We have used this software for years now. Myself, the last two. It is easy enough to teach the least computer literate person to use.

It is so comprehensive-- everything from setting up your event, selling tickets, vaulting credit card info to make for a faster checkout, logging all your items... it's all there! And after the event, there is a good system of reports that let you see how well certain items or categories did, which ones earned the most, who your big spenders were-- everything! We liked the software so much that we've also used it for selling tickets to other school events-- you can set up multiple events in the software and just use what parts of it you need for each event. It really is that easy!

Because so many not for profit organizations use this software, I wish that it could be paid for on a sliding scale; depending on what's it's used for, the people that it may be used for, etc.

We solved our school auction with this software, I loved it because we mostly use volunteers to staff the event and it was very easy to have people with no previous experience with the software use it that evening with ease.

School Auction is a great platform! We started using it for our annual auction and it was a game-changer for our school. It's super easy to use and set up.

I feel like the website that you can create for your event could be a little more robust. You can change the colors but the layout options are limited.

It's not a bad platform but the user interface needs some work.

we used it last year so it made sense to use it again

The virtual interface doesn't allow for customizations that were crucial to our fundraising success

We went with SchoolAuction.net because we needed to have an online event to accommodate covid concerns. Our desire was to have the people decide whether they would attend and bid on their phones or bid from home. Unfortunately, we had an outbreak in our organization and had to go totally online. Because of the design of the software, that was a seamless transition. We originally went with SchoolAuction.net as a one time use because of covid. The program convinced us to stick with it regardless of what next year brings.

This software was obviously designed by someone who has done auctions extensively. Every time I had a specific need, I found that they had already thought of that. Often times, to make a program work for your situation, you need to come up with some workarounds. That was never necessary with SchoolAuction.net. They had already anticipated the need. Support is within an hour at the most. They gave me a phone number to use the night of the auction, but we never needed it. It worked better than expected.

The ONLY thing that would have made the night easier has to do with proxy bidding. We had some people who don't use email or do anything on the internet. They have always been good supporters, so we wanted to provide them a way to participate. It was easy to print a catalog for them. Proxy bidding was easy to use. What I would like considered is to provide a way to sign them up so an assistant could bid from the catalog for them rather than the proxy method. It's so much easier to see your bids in the catalog. Also with proxy bidding the screen keeps resetting so you have to keep going back into their account. I know an issue is that the credit card companies want a valid email, but these people pay with check anyways so that wouldn't be a problem.

For our annual fundraising event I decided to try a new software as our planning committee was looking for new ways to manage the event. We specifically loved the self check-in and out capabilities, the ease of entering catalog items and photos, and the ease of emailing guests. Another really nice aspect was the fact that we did not hire a cashiering service because it was easy to train volunteers to input sales at the event.

The software creates a clean, esthetically pleasing event website. The catalog looks fresh with updated design options compared to other auction softwares. It is pretty user friendly, easy to figure out. I loved the ease of sending out messages to attendees and I also loved the self check-in and self-check out components. There is no reason to hire a cashiering service for the night of the event because training volunteers to enter sales data is super easy. We loved that we could do this ourselves.

1. There is no way to enter attendees as couples. In other auction software, there are households in which two names can be entered. Each person within the household has a very succinct "profile" and then they are linked. This makes it easy to print name badges with the same bidder numbers etc. In my opinion, SchoolAuction really needs to address this issue. 2. I didn't like the look of the template of the receipts/thank you letter and it was super hard to manipulate to make it look decent. I would like it to look more like a regular letter with the receipt part in the body of the letter. It would be nice to have the ability to have more than one template.

My overall experience has been very positive. Everything the software does to make life easier is fantastic. It was created by people who have worked in the trenches of the hellish auction so they totally understand. The rep is also awesome about making himself available to help with event logistics. We've had moments where we were having a hard time figuring out how to transition to a database-run event and [SENSITIVE CONTENT HIDDEN] would spend time on the phone giving us pointers.

We started using this software in 2017. Before signing on, we used an email marketing program for registrations and did everything else manually. It was a nightmare and the event was always stressful and left me feeling drained. After shopping around I settled on School Auction. I work with an animal rescue, not a school, so the platform I use is called Tofino. Same great product but a different name for non-schools. I love everything the software does for us. It keeps track of registrants and lets you add pre-sale items and different price levels, it assigns bidder numbers and can link bidders together to share one number. It keeps track of auction items, numbers them, lets you bundle them together in lots, creates display signs and bid sheets. It's all online so anyone on your team can access and enter data. A couple features that really made life so much easier are the self check-in and self check-out. Guests can check themselves in, vault a credit card, make all their purchases with their bidder number and then at the end of the night you send them an email with their invoice and they can pay securely on their phone! Not having the end-of-the-event nightmare lines out the door is one of the best things. They also have a series of reports that you can run post-event. Everything is broken down so you can see how much the auction made or how much each item sold for, how much merchandise was sold, how many glasses of wine were purchased, etc.

The software is set up so people can teach themselves how to use it. All the videos and help articles are great. But, I gotta say, it would be nice to be able to talk to customer service now and then. For the basic package all customer support is done via email. Now that we're in our third year, that's not such a big deal but year #1 was a bit frustrating at times trying to figure things out with back and forth emails. I will say, though, that they answer the emails quickly so you can usually get resolution in a timely manner. Also, on event night they give you a phone number to reach an on-call support person in case any problems arise. So it's a huge relief having that option on hand.

We have used SchoolAuction since 2016 with great success! Over the years, many new features have been added. The design team is wonderful to work with an is responsive to customer requests. This program is a wonderful value! We use it twice a year for a gala/auction and a golf tournament. The customer service is amazing! They and quick to answer emails, set up conference calls, and alert us when they see problems with our set ups. I frequently review other systems, but have continued to stay with this system as it is a great product at a great price.

I love that this product is very user friendly and that the customer support is amazing! This company is my favorite to work with. They find problems with event set ups often before I notice them. They are quick to respond to emails and set up conference calls as needed. I always feel supported throughout the process. Their west coast hours really work amazingly well with volunteers that are often doing work on the system in the evening hours here.

1. I wish when people placed bids, they could put in a different amount that the next bid or max bid. Sometimes, they just want to overbid for an item as a donation to the school. 2. I wish at the online checkout that it asked if you wanted to add a donation. I may have only spent $100, but I planned to spend $500 that night and no one has asked if I would like to add a donation to my final fill or to round up from $80 to $100. 3. Sometimes the buttons are different things are really hidden, but customer service is so wonderful that I generally just email and get my answer. 4. I would LOVE LOVE LOVE is crowdsourcing was added. Even if it was something to post to social media. Our race software does that. Once you register, it asks if you want to set up a fundraising page and then asks if you want to share that to social media. 5. Our events would go so much quicker for check out if scanning bar codes was an option. Typing takes time and volunteers are manning the computers so there are lots of opportunity for slowness and mistakes when typing. Most attendees would prefer to go to the registration to check out so that they could add a donation easily to their order, but that is not the case. We leave lots of money on the table because the checkout table is too slow and online does not ask for donations.

It was a very good experience. We liked the value, how the site was set up, and the relative ease of using most of the features. We also had good experiences with tech help. I made a phone call one or two times and got good, helpful information.

I was in charge of entering the items. I liked how easy it was to add the pictures and enter the information. I also have to say I was glad that they were watching out for our benefit. One example is that they contacted our administrator before the auction started because we had too many items listed as "priceless". We were encouraged to put values on for the sake of the winning bidders. We hadn't considered it in this way before.

When entering the items, the section where the values and starting bids, etc are entered was tricky. One of the lines had pre-selected one of the choices already, either increasing by a percentage or by a certain number. So when I was entering a lot of items, I sometimes glossed over this since there was already a black dot filled into that line. And this was easy to overlook when reviewing and editing all the information, too. We would like for this "pre-selected" default dot to be deleted and to allow the user to select one or the other. The other thing that was a challenge was when I'd enter info and pictures, if I wanted to see how itlooked on the "bidders" page, I'd have to log out and get back into School Auction and go to the Auction tab to see the item. Then I'd have to log back in to get back to entering info. This was time consuming and a pain. I didn't think to ask SA if there was an easier way to do this.

Some of the features are striking! The voting contest feature got my interest since this software mainly provides online donations or online stores; this software improved in that issue. Also, for almost everything site provides videos to teach how to use the software.

I think it is a bit expensive, yearly it is starting from $1000 up to $3000.

Easy to use, little to no complaints from our users. We can make the pages look the way we want, to fit our brand. Very customizable. Love the pre-event check-in and post even check out! Fundraising success!

We have found it a bit hard to make the online auction part look the way we want it to, but we still love it for live auction and fund-a-need!

We used this software last year for our school fundraising Gala. we have opted to renew and use again this year. It's fairly easy to jump in and get started. There are video tutorials to help you get started. If you organize yourself well, the reporting at the end is great. If you don't categorize as intended, it will affect you at the end. Make sure everyone entering information and creating sellable items, tickets, free, retail, tax info, etc. understands the reason for certain categories because this software can do a lot for you. There were some live features during gala that I would have liked to see -- like a full list of each current bid - it scrolled through and took forever for people to see the current bid on the item they wanted. This may be a feature, but I couldn't find it that night. Make sure to set the settings for live bids to allow your guests to put in their max bid. This was something we did not do, but wish we did. For our first year, I feel that we didn't fully understand the power of the software, and are learning it better prior to the event this year. I am looking at last year as a trail run for us and am hoping from what I've learned in closing out the event that this year will be much more smoother now that I see things we should have done when setting up the event. Overall, last year it was a 4 without much planning into how to use the software. I am hoping with better planning on our end, we can use the software to its full potential. The important things to consider when creating event are: Roles assigned to Users, Settings for your Guests software experience, and categorizing each sellable item, auction item, ticket, sponsorships, etc. If set up properly, the reporting within this software is great at the end and live during the event. If it's wrong, you can always fix during the reporting phase at the wrap up, but the information won't be accurate leading up to and at the event. There is a lot of great tools in this software, but take the time to use it at its full potential.

Reporting, organizing, invoicing, collection of money, database creation

live online bidding wasn't as smooth as we had hoped due to not understanding how to show current bids of a large number of items easily for guests.

Ease of use and online and help desk support. A robust software and very well priced especially for non-profit organizations.

Functionality - multiple types of fundraising events & activities; the online and mobile access for contributors, donors and guests; virtual event capability; provide forms for letters, statements, contributor's information Online Support especially for the setup & implementation roadmap

Integration with contact management applications

It tracks every single aspect of auction. Items donated, who donates, past years they've donated, value. You can assign item to categories (for ease of sorting). I was able to sort items to silent auciton, night of (Gala) online... and it made transitioning form Gala night, to online auction, very smooth. And you can pull from previous years' data (mailing lists etc) which saved a lot of time. Customer support was great too. I emailed a few times as I got familiar with software, and received and email back within AN HOUR or so. Even had someone there when I called one time. It just really is easy to use. Lastly- it's cool that you can run your auction on this, but you can use the software for other school events where you need to track ticket sales, etc. You get use of it for a year-- so why use it for just one event?!

I wish there was a way to ask people purchasing a 'sign up item' to list the child the sign up belongs to. A place to add in a bit more data-- would save us some owrk. but I will look into it for this year!!

It is great to be able to use on the night of our auction. No more scrambling to crunch the numbers during our event and making guests wait while we do so before they need to pay at the end of the night. We have all our items and guests already input and some even have credit cards on file. Our silent auction and live auction items can all be assigned to guests within minutes of the close. Guests even have the option of providing a credit card in advance and we can push out invoices directly to their email. Guests can then confirm purchases and check out on their phones so they never even wait in line to pay at the end of the night.

We frequently input individual items received into the software and then later bundle them into baskets as part of a larger group. The software re-assigns the basket an item number and then re-uses the item number that was assigned to each individual item in the basket. This makes it difficult to track exactly which items are where and makes it tedious to search by name for an item within a basket. It also means that you can't confidently refer to an item by its number because chances are that it has changed later.

I work for myself as a nonprofit event production manager in Northern California and in the two years since discovering SchoolAuction.net I have happily introduced it to three separate clients and been involved with three other organizations who also enjoy using this product. The team at SchoolAuction/TofinoAuctions have virtually thought of everything, and packed a ton of power into their user-friendly, intuitive program. Top that off with an affordable annual subscription fee, and ZERO transaction fees -- ! I hope to work with this organization again and again! Aside from the product itself there is the dynamo known as Roger Devine. I cannot say enough about Roger -- his friendly manner, consistent professionalism, commitment to improving his product and his customer's experience with it. On the rare occasion that he does not pick up the phone on the first or second ring, he either calls right back or emails me with a detailed answer to whatever question I left on his voicemail. Rest assured SchoolAuction.net is not your average internet seller, where you suddenly find you are no longer able to reach the company after they have your deposit in hand. Roger and his team are dedicated to ensuring your success - period. Roger was also instrumental in introducing several local organizations and from that introduction we have built an experienced pool of users who now swap volunteers at our annual fundraising events. It has made our check-in and check-out processes smoother and faster, and greatly reduced the need for training. All of our organizations learn more about the powerful options and shortcuts built into the program. This is critical for me in particular as I produce or support annual fundraisers for different clients whose management needs vary greatly in terms of which aspects of their events raise the most money, and where they need the most support. Brilliant!

Increased revenue each year of use

Prior to finding Auction.net, we developed all aspects of our auction manually, which was time consuming and inefficient. Although several people divided the work, it still required one person to edit the entire effort and attempt to bring it all together. Auction.net allows all of us to develop the auction effort simultaneously, as well as edit the work in progress. It is easy to use, and customer service is only a click away.

We like to make year over year financial comparisons, which is difficult to do with this software. We have successfully merged our donor data base over each year, but have not found a clean way to produce a comparative financial record year over year without exporting and massaging the data.

We use this software to run our gala auction, which is in its 16th year. Our event is in February and I have already set up our event page (it is August) and begun entering items. We are able to customize and brand our event pages and all guest interfaces with organization and event logo and verbiage. When we moved from paper and spreadsheet auction administration to this platform our guests raved about the event organization and it has definitely been reflected in our fundraising.

SchoolAuction, aka Tofino, is an extremely user-friendly auction platform that incorporates simple administration with a guest friendly interface. It stores guest and donor data from prior events to make ticket sales and item entry a breeze. Reporting is comprehensive and easy to customize, although the native reports are so thorough you should rarely need to make your own.

I don't have anything negative to say. It can be a bit pricey for smaller organizations, but we have found it to be very worth the price.

We are really enjoying SchoolAuction and look forward to hosting our first big online auction this year.

We really like SchoolAuction for the ease of setting up the events and inputting the donor data and item information. The customer support is also exceptional with a response within a few hours and also the guides and videos online to help you through any questions is very well considered.

Because of the particular auction we hold, we have a lot of items and the system does slow down with over 1000 items!

Our auction attendees enjoyed using the mobile bidding software. We were able to quickly check-in our guests and monitor the items up for bid. The pre-registration emails helped to prepare guests for what to expect at the event. During the night of the auction, we had NO problems with the mobile bidding and our guests loved the concept! Items went for more than expected and it was a great experience for our guests. The system was user friendly to enter the auction items, and made for a smooth experience! Overall a great product and very user friendly. I feel confident knowing we are planning to use School Auction.net for our next event!

Our auction attendees enjoyed using the mobile bidding software. We were able to quickly check-in our guests and monitor the items up for bid. The pre-registration emails helped to prepare guests for what to expect at the event. During the night of the auction, we had NO problems with the mobile bidding and our guests loved the concept! Items went for more than expected and it was a great experience for our guests. The system was user friendly to enter the auction items, and made for a smooth experience! Overall a great product and very user friendly. I feel confident knowing we are planning to use School Auction.net for our next event!

One issue was that it was difficult for guests to know which items did not have actual bids on without going through all of the items. There were a few items that did not receive a bid at the end of the night, and a few guests stated that if they would have known, they would have placed a bid on it.

The software team is knowledgeable, responsive and produces functional software. To have a tool like this during a quarantine period is remarkable and, in my opinion, likely saved some organizations from being forced out of business. The RTMP livestream is THE reason the software is as effective as it is....the developers were WAY AHEAD of the curve on this one!

The software is full-featured handling an event from beginning to end. Other software developers spend time on "pretty" yet limited software. THIS software is functional! The development team spent their time on making first, a software package that works and second making that software pretty.

There are, at time, a lot of necessary mouse clicks to get to where one is headed.

Great for auctions that have not used software in the past or for auctions that are bringing in loads of money and need many options. Overall a great product that is easy to use and I would recommend!

If you run a charity auction, software is A MUST. This software is easy to use and train others to use. It offers many options for selling items including live, silent and online. Charity auction has an easy to create customizable website. There are charts in this software that help with flow of event from getting started to pulling your final reports.

While not the most expensive auction software,the cost is considerably more than some competitors. You do have an opportunity to pass on credit card fees to people using credit cards at your event. Also, we had a hard time setting up our credit card vendor and linking our bank account for payment. (We did eventually get this figured out and our auction ran smoothly)

We've been using SchoolAuction.net for about 5 years now. In the old days we used to pass spreadsheets around between members of our team, and everyone insisted on having their own version of the spreadsheet because they each needed different bits of information. We had to keep merging files together and sending information to our webmaster so he could manually keep the list of items on the website up to date. We finally decided to invest in some real auction management software, and SchoolAuction.net has vastly improve our whole auction workflow. It gives our volunteers centralized access to all information about donors, donations, ticketed guests and so forth - so anyone on the team can always find out the latest status of anything, or go in and update it. The online auction feature has also been great - after the actual event it's neat to be able to have a "fire sale" and give people another chance to snag unclaimed items. The support is excellent. Our primary contact person is always very responsive, and when we submit a question or problem to the support team we always get a response right away and it answers the question or fixes the problem quickly. The online documentation and videos are great. Any time we have a question, we can find a clear description of the answer in the documentation. Our volunteers go into the event with much more confidence after watching some helpful videos about what they'll be doing at the event. I recommend SchoolAuction.net very highly!

It was good, but we are unfortunately going with another auction site, as it provides the things that schoolauction.net doesn't provide. Once SchoolAuction begins to provide these things, we will be much more likely to go back to them.

This was a great starter auction site for our group. It showed us that we are capable of achieving incredible results and brought back many customers from year to year.

The back end was very slow in many different locations (so not due to internet speed). The requirements were large: having to input the donor and all of that info and then the items. It's a lot. Also, there was no text capability when sending large emails. My auction attendees would have preferred texts and really hesitated to look into their emails. Texts are more "annoying" and people can't ignore them as easily. Also, and this is HUGE: there were pages upon pages of items. I asked but was told that it was not possible to get all items on one page. Other auction sites have all items on one page. I highly believe that if the items were all on one page, we would have had MANY more bidders.

The benefit of setting up and running a successful auction for 2+ years for our local merchants group.

Easy to setup with the ability to bring over past donors and payment gateway information from past events, excellent support, reliable performance, helpful reports and the ability to easily contact winning bidders with a follow-up email.

Improvement to the winning bidder's confirmation email is needed to clearly inform the person where and when their item must be picked up. (This may be an improvement that an administrator can do when the event is set up that's where SchoolAuction.net's responsive support comes in handy!)

This software is very user friendly and has great help sites and customer service. Set up is fairly straight forward and if you use it multiple years it allows for migrating data which greatly reduces set up time in consecutive years. We love the self-check in and check out options as it greatly reduces lines at the event. The online auction option is a nice tool and is very easy to navigate. Running credit cards and making transactions is very easy as is returning items and making changes to a transaction. It has been a great addition to our auction experience.

It has a mail merge option but is hard to customize and prints as one long document. Hard to eliminate duplicates or unwanted merges. The software allows for many reporting options, however, there are not enough customize options so you end up printing multiple reports.