Every auction held on LiveAuctioneers, both Live and Timed, requires bidder participation, which means every auctioneer must vet their bidders to determine who is allowed to place bids on their inventory.
Once your auction is published, bidders will begin to preview your catalog, register, and leave absentee bids. Up until auction day, and throughout your auction, you should be actively monitoring your Bidder Dashboard to make sure you have captured and approved all viable bidders and their bids.
This guide will cover the parts of the Bidder Dashboard, how to use it to sort, filter, and find your bidders, and will help you to maximize completed transactions with trustworthy buyers while minimizing non-paying bidders and disputes.
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Accessing Bidders Dashboard
You can always access the Bidders approvals page by clicking on the blue banner at the top of the bidder dashboard.
Manual Approvals
Manual approval should be reserved for unknown entities to your auction house. This may be new bidders, bidders who have been inactive (have not bid in the last 180 days), bidders with disputes, or bidders with limited bid history on LiveAuctioneers. This page will allow you to filter, search, and sort through your bidders to make sure you've contacted and approved everyone you can, and that you're not leaving any money on the table.
Filter & Search
Filter by auction title: If you have several auctions running at once, you can see each list of registrants separately by selecting your auction title from the dropdown menu.
Search box: Use the search box to search by bidder name.
Filter by bidder attribute: This is a good way to group similar types of bidders and make bulk approvals or declinations.
Bidders with open disputes
International bidders
Bidders with credit cards on file (verified at time of registration)
Bidders with active bids
Bidders with a valid mobile phone number
Premium (guaranteed) bidders
Filter by Approval Status:
Registered: All registered bidders, regardless of approval status. You can further narrow by bidders with bid limits.
Pending: Bidders who have registered but have not yet been approved or declined. Bids still pending at the time an item closes will not be executed.
Approved: All bidders who have been approved for the selected auction(s). You can further narrow by bidders with bid limits.
Declined: All bidders who have been declined for the selected auction(s).
Blocked: Bidders on your Blocked Bidder List and any bidders suspended by LiveAuctioneers. Bidders with open disputes from two or more auction houses are automatically suspended until they have resolved all disputes directly with the filing auction houses
Bidder List View
Use the bidder list view to get a quick overview of bidders within each category and quickly evaluate which bidders need extra scrutiny. Select multiple bidders to take bulk actions.
You can check boxes next to bidders to bulk message, add to favorites, approve (with or without bid limit), or decline.
Basic bidder information:
Stars indicate favorited bidders
Bidder Name
Auction name and time of registration
Number of active bids in selected auction(s)
Payment: This column contains payment rate, open dispute flags, and verified credit/debit card confirmation which is represented by the green card icon. If that icon is not present then either the card on file for that bidder is not valid ( Learn more about Credit & Debit Card Authorization), or the bidder is new or inactive (have not bid in over 180 days) meaning they are not required to have a card on file to submit their first bid.
Live.Approvals: Checkmarks indicate that the bidder’s behavior warrants approval based on both bidder data and best practices from houses that maintain the highest payment rates, while dashes usually indicate that there is not enough data to draw a conclusion, and that bidders should be evaluated on a more granular basis. Learn more about Live.Approvals.
Bidder ID Card
The bidder ID card gives you details about the bidder's registration(s) with you and of their bidding history on LiveAuctioneers, allowing you to make individual approval decisions. This section of the page scrolls independently from the rest of the page so if you can't see it, you can hover your curser over the profile and scroll.
Bidder ID: Name, username, and location are shown at the top of the bidder card, along with the favorite and block buttons, and a link to the Classic bidder profile.
Auction registration cards show each auction registration for that bidder and allows you to set different bid limits for each sale.
- Auction Name
- Date registered
- Registered status
- Number of active bids
- Auction level bid limit
- Auction level approve/decline
- Arrows toggle between auction level registrations
- Approval and bid limits for all current registrations
LiveAuctioneers behavior and details: This section provides further details for bidders who might not have enough purchase history to qualify them for Live.Approvals verification.
- Member since: keep an eye out for accounts < 6 months old
- Card on File: verified initially when a bidder creates an account or registers for an auction and then on a consistent cadence therefore after
- Bidders who are new or inactive (have not bid in the last 180 days) are not required to have a card on file to submit their first bid.
- Number of auctions attended, bids placed, items won
- Tax Exemption: verified resale certificate on file with LA
- Payment Rate: % of invoices paid by volume
- Average hammer price of items won
- Open disputes: disputes open with 2 or more auction houses will trigger automatic suspension from bidding
- Previous conversations you had with that bidder
Notes are internal and only visible to your house. Also, the Bidder ID Card scrolls independently from the rest of the page.
Automatic Approval Rules
Use these rules in combination to automatically approve bidders who meet our criteria and yours to take the majority of approvals work off your plate. Bidders who do not meet automatic approval criteria will remain in your pending folder for you to make a decision. The only bidders who are automatically declined are bidders on your blocked bidders list.
Bidder Guarantee Program: Automatically approve any premium bidders for your auction. Contact your account manager or support@liveauctioneers.com for information on this program.
Live.Approvals: Automatically approve anyone with a Live.Approvals verified checkmark. Learn more about Live.Approvals.
Custom House Rule: (Formerly Global Approval) Automatically approve bidders who meet a combination of criteria. Using the Any rule will approve bidders who meet at least 1 of your criteria. Using the All rule will approve bidders who meet all of your criteria in combination.
Custom House Rule with Bid Limit: (Formerly Global Approval with Bid Limit: Automatically approve bidders who meet a combination of criteria up to a specified bid limit. Using the Any rule will approve bidders who meet at least 1 of your criteria. Using the All rule will approve bidders who meet all of your criteria in combination. You can be a little less strict with this rule if you set a low bid limit, which will prompt bidders who intend to spend more to come to you for a higher limit.
Favorite & Blocked Bidders
Favorite bidders will always be automatically approved when they register for your auctions. Adding bidders to your Favorite list will prompt a confirmation popup in the upper righthand corner of your screen.
Blocked bidders will always be automatically declined when they register for your auctions. Adding bidders to your Blocked list will prompt a confirmation popup in the upper righthand corner of your screen.
Recommended Settings
- Set automatic rules first to take care of the bulk of good faith bidders with strong bidding history.
- Use Bid Limits to conditionally approve unknown bidders, they will come to you if they want to increase their limit.
- Use Custom House Rules to require a card on file if you are running your sale with Autopay.
- Bidders without a card on file can still participate in sales with Autopay, if they win the lot(s) they will be instructed to complete payment through checkout.
- Use bulk actions to message, favorite, approve & decline groups of similar bidders.
- Give remaining bidders extra scrutiny by vetting individually, messaging for more information if necessary.