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Auction platform development

For auction houses, asset disposal businesses and specialist sale rooms who need lot cataloguing, timed bidding with soft close and proxy bids, bidder approval, premium and commission rules and consignor settlement designed around how their sales actually run, rather than a listing site with a countdown on it.

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The problem

What goes wrong today

Where it usually starts

A regional auction house or an asset disposal firm selling plant and vehicles usually catalogues in a spreadsheet, photographs with a phone, publishes a PDF catalogue and takes bids through a third-party bidding service that charges per lot and keeps the bidder relationship.

  • Estimates are typed into the catalogue by the auctioneer; condition reports are emailed on request from a shared inbox.
  • Bidder registration is a paper form or a web form that nobody checks until a bidder with no history wins a lot and does not pay.
  • Commission bids are taken by phone and written in the sale book, and on the day someone has to execute them against the room.

Where it gets harder

After the sale, invoices are produced in the accounts system from the sale book, with the buyer's premium calculated by hand on each lot, and consignor statements follow a week later once commission, lotting fees and unsold lots have been reconciled.

  • A bidder disputes a bid they say they never placed, and there is no log to settle it.
  • A timed sale run through the third-party service closes lots at the same second, so a last-second bid on lot forty is lost while lot forty-one is being watched.
  • The auction house owns the catalogue, the consignors and the bidders in theory and controls none of them in practice.

Scope of the service

What the build covers

A custom auction platform build normally covers consignment, cataloguing, bidder management, bidding, invoicing and settlement. Consignments record the consignor, the terms agreed, the reserve and the commission rate, and lots are catalogued with a number, description, estimates entered by the auctioneer, images, condition report and category. Sales are published with viewing details and a timed online close per lot, with a soft close that extends a lot when a bid arrives in its final minutes, staggered closing across lots and proxy bids executed by the platform up to each bidder's maximum. Bidder registration carries the checks you require: approval by your team, a deposit or card authorisation through the payment adapter, or bidding limits per bidder. Every bid, retraction and administrative action is written to an audit log with time and source. At close, the platform applies reserves, calculates the hammer price, the buyer's premium by your rules, any lotting or other fees and configurable VAT rules per lot, and produces buyer invoices and consignor settlement statements with payment and collection tracking. A live auction companion with a bid log and clerk screen can be added for room sales.

We map your sales first: how consignments are taken, how estimates and reserves are set, what bidder approval really requires, how commission bids are taken today, how premium and fees are calculated and what the accounts system needs for invoices and settlements. Each becomes a named stage in the scope document.

Deliberately out of scope

  • Valuing lots, which remains the auctioneer's judgement
  • Video and audio streaming infrastructure for live sales, which we connect to rather than build
  • Your accounting beyond invoices and settlement statements

When the scope grows

Scoping scenario

An asset disposal business selling plant on behalf of finance companies.

That needs

  • Each sale ring-fenced to a consignor with its own premium rules, bidder approval that checks the bidder against the consignor's own exclusion list
  • A buyer collection process with release notes
  • A collection window, and settlement statements in the format each finance company specifies

The per-consignor rules, exclusion lists and collection process make this a custom build, and the scope document says so plainly.

Deliverables

What you receive

  • Discovery notes from walking through a consignment, a catalogue build, a timed close and a settlement run
  • A written scope document naming each stage, the bidding rules, the premium and commission model, the bidder approval process and what is left out
  • Designs of the lot page and bidding screens for bidders, the cataloguing and bidder approval screens, the close monitor and the settlement views for your team
  • The build, including bidding engine, invoices and settlement statements, deployed to your hosting or ours
  • Migration of consignors, bidders, past catalogues and results from your current tools
  • Training for the auction administrator, cataloguers and accounts staff, with written guides for bidders and consignors
  • Handover material and full ownership of the source code and your data

Process

How a project runs

Each stage maps onto the project view in your client panel. Durations are set in your proposal, never on this page.

  1. Onboarding

    Access to your current catalogue files, bidding service exports, accounts system and payment provider; your conditions of sale, premium rules and bidder approval criteria as applied today.

    Project stage: Onboarding

  2. Planning

    Discovery with the auctioneer, a cataloguer and the accounts team; consignment terms, lot structure, closing rules, bidder approval, premium and settlement are written into the scope document.

    Project stage: Planning

  3. Design

    Lot pages and bidding designed for bidders on their phones under time pressure; cataloguing, approval, close monitor and settlement screens designed for your team.

    Project stage: Design

  4. Development

    Built in layers: consignments and cataloguing first, then bidder registration and approval, then the bidding engine with soft close and proxies, then close, invoices and settlement.

    Project stage: Development

  5. Client review

    Your team runs a rehearsal sale with staff and friendly bidders, including proxies, a soft-close extension, a retraction and a settlement run, with the payment provider in test mode, and tells us what does not match the sale room.

    Project stage: Client review

  6. Revisions

    Changes from the review are made and re-checked against the scope document.

    Project stage: Revisions

  7. Ready for launch

    Consignors, bidders and past results migrated, bidding load tested at the close concurrency you expect, deposits and invoices verified against live accounts you control, launch checklist signed off.

    Project stage: Ready for launch

  8. Delivered

    Sales run on the platform; hosting and maintenance continue under their own agreement if taken.

    Project stage: Delivered

Integrations

Commonly integrated

Systems this kind of business usually asks us to connect. Each integration is confirmed during discovery; none is assumed.

  • Card payment providers for bidder deposits, authorisations and invoice payment through the provider-independent payment layer
  • Accounting software for buyer invoices, consignor settlements and payment allocation
  • Identity verification services for bidder registration, as a record of the result
  • Video and audio streaming providers for live sale companions
  • Email and SMS providers for outbid alerts, closing reminders, invoices and collection notices
  • Carriers and shipping agents for buyer delivery quotes and bookings
  • Image services for catalogue photograph processing

How we would approach it

Worked example

Concept demo

An asset disposal business selling plant for finance companies

In this scoping scenario, an asset disposal business sells repossessed plant and vehicles on behalf of several finance companies, each with its own premium rules and conditions, needs bidder approval to check applicants against each consignor's exclusion list before they can bid on that consignor's lots, runs collection with release notes issued only after cleared payment and a collection window with storage charges beyond it, and must produce settlement statements in the format each finance company specifies. The scope we would propose: consignor profiles carrying premium rules, conditions and an exclusion list, per-sale bidder approval scoped to consignor, a collection module with release notes, slots and storage charge rules, and settlement statement templates per consignor exported to the formats they require.

The custom route is needed because of the per-consignor rules and exclusion lists and the collection process, which go beyond the single set of premium rules and simple collection tracking the package assumes.

Concept demo: a scoping scenario written to show how we would approach the work. It is not a delivered client project.

Pricing

What affects the price

Every proposal is priced on scope. These are the factors that move it most for this kind of build.

  • Timed online only or a live sale companion as well
  • Bidder approval process and whether deposits or authorisations are taken
  • Premium, commission and fee rules and whether they vary by consignor or category
  • Expected number of lots per sale and bidder concurrency at close
  • Settlement statement formats and the accounts system connection
  • Collection, delivery and storage processes after the sale
  • Volume of consignors, bidders and past results to migrate
  • Hosting choice: your own hosting or ours

Start from a package

Online auction package

Lot catalogues with estimates and condition reports, timed sales with soft close and proxy bids, bidder approval and deposits, premium rules, buyer invoices, consignor settlements and a full audit log for auction houses.

Custom build
View the package

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

When is the package enough and when do we need a custom build?

If lot catalogues with estimates and condition reports, timed sales with soft close and proxy bids, bidder approval with optional deposits, one set of premium and commission rules, buyer invoices and consignor statements cover your sales, the online auction package is the right fit and we quote for that. Per-consignor rules and exclusion lists, live sale companions with clerking, or collection processes with release notes and storage charges point to the custom route.

How does soft close work?

Each lot has a scheduled close, and a bid in the final period you set extends that lot by a further period, repeating until no bid arrives. Lots close in a staggered sequence so bidders can follow several, and the audit log records every bid and extension with its time.

Can we take deposits from bidders?

Yes, through the payment provider connected during the build. Registration can require a deposit, a card authorisation or approval by your team, per sale or per bidder category, and deposits are released or applied to the invoice according to rules you set.

Can you move our past catalogues and bidders?

Usually yes. Consignors, bidders, past catalogues and hammer results are imported from your current files or bidding service exports, so bidders keep their history and past results are searchable. The scope document states what can be carried over once we have seen the data.

Who owns the platform afterwards?

You do. The source code, catalogues, bidder and consignor records and the audit log are handed over at delivery. Hosting and maintenance are optional and agreed separately, and the platform can be moved to another provider.

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