This article provides best practices for a successful check-out process.
To ensure both that your guests have a good check-out experience and your volunteers are prepared, it's important that you put together a check-out logistics plan. Let us help you with that!
Once the auction closes, Handbid automates invoices and payments in minutes. This helps to organize your checkout and fulfillment process in order to prevent backup at the checkout line. Here are some best practices that will speed up checkout and leave your bidders with a positive lasting impression and with a smile on their face:
- Capture credit cards at registration and encourage guests to enter their credit card information on their profile via their cell phone. Handbid allows you to utilize either of these methods so that the card is on file and the checkout process is seamless. You can also require guests to add a credit card in order to bid.
- Use our integrated credit card system. We encourage our customers to use our integrated credit card system. We offer this system as a convenience to you and your bidders. The checkout/payment process can slow down if you capture credit card and personal information through another system. If you use our integrated Handbid credit card system, all of that information is stored and ready for payment processing when the invoices are created. If you have your own payment system, you can choose to use that as well.
- Organize your items so they are easier to retrieve. If you skip this step, you may have a bidder who has verified their invoice and paid but when you send a runner off to collect the items – they can’t be easily found! Here are some fulfillment tips you can use to speed up this process:
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- Make sure your runners are familiar with your auction items and your item code naming convention so they can easily locate the items they are looking for.
- PRO TIP: Number your similar items with similar codes i.e. 100s- Vacations, 200s- Sports Memorabilia, 300s- Food, etc.
- Make sure your runners are familiar with your auction items and your item code naming convention so they can easily locate the items they are looking for.
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- Have multiple checkout stations and multiple runners. Checkout volunteers can process the payments within Handbid while the runners are busy collecting the items for the bidder. By the time you have collected payment from the bidder, the items will be ready.
- Have a line for bidders who have paid from their phone. They can show you where they have "Paid In Full" on their phone and you can look at the items they have won, pull them, and let them leave.
- Have index cards or sticky notes available at the checkout stations. These can be used for quick notes so that volunteers can write down item codes and hand it to a runner to collect items while the volunteer is processing the payment.