How to Invoice Bidders

While you might send your invoices to winning bidders, we highly recommend taking advantage of the LiveAuctioneers invoicing system.

Bidders generally expect to receive our invoices, and it also provides a good opportunity to check your internal records against LiveAuctioneers’ records.

Start by checking your EOA (End of Auction) report.

Click the Post Auction tab at the top of your seller’s dashboard > Click catalog title > Go to the EOA tab.

Here you will find a list of all your winning bidders!

Check the list against your records for:

If any of these instances should occur, please email the Support team at support@liveauctioneers.com with the sale date, lot number and, bidder username along with your request to remove the lot from the EOA report.

From this page, you can also make amendments to the hammer prices of items not sold to LiveAuctioneers bidders. Click the Hammer Price button found top left of the EOA report:

You also have the option of exporting a full list of winning bidder information from the EOA. Check it out by clicking on one of these links:

Once you are happy with the EOA report, let’s move on to Invoicing.

Next to the EOA tab, you will find the Invoices tab.

First, we need to prepare the Invoices by setting our Payment Options. Clicking this button will take you through to a separate page where you can

Hit the Change button to save the edits. Click View Invoices to return to the Invoices page.

Invoice Message

Your invoice message will appear on the bottom of the invoice that is emailed directly to your buyers. Keep this succinct and only include the most important payment and shipping information:

• Whether you have a payment deadline
• What types of payment you accept (if you are not using LivePayments)
• The best way to complete payment (if you use LivePayments, please reference our Guidelines & Best Practices)
• Shipping and pickup information

You will be able to update and edit your invoice message during the auction setup process, while your catalog is online, and post auction. Your Invoice Message can be found in your auctioneer dashboard under  your auction > Auction Details > Policies.  

Write clear instructions to the buyer about how to complete payment. This message will appear in the Payment Details section on every invoice. This is a simple text field and only accepts simple HTML tags such as <b>, <center>, <br>, <p>

Hit the Submit button to apply this message to all the invoices.

Hit the button to generate Invoices. This will create a unique reference # for each invoice.

Before sending them out, you can edit the individual invoices by clicking the LA#### next to each bidder’s name:

This will launch the individual invoice in a separate tab. Under the Invoice Details section, you can add shipping fees, manually edit the sales tax or VAT, and include alterations.

In order to include reductions, the “ - “ symbol can be used before numerals. For example: -150.00 or -50.00.

Click Save Changes or Add to calculate a new total.

Before you send the invoice, look for the red and white envelope symbols:

This allows you to add an alternative email address to the invoice.

This represents an unsent/pending invoice. You can click on the red envelope symbol to remove an invoice from the mailbag, with the option of sending it at a later date.

Once you are happy with your invoice(s) you have two ways in which you can send them to bidders. The first being individually, you will click on the respective invoice and then click Send Invoice at the bottom.

You also can send invoices in bulk by clicking Send Mailbag.

Hit the refresh button and a green envelope symbol will appear next to each sent invoice.

And now wait for the money to pour in!

* For auction houses using LivePayments: any invoices that are not sent within 72 hours following auction close will be automatically generated and sent to the winning bidders. This ensures they receive their invoices and can complete payment in a timely manner. For more information, click here. 

If you’re using the classic version of Invoices:

Update each invoice by selecting the appropriate LA#### and adding the payment (either partial or full amount) received, then hitting the Add button.

After the full amount has been added to the invoice, the balance due will display 0.00 along with a timestamp for when the amount was added.

If a bidder pays via PayPal, this symbol: will appear on both the individual invoices and the list of invoices.

If you’re on the latest version of Invoices:

To mark an invoice as being paid in full, use the Paid checkbox near the top left corner of the invoice.To record a partial payment, enter the paid amount in the Payment Received field, and click “Add”.  For sales enabled with LivePayments, once a payment has been manually entered on the Invoice, the remaining balance cannot be paid via LiveAuctioneers checkout. 

And finally…