Four stages, one ledger. An item is entered once and carries its own history from there.
From the receiving door to the seller's cheque.
Cataloguing, bidding, invoicing, tax, shipping and settlement, set out in the order they happen on a sale.
01
Receiving
Scan, photograph, correct, print. One pass, at the door, on a phone.
3 to 4 Times an item is keyed todayThe item gets entered once.
Today it gets entered three or four times. Somebody photographs it and writes quick notes. The notes go into a spreadsheet. Somebody else types the spreadsheet into the platform.
On Going Once the phone at the receiving door does the whole job. Scan the barcode and the product details come back filled in. If there is no barcode, photograph it and correct the description instead of writing one. Then the sticker prints.
The item leaves the door with a permanent code on it and a description good enough to list. Nothing is retyped after that.
Example figures: one person at 40 hours a week on $26 loaded, plus $800 a month of outside entry. Put your own numbers in on the cost worksheet.
02
The catalogue
The item is permanent. The lot number is a label that moves.
The lot number is not the item.
Most auction software treats an item and its place in one sale as the same fact. Pull lot 47 because it sold off the floor on Tuesday and everything behind it shifts. The stickers already on the shelves are wrong, and somebody spends the afternoon reprinting them.
Here the item gets a permanent code at receiving and the lot number is a label that moves. Withdraw a lot, insert one, resequence the sale, roll an unsold item into next weekend. If you run a shop as well, the same item can leave through the till instead.
One sticker covers every appearance. Staff who scan it get the full history, and everybody else gets the current listing.
| Sticker | Where it went | Lot | Outcome |
|---|---|---|---|
| A7K2Q | Timed sale, 08 August | 079 | Passed |
| A7K2Q | Timed sale, 15 August | 112 | Passed |
| A7K2Q | Retail floor, 19 August | n/a | Sold $45 |
What stays with the item, and what is set per sale
- Item codePermanent. Printed once, at the door.
- Photographs and descriptionPermanent. Corrected, never retyped.
- Sale historyPermanent. Every appearance, and what it did.
- Lot numberPer sale. Reassigned whenever the sale is resequenced.
- Closing orderPer sale. Changing it reprints nothing.
- Withdrawn or rolled forwardPer sale. The item carries on to the next one.
03
The sale
Timed bidding, proxy bids, and a soft close. Delivered cost sits beside the bid.
Bidders who cannot drive to you can still buy.
Canadian auctions are effectively pickup only, so the room stops at driving distance. Here the delivered cost to a bidder's postal code sits beside the bid before they place it.
Bidding is timed. A bidder leaves the most they are willing to pay and the system bids on their behalf up to it, and a bid in the last minute moves the close.
Nine lots won by the same bidder leave as one box, on one shipping charge.
| Time | Bidder | Bid | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| 14:22:08 | B-0417 | $32.00 | |
| 14:22:41 | B-1180 | $35.00 | Auto |
| 14:29:55 | B-0417 | $38.00 | Close moved to 14:32 |
A bid in the last minute moves the close.
What the bidder sees
- Delivered cost to their postal code, beside the bid
- Nine lots won, one box, one shipping charge
- One account across every house on the platform
- A card on file, charged on win
- Watchlists and outbid alerts
Pickup only is still a setting, per sale.
The sale day sequence
- Lots open. Bidders watch them, set the most they will pay, and get an alert when they are outbid.
- Closing begins. Lots close in sequence rather than all at once.
- A bid in the last minute moves that lot's close, and the lots behind it follow.
- Invoices generate. Hammer, premium, tax and shipping land on one document per buyer.
- Cards on file are charged. Interac transfers are matched to invoices as they arrive.
- Buyers collect, or their boxes ship to the postal code they were quoted.
- Seller statements and payouts come off the same ledger the invoices did.
04
Settlement
Tax by province, the exemptions you hit every week, and getting paid.
The tax scheduleThe tax is right before the invoice goes out.
GST, HST, PST, and QST change by province and apply to the hammer and the premium both. The exemptions are the ones you hit every week: zero rated farm equipment, dealer resale, and section 87 of the Indian Act.
The rate follows the sale. The invoice is built right before it goes out rather than corrected after a buyer queries it. The rates for all thirteen provinces and territories are set out on the sales tax page.
Buyer invoice, lot 112, Ontario
- Hammer
- $45.00
- Buyer's premium, 15 percent
- $6.75
- Subtotal
- $51.75
- HST, 13 percent
- $6.73
- Shipping, M5V 2T6
- $14.20
- Due
- $72.68
Getting paid
- Cards on file, charged on win
- Interac e-Transfers matched to invoices for you
- An optional discount for buyers who pay by transfer
- Seller statements and payouts from the same ledger
- French invoices and listings for Quebec sales
Where this is up to
We are looking for a few more houses to build this with.
Going Once is being built with auction houses in southern Ontario, starting with liquidation and consignment sellers running timed online sales.
If you run sales in Canada, what helps most is a morning in your warehouse and an honest list of what slows you down.