*Internal* System Release Notes May 15th, 2026
Setting up the 3rd Party Platform BP Rates:
The first step in setting up accommodating 3rd party online bidding is to create the labels for the up to 2 other online bidding platforms that you want to incorporate into the auction management process. To set these up, go to Settings, Auction and then in the Buyers Premium area create the labels. Each label has a maximum of 8 characters. With how the label appears in the clerking grid (to be shown later) it is best to make it short (label Proxibid as Proxi, Equipment Facts as EF, Bidspotter as Bidspot, etc).
Once your labels are created, scroll to the bottom and hit save. You MUST click save in order for the system to generate the options to create a buyers premium structure for the the additional platforms.
Once you have saved, you will be returned to the same page and you will see 2 new options beneath the Internet Buyer Premium called {platform_1_label} Buyer Premium and {platform_2_label} Buyer Premium. This is where you can set up your appropriate BP structure for each component. Remember that you need to note whether the BP for that component is to be charged on top of the onsite BP or by itself if someone purchases an item at the auction using that provider. Most clients will have it be applied on top of the on-site buyer premium.
Once you have set up each BP appropriately, you will want to save the the changes you have made. Once made, every webcast based auction you create moving forward will have this structure applied to it and can be updated in the buyer premium section of the auction individually (see below). You cannot change the label names on an auction by auction basis, but you can change the associated BP rate. If you need this to apply to already created auctions, make sure to go back to the Buyer Premium settings of each of those auctions to ensure that they are appropriately set up.
Checking in bidders from other platforms:
With your BP structure set up, it is now time to import in your registered bidders from your 3rd party providers. Some providers will NOT provide you this list until the auction is completed (in which case you will want to jump to the section titled "Assigning clerked rounds manually to 3rd party bidders").
If you have a list of bidders go to the Bidders tab for the auction and then click on the green/white upload button net to Import Auction Bidders and then choose which 3rd party platform you want to import bidders for. Lets start with Proxi.
Once you click on the Proxi label, you are brought to the import bidders page. If you already have an exported excel list from Proxi you can click choose file, or you can download the Nextlot template. The import process works the same as inviting bidders to create accounts on NextLot for the fact that all of the traditional bidder information fields are NOT required (Paddle #, email, first name, last name, phone #, address, city, state/region, postal code, country). The only required fields are the paddle # and the email address. While these are the only 2 REQUIRED fields, it is strongly recommended to have a full array of the bidder's data imported so that their profile is fully created/updated if they already have an account in NextLot.
Example of a bidder who is checked in and only has their email attached to their paddle #. Their phone # and mailing address and name are all missing from their profile.
This data must be normalized, meaning that if you import a bidder from the state of North Carolina and the state is spelt out, the system will attempt to change it and normalize it to NC (how the state is stored in our system).
For example when we import the following data:
When it registers the bidder, it normalizes the data and adds the bidder with the appropriate data formatted the way that NextLot requires it (phone # with dashes and spaces, Country with formatting and state with formatting).
Once an external platform bidder is checked into the auction, if the auction has manual bid request approval set, the bidder will receive an email that their bid request has been approved. If the auction is set to Auto approval- no email will be sent to the bidder alerting them that they have been approved. If a bidder is imported AFTER an auction has ended, no bid request email is sent (regardless of the approval settings of the auction).
Since this was an entirely new bidder being added to the platform, it creates a new entry in the NextLot system and assigns that bidder a permanent online bidder # on NextLot (3008).
This bidder was imported as Paddle # 15000 on Proxi, but is ALSO NextLot permanent online bidder # 3008 on this site. Once a NEW bidder is imported into an auction, it creates a permanent NextLot profile for them with a NextLot online bidder #. By doing so, the bidder can later use this account to view their invoices AND hopefully begin bidding with NextLot in the future. The hope is that we can convert some of these bidders to buy on NextLot versus Proxi over a period of time.
If this bidder is new and goes to the NextLot site and then enters their email, they will be presented with the registration process
They will receive the email and when they click on the register link in the email, they will be taken to the website where they can set up a password and update their profile if needed (meaning if they are missing required information, or need to enter in a credit card or verify a phone #, they will be prompted to do so before being able to accept the terms on the NextLot auction).
Another scenario that might occur is when a bidder is checked in who already has a NextLot account. If a bidder already has an account with NextLot, the import will compare the imported bidder data with what already exists in the site's bidder database. If there are any differentiating factors, you will be brought to a resolution screen where you will need to click the yellow icon to be brought to the resolution screen to choose to update the specific data points or choose to keep the data the as it was in NextLot before the import.
Maybe the bidder has a new phone #, maybe they have moved to a different billing address, etc. These are all possibilities that you can rectify in the below screen. This has to be done on a bidder by bidder basis. Once you click save, it will fully check in that bidder AND update their NextLot bidder data accordingly.
Important things to check when importing in bidders from a 3rd party are to make sure the State/Province uses the abbreviation (capital letters) and that the country uses the 2 letter country code (capital letters again).
Once checked in, the bidder will be approved to bid online with NextLot as well as the platform that they were imported from. Since they already had an account, they should have already set up and instead of being sent an email to set up their account and create a password, they are simply prompted to login to their account.
Once all of your bidders are checked into the auction, you can begin conducting the live webcast auction.
If you bulk check-in bidders before the auction begins, you can include these same bidders on a list to import later. For example, if you have 3 bidders you checked in before the auction started, and then at the end of the auction have a total of 10, you can include the 3 already checked in bidders with the 7 new ones and import them all again. This will not change the 3 already checked in. This prevents you from having to separate out the already checked in with the new bidders.
Assigning clerked rounds manually to 3rd party bidders
When in the webcast clerk screen, you will want to assign the appropriate paddle #'s to the successful bidders. If a 3rd party online bidder is the winner of a particular lot, you will want to assign their paddle # to that lot.
Once assigned, the bidder's name will be listed IF that bidder was already checked into the auction
If the bidder was NOT checked in already, it will read "not found".
Once the auction has been completed (or whenever the admin elects to import the sold data) you can go to the Clerking Grid. You will see all of the lots that were sold to the 3rd party bidders (lots 3 and 4 from the above example) will be marked as Floor. Since they are are currently set to Floor, they will not have an invoice generated for them yet (notice the lack of the invoice icon for those lots). You will also see that they are noted as On-Site bidders currently. Since they are marked as Floor bidders- the default for that is the On-Site BP structure.
There are 2 ways to update these lots to the applicable 3rd party buyer, 1 at a time or in bulk. To change them 1 at a time, you can click on the edit pencil to edit the for the clerked line item and make the Paddle # assignment match the Floor Paddle hint (which is the value that the clerk typed in in the closed rounds tab of the Webcast Clerk Screen). When you do this, since the Bid Origin is set to "Auto by Paddle #" and since the paddle # 15000 is associated with Proxi (it was bulk checked in by choosing Proxi in the step "Checking in bidders from other platforms", it will automatically assign the Proxi BP structure to this lot when its added to an invoice.
Once the paddle # has been updated, the paddle # and assigned bidder will update, the bid origin will update (which helps to determine the appropriate BP structure) and an invoice will be generated for the lot.
If you attempt to assign a paddle # that is NOT checked into the auction, it will not save and it will tell you that it was not assigned because the bidder paddle # was not found as a checked in bidder for this auction.
To bulk import results after the auction from a 3rd party online bidding platform go the clerking grid and click on the upload button and choose the platform you want to upload the results from.
Once in the uploader, you can either download a template and put the data in the template or upload your own that you download from the 3rd party platform. The data needed for the uploads includes the Lot #, the Bidder # and the price (and optional the bidders email).
Once you complete the import, you will get a result. If a paddle # you assigned to a bidder is NOT checked into the auction- you will be presented an error (see below) or if the selling price you import does not match the lot's clerked price in the clerking grid you will get an error.
Once you have completed your import- all of the lots will automatically update in the clerking grid that were assigned and did not have any errors (see below lots 5, 6 and 8 all updated as selling to their respective bidders and generated invoices), while lot 4 which had an error did not update because Paddle # 15001 was not found to be checked into the auction. He would have to be checked into the auction first before being able to be assigned his lot.
As soon as lots are assigned to a bidder, an invoice is generated. You can click on the invoice icon in the clerking grid (far left column in the above image) and it will take you directly to the bidder's invoice.
Once on the invoice you will see that this bidder was charged the appropriate rate for his BP ($1000 flat for proxi plus the onsite fee of $10) for a total of $1010.
FEATURE - Ability to Check-in a Bidder More than Once under Different Paddle #'s
Once a bidder is checked in, (using any of the bidding options, [onsite, NextLot Online, Platform 1, Platform 2] you can go to their bidder profile for that auction and click check-in/update bidder and manually assign them additional numbers for the different bidding methods (except for Nextlot online, which is preset).
So in the above example, if this bidder showed up and wanted to get an onsite paddle #, the admin onsite could check the box for onsite and give them a paddle #. Same with the Equipment Facts