This article overviews frequently asked questions regarding the Guest List.
The Guest List is one of the top area's of Handbid that generates the most questions. This is largely due to the fact that people are not often sure whether they should use the feature or not. This FAQ will cover our most common guest list questions. However, if you don't see the answer to your question here, do not hesitate to reach out to Handbid support. We are happy to help!
What is the difference between the Guest List and the Bidder List?
The guest list represents a list of people that are coming to your event. The bidder list is a list of people bidding in your auction. It is not unusual for these lists to be different! Therein lies the confusion for some. When can that happen?
A person is in the guest list and not in the bidder list.
This will occur when a guest comes to your event but chooses not to bid or receive a bidder number. Perhaps their spouse is already setup to bid or they simply have decided not to (we don't get into whether or not you will make them, just the scenario that they are not registered).
Shouldn't every guest become a bidder?
Not necessarily. As we mentioned before, some guests come as couples and want to bid under one account. In other circumstances, some guests simply don't want a paddle number. Certainly you can require that to happen, but not everyone does - so there can be situations where a guest is not in your bidder list!
A person is in the bidder list but not in the guest list, why?
External Bidders
Perhaps you are allowing remote bidders or external bidders (from the Internet) to bid in your auction. They may not be attending your event in person, but they are bidding on items. In those cases, you will have a bidder in your auction that is not in your guest list.
If you don't want that to occur, then you will need to put in a check-in restriction that will prevent non-checked in bidders from bidding in your auction.
Self Registered Guests
It is possible that one of your guests has registered themselves for your auction using an email address that is different than the one in the guest list. While Handbid does its best to match up bidders to guests when they do this, sometimes it can't accurately determine if they are the same. So what happens in that case is that Fred Flintstone is a bidder in your bidder list with email fred@frednwilma.com and Paddle 102 and a guest in your guest list with email fred@slateco.com. It is easy enough to detect this and match them up (either before your event or at checkin). We show you how to do that here in this article: How to link bidder accounts on the guest list
Can I just create Guests as Couples?
Uh.. maybe? But why? It defeats the purpose of the guest list. The guest list is designed to give you a list of everyone coming. Every slot in the guest list should represent a "seat" occupied at your event. Couples typically occupy 2 seats and not one. So it would make more sense to generate 2 slots for a couple in the guest list. Only one of them needs to register (and that is typically what happens).
Can I add custom registration data to my guests list?
Yes you can! Using our custom forms, you are able to attach a custom registration form to your ticket and collect that data from guests who purchase them. You can even import that data from an external source.