How to use your charity auction software

It’s the website your guests use to buy tickets, play games, buy raffle tickets, make a pledge, and bid on auction lots, and it’s also the place you, the organiser, go to add lots, see bids, and check guests in. Everything runs from the normal WordPress admin area, in a section simply called Charity Events.

Log in to your WordPress admin area (yourwebsite.com/wp-admin), then look for Charity Events in the black menu down the left-hand side, it has a megaphone icon. Everything described in this guide lives inside that one section.

Silent is the everyday option, guests bid online and it closes itself automatically at a time you choose. Live is for your headline items, sold from the stage by an auctioneer on the night; guests can leave an advance “holding bid” as a backup. Sealed is for delicate items, each guest submits one secret amount, and nobody, including you, sees any of the amounts until it closes. You choose which one when you add the lot.

No. Every screen in the Charity Events section is a normal form, type into boxes, tick options, click a button. Nothing here requires any technical knowledge.

Go to Charity Events → Add a new lot (there’s a big button at the top of the Lots screen). Fill in the name, a description guests will see, and a photo, then choose how it will be sold and set a starting price.

The lowest amount you’re willing to accept. If nobody bids that high, the lot is marked “Unsold” instead of being given away too cheaply. You can leave this blank if you’re happy to accept any winning bid.

How much higher each new bid has to be than the last one, for example, if it’s set to £25, someone can’t bid just £1 more than the current price, they have to beat it by at least £25. This keeps the bidding moving in sensible steps.

An optional price that lets an impatient guest skip the bidding entirely and buy the lot outright, there and then, ending the auction immediately. Leave it blank if you don’t want to offer this.

In the “When should bidding close?” box, pick a date and time. This only applies to Silent and Sealed lots, Live lots are closed by you, afterwards, once you know the real result from the stage.

Yes, click “Advanced settings” next to any lot in the list to open WordPress’s full editing screen, where you can change the photo, description, price fields and anything else. Small day-to-day tweaks like start/finish times can also be done in bulk, see “Changing lots in bulk” below.

It works like eBay. A guest sets the most they’re personally willing to pay, and the system quietly bids up on their behalf, one small step at a time, only when someone else challenges them, so they usually pay much less than their true maximum, and never have to keep refreshing the page.

They get an instant on-screen and email notice that they’ve been beaten, so they can decide whether to raise their maximum.

Yes, click “End it now” next to that lot on the Lots screen. This works out the winner immediately, exactly as if the clock had run out naturally. This can’t be undone, so it will ask you to confirm first.

Yes, click “+1 day” next to the lot to push its closing time back by 24 hours. For a different length of time, use “Changing lots in bulk” below.

Any bid placed in the final two minutes automatically pushes the closing time back by another two minutes, so there’s always a fair chance to respond, exactly like a real auctioneer taking “one more bid” from the room.

The highest bidder wins (as long as any reserve price was met), and, if they have a card on file, they’re normally charged automatically straight away. See “Cards & payments” below for exactly how that works.

A safety-net bid a guest can leave online in advance, in case they can’t be in the room when the item is actually sold live. It is not a competitive online auction, there’s no bidding war, it’s simply a flat amount recorded as a backup.

No. Live lots never close automatically, the real sale happens out loud, in the room, called by your auctioneer. The website just collects holding bids beforehand.

After the event, go to that lot on the Lots screen and click Record the winner. Type in the winning bidder’s email, their name, and the final price the auctioneer actually achieved (which is very often higher than any holding bid placed online).

The system creates their order at the price you typed in, and, if they already have a card on file, tries to charge them automatically, exactly like a silent auction win. If they’re not already registered on the site, an account is created for them automatically using the email you provide.

There’s no visible price and no bidding war. Each guest privately submits one amount. Nobody, not other guests, not you, can see anyone’s amount while the lot is still open.

Yes, as many times as they like, right up until the lot closes. Only their most recent amount counts when it’s time to work out the result.

The Lots screen shows how many people have bid (e.g. “3 bids, hidden”), but never the amounts, so you genuinely can’t see or be swayed by them either.

The moment the lot closes, the system compares everyone’s latest sealed amount, and the highest one wins (as long as it meets any reserve price), only then does the winning amount become visible.

It’s an optional switch that turns the silent auction into the simplest possible version of itself: guests open one link, type their email, and bid. No app, no password, no account to activate, and no card details.

Use it for an in-person event where guests are in the room with a drink in their hand and you want bidding to take seconds, typically a gala, a dinner or a ball. Stick with the normal silent auction for an online-only auction running over days, where proxy bidding and card-on-file really earn their keep.

Three things: type their email address, type their name, and tick a box to confirm a short declaration. That’s it, they’re bidding. There is no separate signature step.

Nothing at all on their own phone, it remembers them for the evening and shows "Bidding as [their name]". If they come back on a different device, they just type the same email address and the platform recognises them instantly, it never asks for their name or the declaration again.

The amount the guest enters is the bid. There’s no proxy bidding, no hidden maximum, and nothing bids on their behalf. They tap a button showing the exact next amount, for example "£3,700", and that becomes the new highest bid.

Every lot has a fixed step (its "minimum bid increase"), and guests are shown buttons for the next few valid amounts, so the price can never jump by an odd figure they didn’t choose. If someone types their own amount instead, it’s rounded up to the next valid step rather than being rejected.

No. This mode deliberately removes the card requirement, which makes it the right choice when you’re settling by bank transfer or invoice after the event rather than charging cards on the night.

Nothing is charged, no order is created, and no email goes to the winner. The result goes into a review list instead, so you check it first. Only when you approve a lot can a winner email be sent, and you can edit that email before it goes.

Yes, on Charity Events → Direct Bid: Live overview. It shows every lot with the current highest bid, the leading bidder’s name and email, when they bid and whether it came from a phone, a shared tablet or a paper form. Guests never see any of that, they only see the amount.

Yes. Open that lot’s bid history, choose a reason (data-entry error, accidental bid, and so on) and mark the bid invalid. The bid is never deleted, it stays in the history with your reason attached, and the next highest valid bid automatically becomes the leader.

Yes, on the Direct Bid: Paper bid tab, as an emergency fallback. Enter the bidder’s email, the lot and the amount, and it goes into exactly the same central system as an online bid, tagged so you can see later that it came from paper.

Point the tablet at /auction/tablet/. In that mode the platform asks for an email before every single bid and forgets the guest immediately afterwards, so one guest can never bid under the previous guest’s name. A small "Shared tablet" badge shows on screen so it’s obvious which mode you’re in.

No, and that’s deliberate. In this mode lots close at exactly the time you set, so a whole room of lots can close together at, say, 10pm. The normal two-minute extension is still there for every other event, it’s simply switched off while this mode is on.

Charity Events → Direct Bid: Settings. It’s off unless you switch it on, and it only affects the site you switch it on. Everything the platform already does, proxy bidding, live lots, sealed bids, buy-it-now, card payments and the usual emails, is untouched and comes straight back if you switch it off again.

An item with one set price that any number of guests can support, rather than a lot that people bid against each other for. Think "Sponsor an incubator, £10,000" or "Fund a support dog for a year, £8,000". There’s no highest bid, no competition and no winner.

Edit the product and tick "Medical Item / fixed contribution" in the Inventory tab, then set the contribution amount per unit. It works on an ordinary product as well as an auction lot.

The set amount, a quantity box and a Contribute button. They identify themselves with exactly the same email-and-name step as bidding, so if they’ve already bid on a lot that evening they’re recognised straight away and just confirm.

No. While Direct Bid Mode is on, these items are taken out of the shopping cart entirely, so nothing is charged and no payment email is sent. The contribution is recorded as a pledge for you to follow up and approve, which is what you want when you’re settling by bank transfer.

Charity Events → Direct Bid: Medical Items, which lists every contribution with the contributor’s name and email, the quantity and the total, plus a running total across them all. You can invalidate a contribution there, and send a thank-you confirmation once you’re happy with it.

Every guest who’s paid for something gets a small square QR code image, shown on their order confirmation and in their email. On the night, a volunteer scans it with any ordinary phone camera (no special app needed), it opens a page that instantly confirms them as arrived.

Go to Charity Events → Guest check-in, find their name in the list, and click “Mark as arrived” by hand.

Nothing bad happens, scanning it a second time just shows their original arrival time again, it doesn’t cause any problem or duplicate.

Edit any page (for example your Silent Auction page) in the normal WordPress editor, add a “Shortcode” or “Custom HTML” block, and type: [cha_leaderboard count="5"]. Save the page and it will show a live running total plus the top 5 current lots, updating as bids come in.

Yes, change the number in the shortcode, e.g. [cha_leaderboard count="10"] shows the top 10.

No. Sealed-bid lots stay completely out of the total and the list until they close, exactly like everywhere else on the site, the whole point of a sealed bid is that it never leaks.

So that if they win, they don’t have to remember to come back and pay, the system can charge them automatically the moment the lot is theirs. It’s exactly like a hotel or car hire deposit: normal and expected, not unusual.

No, placing a bid never charges anything. A card is only ever actually charged if and when that guest wins a lot.

For silent auction lots, while someone is the highest bidder, we place a temporary hold (like a hotel deposit) on their card for the current bid amount, this isn’t a charge, no money moves, it just quietly reserves that it’s available. If someone else outbids them, their hold is released immediately and moves to the new highest bidder. This simply makes the final payment faster and smoother when the lot sells; if it ever doesn’t work for any reason, nothing is lost, see the next question.

Nothing is broken and no sale is lost. The order simply stays as “awaiting payment” and that guest is emailed a normal payment link instead, exactly as if the automatic-charge feature didn’t exist. You’ll see a note on their order explaining why.

No, card saving and automatic charging use your store’s existing Stripe payment setup and need no extra configuration from you.

Go to Charity Events → Batch edit times. Tick every lot you want to change, set a new start and/or finish time at the bottom, and click “Apply to the ticked lots”, every ticked lot updates in one go.

Yes, leave whichever field you don’t want to change blank. Only the field you actually fill in gets applied.

You can update a Live lot’s finish time here too, for Live lots that’s simply when advance holding bids stop being accepted, since the real sale happens live on the night rather than closing automatically.

No, closed lots (sold or unsold) have already had their result decided, so they don’t appear in this list. It’s only for lots still open for bidding.

Open that ticket product’s Advanced settings, find the Sale price field (a normal WooCommerce field), fill it in, then click Schedule next to it to set the dates it should run. The early-bird price shows automatically with an “Early bird” ribbon while the schedule is active, and reverts to the normal price once it ends.

Create it exactly like any other product, then set the same two fields as your other tickets: Total capacity for the “sold so far” bar and Seats this ticket grants at the table planner, both found near the bottom of the Inventory tab. That’s what makes a new tier behave like the others, with a live sold counter and the right number of seats.

Automatically, on the ticket’s product card and its own page, a bar shows “X of Y sold”, turning into “Only N left, selling fast” once few remain, or “Sold out” at zero. Nothing extra to add.

Leave the “Total capacity” field blank and the sold-counter bar simply won’t show for that one, the ticket still goes on sale as normal.

Go to Charity Events → Table plan, fill in the small form on the left (a name, round or rectangular, how many seats), and click Add table. It appears on the plan as a shape with empty seats around it.

Anyone who’s paid for a ticket but isn’t seated yet appears in the Guests waiting to be seated list on the left. Drag their name onto a table to seat their whole party at once (a Pair ticket seats 2, a Table of Ten seats 10, and so on), or drag it onto one empty seat to place just a single person from that party.

Click and drag the table’s own name bar (not the seats) to reposition it anywhere on the plan.

Yes. Click any empty seat and type their name directly, no ticket order needed. Click a filled seat to rename it, add a dietary note, or clear it.

Add the [cha_find_my_seat] shortcode to any page (it’s already on the Tickets page). A guest enters the email they used to buy their ticket and it tells them their table, and who else is sitting with them.

Everyone seated at it becomes unseated again, and reappears in the waiting list so you can reseat them elsewhere. You’ll be asked to confirm first, since this can’t be undone.

Go to Charity Events → Team tasks, fill in the task, who it’s for and a due date, and click Add task. It appears under “Open tasks” for anyone who can see the dashboard, and moves to “Completed” once you click Mark done.

No, deliberately not, it’s just a shared list so everyone can see who’s doing what before the night. For anything more complex, a dedicated tool would suit you better.

Go to Charity Events → Documents, give it a title, choose the file, and click Upload. Add the [cha_documents] shortcode to any page (it’s already on the Tickets page) to list every uploaded document there for download.

Anyone who can see the page you’ve put the [cha_documents] shortcode on, so keep sensitive files off any public page and only share that page’s link with your team if needed.

Go to Charity Events → Streaming, paste in a plain YouTube, Vimeo or Zoom link, and click Save. Add the [cha_livestream] shortcode to any page (it’s already on the Live Auction page) to show it there.

Yes, open that lot’s Advanced settings and look for Stream link for this lot on the Auction tab. This is mainly useful for a Live-mode lot, so remote bidders can watch that specific sale.

No, just paste the ordinary link you’d share with a friend (the one from your browser’s address bar). The system works out how to embed it automatically.

Leave the field blank, nothing shows and nothing changes for guests in the room.

No. A small globe menu in the main navigation lets any visitor switch the whole site into one of 11 languages instantly, there’s nothing for you to set up or maintain.

No, you keep writing everything in plain English as normal. The translation happens only in the visitor’s own browser, the original English content is what’s stored and what search engines see.

French, Spanish, German, Italian, Portuguese, Polish, Arabic, Chinese, Hindi and Ukrainian, alongside the original English.

It’s the same platform as the website, but guests can add it to their phone’s home screen so it opens full-screen with its own icon, just like a normal app. Everything works exactly the same: tickets, bidding, pledges, check-in, and paying. Its main benefit is faster, easier payment (see below).

When they open the event website in Chrome, a banner appears saying “Install this event app”, they just tap it, then “Add to home screen”. If they miss the banner, they can tap the three-dots menu in Chrome and choose “Install app” or “Add to Home screen”.

On an iPhone the guest opens the event website in Safari, taps the Share button (the square with an arrow), then taps “Add to Home Screen”. A short reminder of these steps also pops up automatically on Safari.

When the app opens it shows a login screen. Because each event has its own separate web address, opening that event’s app always logs the guest into the right event. New guests tap to register; returning guests just sign in and go straight to the event.

At checkout, if the guest’s phone has Google Pay (Android) or Apple Pay (iPhone) set up, a fast-pay button appears above the card fields. One tap, confirm with their fingerprint or face, and it’s paid, no typing card numbers. If they don’t have a wallet set up, they simply pay by card as normal.

No. The app installs straight from your event’s web address, there’s nothing to submit to the Apple App Store or Google Play and no separate app to maintain. Every event subdomain automatically becomes its own installable app.

It opens and shows a friendly “you’re offline” screen if the guest loses signal, but bidding and payments always need a live connection (so nobody bids on stale prices). As soon as they reconnect, everything works normally again.

Nine times out of ten they have opened your link from inside another app: a WhatsApp message, a QR scanner, Facebook, or their email. Those built-in browsers cannot add anything to a home screen at all, so no amount of tapping will find the option. The page now spots this and tells them what to do: tap the menu in the corner, choose “Open in Safari” or “Open in Chrome”, and install from there. There is also a “Copy the link” button so they can paste it into their browser themselves.

Yes. Modern iPads describe themselves to websites as Macs rather than as iPads, which used to mean they were shown Android instructions that did not match anything on screen. That is fixed: an iPad now gets the correct “tap Share, then Add to Home Screen” steps, and the app opens properly full screen without anything hidden under the status bar.

Beyond faster payment, it is what lets an iPhone or iPad receive outbid alerts. Apple only allows a website to send notifications once it has been added to the home screen and opened from that icon. On Android and on a laptop, alerts work either way.

It lets a supporter become a monthly donor, giving a set amount every month rather than a one-off gift. It’s shown on the Regular Giving page, and it’s the most dependable income a charity can have because it’s predictable.

From their card, set up once and taken automatically each month (they can cancel any time from the same page), or by standing order, where they set it up in their own banking app using your charity’s bank details and a unique reference we give them. Standing order has no card fees at all.

Go to Charity Events → Regular donors and open “Standing-order bank details”. Fill in the account name, sort code, account number and bank, and they’ll be shown (and emailed) to any donor who chooses the standing-order option.

The Charity Events → Regular donors screen lists everyone, with their amount, method, unique reference, whether they added Gift Aid, when they were last charged, and their status. At the top you’ll see your total monthly income and the Gift Aid it adds.

If a donor is a UK taxpayer and ticks the Gift Aid box, the charity can reclaim the basic-rate tax they’ve already paid, adding 25% to every donation at no cost to the donor. A £10 monthly gift becomes £12.50. Donors are offered Gift Aid when they set up regular giving AND when they buy a pledge or pay-what-you-can gift at checkout, and the system records every declaration for you. It’s only offered on genuine donations, never on tickets, raffle entries, games or auction lots, where HMRC doesn’t allow it.

Yes to both. A card donor can cancel themselves from the Regular Giving page. You can cancel anyone from the Regular donors screen. A standing order is controlled by the donor at their own bank, so cancelling it there is up to them, but marking it cancelled here keeps your records tidy.

A true bank Direct Debit (where the charity collects the payment) needs a provider such as GoCardless, connected in production. The two built-in options, automatic monthly card and standing order, cover the online and bank routes without any extra account.

The normal way, on the lot itself. Edit the product and use the Product image box on the right-hand side. The same applies to fixed contribution items.

Go to Charity Events → Pictures. Every picture that isn’t a lot photo is listed there with a thumbnail, a Choose button that opens your normal media library, and a Clear button.

On that same Pictures screen, type a name into "Add another picture", for example Sponsor logo, and click Add. You’ll get a short code such as [cha_image key="sponsor_logo"]. Paste that into any page, post or widget, wherever you want the picture to appear.

No, that’s the point of it. Change the picture once on the Pictures screen and every page using that code updates at the same time.

Yes. [cha_image key="sponsor_logo" size="medium"] for a smaller version (thumbnail, medium, large or full), alt="..." to add a description for screen readers, and class="..." to attach your own styling. All the options are listed on the Pictures screen itself.

The image people see when your auction link is shared in WhatsApp, an email or on social media. Lot pages automatically use that lot’s own photo; this setting covers the home page and everything else.

Yes, any slot you created has a Remove button. The three built-in ones can’t be deleted because the site refers to them by name, but you can change or clear their image freely.

Charity Events → Direct Bid: Settings, in the Appearance section near the bottom.

The accent colour (headings, countdown and the current amount), the bid button colour and its text colour, the box background, the text colour, and how rounded the corners are. Each one is a normal colour picker.

Yes. There’s an image chooser for a picture that appears above the bid box on every lot, and an "Intro line" box for a sentence of your own, for example a thank-you or a reminder of what the money funds.

Yes, both have their own tick box under "Show to guests". Some organisers prefer to hide the bid count so a quiet lot doesn’t look unloved.

Yes. While Direct Bid Mode is on, the combined public total is suppressed automatically, so guests only ever see the current amount on each individual lot. You still see the overall total in Charity Events.

The gala screen runs itself: it cycles through your lots and pops up a card every time money comes in. The slideshow is the opposite, it stays on whichever lot you put it on until you move it. That is what you want while a lot is actually being sold, because an automatic screen wanders off the item the room is bidding on at the worst moment.

Many events use both: the gala screen during dinner and the pledge drive, the slideshow while lots are being sold.

Go to Charity Events → Lot slideshow and click Open the slideshow. Do that on the laptop plugged into the projector, then press F for full screen. That is it.

Use the button rather than typing the address yourself: the link it gives you carries a key that lets that keyboard control every other screen and remote as well.

From the projector keyboard: left and right arrows move between lots, G opens a grid of every lot so you can jump straight to one, Home goes back to the first lot, and the number keys 1 to 9 jump to the first nine lots. You can also click the left or right edge of the screen, or swipe if it is a touchscreen. The edges are invisible, so the room never sees a button.

Yes, and this is how most people run it. The remote is built into Charity Events → Lot slideshow, with big Previous and Next buttons and a list of every lot to jump to. It always shows what the room is currently looking at.

Yes. On the same page there is a shareable remote link and a QR code for it. Anyone who opens that link gets the full remote with no WordPress login at all, which is ideal for handing to your AV person or a volunteer.

Treat it like a key: anybody holding it can change what the room sees. If it gets out, tick Issue a new remote link in the settings on that page and the old one stops working immediately.

You can, but it is off on purpose. Turn on Advance on its own in the settings and set the seconds per lot. Even then, the moment you press an arrow or the remote it holds on that lot for a while before carrying on, so it never fights you.

A good pattern is to leave it advancing while guests arrive, then take manual control when the selling starts. Press space on the projector, or tap Hold on this lot on the remote, to stop it wherever it is.

The lot photo, its number and name, a short description, what it currently stands at, who is winning, how long is left, and a “scan to bid” QR code. Every one of those can be switched off individually in the settings if you want a cleaner screen.

Sealed-bid lots never show a price or a name while they are still open, whatever these settings say. That is the point of a sealed bid.

The slideshow follows the order of your products, so slide 3 stays slide 3 all evening rather than jumping about every time a bid lands. To reorder, edit each lot and set its Menu order (under the Advanced tab of the product data box). Lots without one are sorted alphabetically after the rest.

Yes. Every screen follows the remote by default, so they all show the same lot. If you want a second screen that ignores the remote and runs independently, use the shortcode

Two places, and they do the same thing. For one lot, edit the product and use the When bidding opens and closes box on the Auction tab. For the whole silent auction at once, go to Charity Events → Auction times and use Set the silent auction window, which writes the same opening and closing time onto every silent lot in one click.

The second one is what you usually want. Typing the same two times onto twenty products is both tedious and the easiest way to end up with one lot closing at the wrong moment.

Because getting it wrong is silent and expensive. If your site is left on UTC, a British auction set to close at 9pm will actually close at 8pm between late March and late October, while British Summer Time is running. Nobody gets an error. The lots just shut an hour early, in the middle of your event, while people are still bidding.

Charity Events → Auction times now states in large type which time zone the site is on and what the time is there right now, so you can see at a glance whether it is right.

On that same page, pick from the dropdown and click Save time zone. For a UK event choose London, not UTC: London handles British Summer Time automatically and UTC does not.

No. Lots that already have times set keep the exact moment they were set to, so changing the setting cannot silently drag your closing time about. If you want them to follow the new time zone, re-apply the window using the box underneath.

Scroll down the Auction times page. There is a table of every lot showing when it opens, when it closes, and its status: open for bidding, opens later, closed, or No times set in red. That red is the one to hunt for. A lot with no closing time never closes on its own.

The countdown on each lot is worked out from the actual moment the lot closes, so it is correct wherever the guest is in the world. What you type in the admin area is always read in the site’s time zone, which is the one named at the top of the Auction times page.

Whoever is currently winning it. Their name appears on the lot page as Leading bidder, on the gala screen, and on the slideshow. Once the lot closes it becomes Winning bidder.

This is on by default on purpose. A named leaderboard is a large part of what makes a silent auction competitive: people bid again when they can see they have been overtaken by someone they know.

There is a Bid anonymously tickbox under the bid box. If they tick it, their bid shows as “Anonymous” everywhere the public can see, including the big screen. The choice is remembered for that lot, so when they come back to raise their bid the box is already ticked.

It also carries through automatic bidding. If the software keeps bidding on their behalf up to their maximum, those bids stay anonymous too.

Yes, always. Anonymity is about what the room and the other guests see. As the organiser you see the real person on the order, in the bid history in Charity Events, and at check-in, because you need to know who to give the item to and who to charge.

Yes, in Charity Events → Settings, under “Bidder names on the lots”. Three choices: first name and last initial such as “Ashley R.” (the default, and the one most events want), the guest’s full name, or never naming anybody at all so every lot shows “Anonymous”.

Because their account has no real name saved on it. Rather than put a username or an email address on a projector, the software shows “A guest” instead. It is deliberately different from “Anonymous”, which only ever means somebody actively chose to hide.

If you want their name to appear, add a first and last name to their user account, or ask them to fill in their billing name at checkout.

No name and no price is shown on a sealed lot until it closes, no matter what these settings say. Once it closes the result is revealed like any other lot.

They get an email straight away, with the new price and a link back to the lot. This is on always, costs nothing, and needs no setting up. The same happens if they are beaten because somebody used buy-it-now to take the lot outright.

A notification on the guest’s phone screen, the way any app notifies you, saying they have been outbid and on what. Tapping it opens the lot so they can bid again. On the night this is far more effective than email, because nobody is reading email at a gala dinner.

They cost nothing per message, ever. There is no account to open and no third party involved: the guest’s own browser delivers them.

On any lot, under the bid box, there is a button reading Alert me when I am outbid. They tap it and say yes to their phone’s permission prompt. That is the whole process. You can also put the button anywhere else with the shortcode

Log in to get alerts when you are outbid.

Only once the guest has added the event to their home screen and opened it from that icon. That is Apple’s rule for every website, not a limitation of this software. In Safari itself, nothing will happen, so the button explains this rather than failing quietly.

On Android phones and on laptops they work straight away.

It is a good reason to point guests at the “Download the app” page early in the evening.

Yes, in Charity Events → Settings, under “Lock-screen alerts”. Guests always keep the email either way.

Both are supported, through a Twilio account you provide in Charity Events → Settings. They can fire when somebody is outbid, when a lot they bid on is closing soon, and when they win.

Be aware that neither is free. A UK text costs roughly 4p through Twilio, and WhatsApp messages that your event starts, which is exactly what an outbid alert is, are charged per message by Meta at roughly 1.6p and have to use a message template they approve in advance. For a busy auction that is usually a few pounds an evening rather than a few pence.

Email and the phone alerts above do the same job for nothing, so it is worth seeing how many of your guests install the app before paying for messages.

No, and it is worth being clear about why. Tools do exist that log into WhatsApp as you and send messages automatically, and they are against WhatsApp’s terms. WhatsApp detects them and bans the number, usually permanently. If that number is the one your charity or your supplier does business on, losing it costs far more than the messages ever would, and it tends to happen at the moment of heaviest use, which is your event.

The only sanctioned route is Meta’s WhatsApp Business Platform, and that is charged per message.

For a tablet you leave out for guests to use, on a table or at a stand near the lots. It strips the site back to a kiosk: full screen with no address bar, larger text, and much bigger buttons for fingers rather than a mouse.

On the tablet, scroll to the bottom of any page and tap Tablet mode in the footer, then enter the organiser password. To take the tablet back out afterwards, tap Leave tablet mode in the same place and enter the password again.

Settings → Tablet mode in the admin area. It is shown in plain text on purpose: it is a door code for your room team to read off a screen, not an account password. Set your own before the event, and do not reuse a password you use anywhere else.

Because the whole point is that a guest cannot change it. Without a password a guest could drop the tablet out of kiosk mode and start wandering the site, or put someone else’s phone into it. The password is checked on the server, not in the page, so it cannot be worked around by a curious guest.

No. It applies only to the device you switch it on, and it is remembered on that device until you switch it off. Guests on their own phones see the normal site.

On an iPad, Safari will only give up its address bar completely if the event has been added to the home screen first. Tap Share, then “Add to Home Screen”, and open the event from that icon before switching tablet mode on. Tablet mode still works without doing this, you just keep a slim bar at the top.

Two things. Sign the tablet in first if it is for a named guest, and turn the screen auto-lock off in the tablet’s own settings, otherwise it will keep going to sleep between bidders.

Because a table of ten used to arrive as one order with one code. That means nine people turn up with nothing, and the tenth has a screenshot of somebody else’s QR. Each guest now has their own code, so the door knows exactly who has walked in and who has not.

Charity Events → Guests & tickets. There is a box at the top telling you how many guests have not been sent a ticket yet, and a button to send them. You can also tick “send automatically as guests are named”, and then they go out on their own as names come in.

They are skipped, quietly. A seat with a name but no email address cannot be sent to, and a seat with neither is not a person yet. That is the normal state of a table booked a month early, not a problem, so the software does not nag you about it.

No. Once somebody has been sent their ticket, they are not sent it again. If you genuinely need to re-send one, that is a separate deliberate action rather than something that happens by accident.

Yes. The codes are drawn by your own website rather than fetched from somebody else’s, so they appear whether or not there is a signal, and no outside company is told your guests’ check-in codes. This matters most on the big screen in the room, where a missing code means nobody can scan to bid.

Every order that bought seats has a private link. Send it to the buyer and they fill in who is coming, with no password and no account. It saves as they go, so somebody who only knows six names out of ten can put those in and come back later.

Write to your guests, pick the audience “buyers whose seats still have no names”, and use the {{guest_names_link}} tag in your message. Each person gets their own link automatically. You never have to look one up by hand.

Yes. On a ticket product there is a box for questions, one per line: dietary requirements, a starter choice, a name for the badge. Put options after a | to make it a list, write yes/no for a tickbox, and end a line with * to make it required.

Because the person paying for a table of ten does not know their guests’ allergies at the moment they pay. Frequently they do not yet know the guests. Asking at checkout gets you ten blank answers and a false sense the job is done.

Guests & tickets → Import / export as a spreadsheet. Download the sheet, paste their names in, upload it back. Blank cells are left alone, so a half-finished sheet cannot wipe anything you already have, and any row that does not match a seat somebody paid for is reported back rather than quietly adding a stranger to the room.

Guests & tickets → The running order. One line per item, and if something only applies to certain tickets, name them at the end of the line. Each guest’s ticket then shows only the parts that apply to them, so the VIP drinks reception does not appear on a standard seat’s ticket.

Groups the software works out for itself: everyone on record, ticket holders, buyers whose seats have no names, people who have not arrived, people who did, everyone who bid, and everyone who owes money. It shows you the number of recipients before you send, because the difference between 12 people and 1,200 is the difference between a nudge and an incident.

No. Everyone is matched by email address first, so a guest who bought three tickets and bid on four lots is one person and gets one message.

Every message carries a link, and it is honoured automatically. You do not have to remember. Somebody who unsubscribes while a send is still going out is dropped from the rest of it. You can also take somebody off by hand when they ask you on the phone, and put them back if they say it was a mistake.

There is a tickbox for that, and it only appears where it is defensible. A message about an order somebody placed is a service message rather than marketing, so it is allowed to reach them. Using it is recorded against the send with your name on it, which is the difference between a considered exception and a loophole.

Communications → Settings. “Where replies go” can be any address anywhere — your events inbox, a trustee, a mobile. Left blank, replies go to the website’s admin address, which on a site somebody else built is usually the person who built it.

Yes. Every recipient gets a row, so “I never got that email” has a factual answer, and when three people are messaging guests on the same night, so does “who sent this?”

They give a name, an email and a target on your website. That is it. They are emailed a private link for managing the page, and no account is created — a supporter running a marathon for you is never going to be a user of your website, and asking them to invent a password loses most of them at the first screen.

Edit their story and target, add a photo, post updates, record cash they have collected themselves, and thank the people who gave. It is the only way back in, so it is worth telling them to keep the email.

Because somebody who raises £180 in an office collection has to be able to put it on their total, or the total is wrong and they stop using the page. It is recorded separately from card donations, so you can still tell what has actually reached the bank.

No, and that is deliberate. They see names and amounts. They write the thank-you and the website sends it. Your supporters gave their address to you, not to them, and handing a stranger a list of them is not yours to do.

Yes. Make one page a team, and other pages can join it. Each person’s total still counts as their own, and is also added to the team’s.

They get an email at a quarter, half, three quarters and at their target. The ones before the finish ask for an update rather than just congratulating, because an update is the thing that actually raises more — the people who already gave are the most likely to share the page again, and they need a reason to.

So the account is yours. You see exactly what it costs, you can switch it off in one click without asking anybody’s permission, and your guests’ information is covered by your agreement rather than a contract between us and somebody else. You create a key at console.anthropic.com and paste it into Assistant → Settings.

Things it can see: which lots have had no bids, how you are doing against reserve, who still owes money, how many seats have no name, and whether the venue’s network is coping. It answers in a sentence or two, and it says when it does not know rather than guessing.

No. It reads. If the answer is “close lot 12”, it tells you so and tells you which screen does it, rather than pretending to have done it.

Not by default. It sees your lots, prices, totals and counts of people — never signatures, medical notes or Gift Aid declarations, and not names or email addresses unless you deliberately switch that on. With names off it still answers the operational question, it just says “Bidder 12” instead of naming somebody.

Pennies for normal use, and the settings screen keeps a running estimate for the month so the first bill is not a surprise. That figure is our estimate from what the AI reports back, not an invoice — the one from Anthropic is the one that counts.

Yes: lot descriptions from rough notes, and emails to guests. It uses only the facts you give it, so it will not invent provenance, a value or a date — a catalogue that promises what the donor did not donate is your problem, not a wording one.

Charity Events → Set up an event site. Tell it the event name, date and venue, and it creates Tickets, The lots, How the bidding works, Find my table, Our sponsors, Donate and Fundraise for us — each with the right shortcode already in it and wording a guest can follow.

No. Anything with a name you already use is left completely alone, and the screen tells you which ones before you press anything.

Only if you tick the box. By default they arrive as drafts, because the wording is a starting point for you to edit rather than a finished site.

All of them and none of them, honestly. Charities run Salesforce, Beacon, Donorfy, Raiser’s Edge or a spreadsheet, each wanting something different. Rather than claim to integrate with yours and be wrong, Charity Events → People gives you a full export in the shape import wizards expect.

One row per supporter with their name, contact details, total given, orders, bids, seats held, whether they turned up, and whether they have given you a Gift Aid declaration. That last one is worth 25p in the pound, and re-asking somebody who has already declared is both wasteful and slightly insulting.

If you have a developer, yes. Give it a web address and every new supporter and every gift is sent there as it happens, signed so the receiving end can tell a real message from anyone who has guessed the address. Pointing that at a particular CRM is about a day’s work for somebody who has an account to test with.

Say you are running the same sponsored walk in Bath, Bristol and Cardiff on the same weekend. Each city needs its own page — its own date, its own venue, its own route map and its own target — but you also need one number for the whole thing. That is what a location does.

If your event happens in one place, you do not need this at all. Skip it.

Charity Events → Fundraising pages, then Add a location near the bottom. You give it a name, a date, a venue and a target, and you can upload a route map as a PDF or a picture. Supporters get a download button for it on the location page.

They choose it themselves. Once you have added locations, the “start your own page” form asks where they are taking part, and they can change it later from their own editing link. You can also file somebody yourself from the same admin screen if they get it wrong.

File the team into a location and its members come with it. You do not need to file them individually, and doing so would not change anything — their money always flows through their team.

No, and this is worth understanding because it is the thing that goes wrong in spreadsheets. Somebody in a team, in a city, has their money counted once: through their team. If a person is not in a team, it counts through their city. Nobody is ever added up twice, however they are filed.

Put

Anything with a number and a target. It was built for miles, but it is deliberately not called “distance”, because charities count all sorts of things: books read for a read-a-thon, trees planted, days sober, nights slept outside. You give it a name, a unit and a target, and it draws a bar.

The fundraiser does, from their own editing page — the same link they use to write their story. They update it as they go, which is also a good moment to post an update about it.

Yes, as long as everybody is counting the same thing. A team’s bar is the sum of its members’.

If one member is counting books while the rest count miles, they are left out of that sum and the page says so by name. That is deliberate: adding nine books to a mileage total would produce a confident number that means nothing, and leaving them out silently would be almost as bad.

Clear the unit box and save. The bar disappears and the page shows the money only.

Because the people most likely to give again, or to share your page, are the ones who already gave — and they need a reason to come back. “Halfway through and my feet have opinions” is a reason. Silence is not.

From their own editing link, under Post an update. They can give it a heading, which is what appears in bold on the page, and the date is added automatically.

Both. Every update they have posted is listed underneath the form, each one editable. Editing does not change the date — it records when the thing happened, not when the typo was fixed.

To take one off the page there is a Hide it button rather than a delete. It comes off the public page and stays in their own list, greyed out, with a button to put it back. Somebody who has just written three paragraphs about why they are doing this should not be one mis-tap away from losing them.

It lets whoever won a lot invite other people to take part of the cost. Four people at £500 each rather than one person at £2,000 — which is often the difference between the lot selling for £2,000 and selling for £600.

The winner, exactly as they would have been without the split. This is the important bit and it is deliberate: a share is a convenience for the winner, not a transfer of who owes you. If one of their friends never pays, you chase the winner — not a stranger you have never met. There is never a half-owned lot to argue about.

The winner opens their order and adds a share: a name, an email and an amount. They get a link to send. Whoever opens it sees what the lot is, what they have been asked for, and a button to pay — no account needed. As each share is paid, the winner’s own bill goes down by that much.

Yes, in their own name, and this is worth more than tidiness: Gift Aid is claimed per person. Four separate £500 gifts from four UK taxpayers are worth up to £500 more to you than one £2,000 payment from one person.

An unpaid one, yes. A paid one is money and stays where it is.

Charity Events → Settings → Raffle / prize-draw rules. Every product you have marked as a raffle appears there with its entry count and its pot, and a Draw a winner button.

Yes. Every ticket is one entry. Somebody who bought ten has ten times the chance of somebody who bought one, which sounds obvious and is the thing most often got wrong.

We do not claim a “certified” generator, because nobody can honestly certify one for you. What you get instead is a draw you can show your working on: the number of entries, a fingerprint of the exact list drawn against, the winning position, the winner and the time, all recorded.

If anyone adds or changes an entry afterwards, that fingerprint stops matching and the screen tells you in red. That is a stronger answer to “how do I know?” than a badge would be.

Only by voiding the first draw and giving a reason, and the voided result stays on record. A raffle that can be quietly re-drawn until the right name comes up is a raffle nobody should trust.

Half the money raised goes to the winner and half to you. There is no prize to source, which is exactly why charities like them. Tick the box on the product and the screen shows what the winner would take.

You can add postal entries by hand before the draw, and they go in the same hat with the same odds. Entries close the moment the draw is run.

Please take advice on the wording. There are two lawful ways to run this in Great Britain — a registered small society lottery, or a free draw with a genuine free route in — and what counts as “equal terms” has real consequences. The software gives you the mechanism; it deliberately does not write your rules for you.

Write it as normal, then fill in Send later before sending. It goes into a list of what is waiting, each with a cancel link. Leave the box blank and it goes now, exactly as before.

The people who match now, when you write it. If you write to “people who bid and did not win”, it means the ones who lost, not whoever happens to fit on Thursday. Otherwise the list could quietly change between writing and sending, and somebody would get a message about an event they were not at.

Yes, and it is the best ask of the whole evening. Somebody who bid £400 and lost has already told you they wanted to give £400. They are a separate audience from “everyone who bid”, so you are not writing to the people who beat them as well.

Anyone who won anything is left out, even if they lost four other lots. Asking somebody to make up for the ones they missed reads as not having noticed they bought something.

They can, if you have connected a Twilio account under Charity Events → Settings. You then choose email, text, or both. Without an account it stays on email — a message that reaches nobody would be far worse than one arriving by the usual route.

Users → Add New, and give them the Event Organiser role. That is all.

They land on Charity Events. No Posts, no Plugins, no Tools, no Users, no Settings — those screens are not hidden behind a menu, they are genuinely closed off, so typing the address in does not get anybody there either.

They cannot install anything, change the theme, or make themselves an administrator. You keep the full dashboard.

Only if you let them. There is a switch under Charity Events → Settings. Left off, they see one menu and nothing else, which suits an event you are running for them. Turned on, they can write their own page copy and upload pictures. Either way they cannot touch products, so nobody can change a lot’s price by hand three days before the event.

Add the shortcode

Genuine gifts count: the paddle raise, offline cash or cheque donations, Second Chance gifts, and any donation order where the guest ticked the Gift Aid box. Auction purchases, tickets, raffle entries and games do not, because HMRC does not allow Gift Aid where the giver receives something in return. The platform only ever counts the eligible part.

Add

Yes.

When a lot closes, a guest who bid but did not win is gently shown their biggest near-miss and invited to give that amount as a gift instead. Because a gift carries Gift Aid where an auction purchase does not, the same figure is worth a quarter more to the cause.

Add to a page your guests see after bidding, such as the auction page. It only appears to a signed-in guest who bid on and lost a closed lot, it never shows to the winner, and it never asks the same person twice.

If the guest has a card saved, it books the gift there and then. If not, it records the gift and you follow up. It never asks for more than the guest actually bid.

Their bid is saved on their own phone and sent automatically the moment the connection comes back. They see a calm message that their bid is saved and waiting to send, not a failure.

No. Every bid carries a one-time key, so even if the phone retries several times, the bid is recorded exactly once, and charged once.

Open any lot page with ?cha_offline_demo=1 added to the address. A small switch appears that lets you rehearse a dropped signal on a perfectly good connection: place a bid, watch it queue, switch back, and watch it send.

In Charity Events, open the Direct Bid review screen. The approved winners are each marked Paid or Outstanding, with a running total of how much has been collected and how much is still owed.

Click Mark as paid next to that winner. The date is recorded and the outstanding total updates, so you never need a separate spreadsheet.

For a won lot that becomes a normal order, an unpaid order is chased with a short, polite reminder sequence automatically, and sending a payment link tries the guest’s saved card first before emailing them.

A live organiser screen showing what has been raised (and its worth with Gift Aid), lots closing in the next few minutes, quiet lots with no bids that could use a word from the stage, winners still to pay, how the paddle raise is tracking, and how hard the room’s network is working.

Add to a page and open it on your phone or laptop on the night. Only a signed-in organiser can see it, so guests who wander onto the page see nothing. It refreshes itself every half a minute.

Yes. The bidding box works with a screen reader and with a keyboard alone, and it speaks the things a sighted guest simply reads off the screen, above all being outbid, announcing the new highest bid the moment it changes.

Yes. The bidding box and its buttons keep clear, readable contrast in both light and dark, and every control shows a visible outline when tabbed to.

No. Identifying yourself is only an email address, there is no password to remember and no puzzle to solve.

Straight to Stripe’s own secure checkout. Card numbers never reach this platform or its database, so the most sensitive part of a payment is never yours to lose.

Yes. A guest’s bids and watchlist can be exported and erased through WordPress’s own privacy tools, consent is captured when they register, and every database query is written so that a form entry can never be read as a command.

It ships with two dozen automated self-tests, more than 390 individual checks, covering the things that would quietly cost a charity money if they broke, such as one guest never seeing another’s bids, and a sealed lot never leaking its price.

No. There is no commission. The charity keeps every pound it raises.

Ask them to check their spam or junk folder first, that’s the most common cause by far. Their order and bid history are still all correctly recorded on the site either way; the email is just a courtesy notice.

Click “Advanced settings” next to that lot to open the full WordPress editing screen and fix anything you need to. This is completely safe to do on an open, unsold lot.

Either nobody bid on it at all, or the highest bid didn’t reach the reserve price you set. Both are shown clearly as “Unsold” on the Lots screen.

Yes, via “Advanced settings” on that lot, using the normal WordPress product screen, this is the one thing the simple Charity Events screen doesn’t do directly, since it’s rarely needed and easy to do by mistake.

Get in touch with Kevin Durham directly, the same way you would for anything else about your event.