Handbid Release 2.36: New Updates including Custom Paddles and Streamlined Donations

We are excited to tell you about some important new updates we have made to the Handbid platform to support your auctions and online fundraisers. These features include:

Handbid's New Features Update
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Custom Paddle Assignment

While many people are not running in-person events at this time, this has been a feature requested for a long time by auction managers. So why so long to release it?

Well, we believe in the principle that technology should eliminate human error and the ability for a manager to assign any paddle number to any bidder re-introduces the risk of human error. So we held off for a while. However, we now feel we have a solution that can work for those that want to use it while maintaining the automated paddle number assignment for auctions that do not (e.g online auctions).
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Here is how it works

1. Managers can turn on an option to allow for custom paddle numbers. When they do this, they will set an auto-assign level (such as 1,000). So in this example, Handbid will assign paddle numbers on its own starting at 1,000 and managers can assign paddles starting at 100 up to 1,000 manually.
2. When a guest checks in or a bidder is registered, the check in agent will be given the opportunity to assign a custom paddle number and enter in that value.
3. Assigning a custom paddle number works on all guest list check in interfaces: Auction manager, iPad app, and iPhone app.

For more information on how this works along with video instructions, please visit our knowledge base support article on it.

Streamlined Donations

We want to make the process of donating online to your fundraisers as simple as possible. To do that, we now allow guests to donate without creating a Handbid account. Guests can use our merchant processors automated payment methods (Apple Pay, Google Wallet or Stripe Checkout) to easily add payment information and complete their donation.

Guests who do not create a Handbid account will not have an email visible in the manager, but you will still be able to email them their receipt (the email is privately stored).

In addition, the donation process for Handbid users and those that create a Handbid account has also been streamlined and simplified using a basic 1-2-3-4 process of selecting their donation level, putting in their information, adding in payment information and confirming their donation.

In both cases, Handbid allows managers to prompt donors to cover credit card fees (donors can opt-out).

Other improvements in this release:

• Managers now have the option of loading guests into the guest list or registering new guests or bidders with the same phone number. In the past, Handbid would recognize a bidder or guest in the event with the same number and ask the manager if they wanted to link them. In 99% of cases, 2 bidders would not have the same phone number, but we realize that some managers what to load a collection of guests with the same office number or phone number. In these cases, you can now opt for "DO NOT LINK.”
• Users who asked for a magic login link from the donations page were sent to the tickets page. This was fixed!
• Handbid TV did not like it when a puzzle was shown that did not have one of its images. This has been fixed!
• We cleaned up the dashboard reporting in the manager. Some of the discrepancies were related to custom donations as well as currency exchange issues. Those have been resolved.

Thank you again for your continued partnership with Handbid. Look for more exciting updates to come here in the near future to the platform! We have some really cool things in the works!