Contacts are people or businesses with whom your organization has a relationship. Contacts may be donors, bidders/attendees, both or neither depending on your event.

Contacts become ''bidders / attendees'' when they either complete online registration for your event, purchase an admission ticket to an event, or have an admission ticket assigned to them by another guest, or an admin. Contacts who are registered and/or have a ticket, display on the Participants Report.

Contacts can also be donors. Contacts become donors when you enter a donation tied to a contact record.

Contacts are "owned" by (i.e., associated to) group members who add them to the database. Contact owners have the ability to edit their own contacts, reassign ownership of their contacts to other members, and claim ownership of contacts that are not yet owned. Auction assistants and administrators have the ability to edit all contacts in a group.

Because the Silent Auction Pro software is a multi-user environment, associating contacts with owners prevents contacts from receiving duplicate correspondence or solicitations from multiple members. The contact ownership status can also be designated as Not Owned if one individual is performing data entry in advance of the contacts being assigned to other individuals. When adding contacts through the Bidsheet Plus™ or higher level packages, the ownership status defaults to Not Owned to prevent the check-in person from owning all new contacts by default.