and Maximum Bids

Item categories are used to separate donations and auction items into common categories such as Dining, Vacations, Sporting Goods, and so on. Categories help bidders identify items in which they might be interested. For Mobile Plus™ and Mobile Pro™ users, the Auction Catalog can be filtered by categories. Categories also help organizations identify which donation types result in the highest percentage of return by viewing the Auction Results report available in the Event History section.

Categories drive Buy it Now (Mix bid) price

When you create (or edit) categories, you must define a Max bid percentage. Max bid percentage is used to calculte the Buy it now price. For both online and bidsheet bidding, Buy it now price is only displayed IF the auction type for the particular item is enabled.

If you are using an auction Type that does not have Buy it now price enabled, you still need to assign a max bid percentage, even though it will NOT display to your bidders.(See Auction Types for more info.)

To add a new category
  1. Click the Auction Items & Catalog menu item in the left navigation, and choose the Auction Types, Categories and Tags option.
  2. Click the Add new Category button.
  3. Enter the name of the new category.
  4. Enter the default Max bid pice (Buy it now) percentage for the category. To set the default Max Bid (Buy it now price) to be greater than the value of the item, set the percentage to a value greater than 100, such as 120 for 120%. Entering less than 51 (less than 50% of the item's value) is not allowed. Anything less than 100 will allow the item to be sold at a discount from the value of the item.
  5. Click the Add Category button to save the new category.


Why price items at a discount? Most organizations see an average of 50–60% return on items depending on the category of the item and generosity of the bidder. Items such as Wine and Dining often sell over the value of the item where items like Services, Art, and Sporting Goods sell for less than value. When using the Buy-It-Now feature on bid sheets, setting the Max Bid (Buy-It-Now) percentage to a value such as 80% can increase the overall return for an organization by allowing a bidder to purchase the item instantly at a 20% discount over retail and to not have to stay there and monitor the bidding to ensure they get the item. As more and more items are bought by Buy-It Now, other attendees may "panic"—seeing that things on which they were bidding were lost—and choose to buy items by Buy It Now rather than risk losing another item, there again increasing the percentage of return.