Auctions, Offers and Deal Rooms

The Auction Ops section of the admin sidebar is where you run sales once lots are on sale: watching live bidding, reviewing sealed bids, responding to buyer offers, managing deal rooms for lots that did not sell, and keeping buyer conversations, public questions and flagged content under control. It also holds your live auction events and the hammer log.

Most screens here are for monitoring and responding. Sale formats, prices and schedules are set on the listing before it goes on sale; see Listings and collections.

Before you start

Each screen checks its own permission, so the items you see depend on your role. In the standard roles:

• Admin can see every screen. Events and Hammer Events also need live auctions on your plan, and Events needs a permission that Admin does not hold by default (see below).
• Moderator can use Offers, the Moderation Queue, Conversations and Questions.
• Support Agent can use Offers, Conversations and Questions.
• Listing Admin can see Offers, Conversations and Questions.

See Team members and roles to adjust access.

Overview

Auction Ops → Overview summarises what is happening now: live and upcoming events, draft events, live auctions, sealed bid auctions ending in the next 24 hours and pending offers. It highlights work that needs attention (paused events, events with no start time, sealed bids ending soon, pending offers and content awaiting moderation) and links straight to each screen.

Auctions

Auction Ops → Auctions shows the auctions currently live, updating as bids arrive. For each auction you can see the listing, sale format, status, current bid, reserve, number of bids and end time. Filter by sale format, and click View to see the full detail: the sale configuration, current state (current bid, total bids, current bidder, and the winner and winning bid once ended) and timing.

You do not create auctions here. Babylon opens an auction automatically when a listing is approved or scheduled for sale, using the listing's sale format and prices. Auctions cannot be edited or deleted from this screen: change prices and times on the listing, and to stop an auction, cancel the listing. Scheduled and ended lots are tracked on the Sell → Listings tabs.

Sealed bids tab

If you hold the permission to view sealed bids (the standard Admin role does), the Auctions screen has a second tab, Sealed bids, with a count of live sealed bid auctions. It is sorted by reveal time and adds Seller, Highest Bid and Highest Bidder columns.

Sealed bid amounts and bidders stay hidden from everyone, including admins, until the auction reveals. Before then the columns show a placeholder, and hovering explains why. The sealed tab also keeps showing auctions after their listing has left the live state, so you can finish reveal and post-sale work.

The sealed bid rules themselves (first-price or second-price, tie breaks, replacements and withdrawals) come from Auction settings and bid increments and the listing's own sealed bid configuration.

Offers

Auction Ops → Offers lists offers buyers have made on your lots outside the normal bidding, with a count of pending offers in the sidebar. Offers only arrive on published listings that are set to accept them (Allow Offers on a fixed price listing, with optional Minimum Offer % and Auto-Accept Offer %). Only buyers create offers; staff cannot add one here.

For a pending offer:

• Accept confirms the offer and immediately creates an order for the buyer at the offered price and quantity. You will be asked to confirm.
• Reject declines it.

You can also leave an offer for the seller to answer from their own account. Offers that are not answered expire after the Offer TTL (minutes) set for fixed price sales under Settings → Business Settings (60 minutes by default); see Fees, commission and sales models. Filter by Status (Pending, Accepted, Rejected, Cancelled), listing, or Expired.

Accepting and rejecting are available to staff who can edit the listing concerned.

Deal rooms

A deal room is a private negotiation that Babylon opens after a lot fails to sell, so the underbidders get a second chance to buy it. Go to Auction Ops → Deal Rooms; the sidebar shows how many are open. You need the permission to view deal rooms, and the permission to manage deal rooms to take action.

When deal rooms open

You do not open deal rooms by hand. When a timed auction ends unsold, Babylon schedules a deal room to open automatically after a delay (24 hours by default). The room then works down a ladder of the auction's underbidders (three by default), giving each a set time to respond, and stays open for a default of seven days.

The delay, duration, ladder depth and whether deal rooms are used at all are not editable in the admin. Contact Hammerd support to change them.

Working a deal room

The list shows each room's reference, listing, status, current bidder position, ladder depth and expiry. Statuses are Provisional, Open, Pending Acceptance, Finalised (Sold), Finalised (Failed) and Cancelled. Open a room to see the listing, the offer history and the settlement breakdown (accepted price, buyer total, seller net and platform revenue).

From the row's More actions menu:

• Apply Commission Concession reduces the seller's commission by an amount you enter, with a reason, to help a deal close. It is available while a room is open or pending acceptance.
• Set Commission Concession Limit (Lot) sets the maximum concession for this lot, as a percentage of the accepted price, overriding your marketplace cap.
• Add Exclusion removes a bidder from the room's ladder, with a reason.
• Force Fail closes an open or pending room as failed. A reason is required.
• Force Finalise completes a room that is pending acceptance. This needs its own permission.
• View Listing and View Auction open the related records.

Edit lets you add Admin Notes and metadata to a room. Export Analytics (CSV/JSON) exports selected rooms. For trends across rooms, see Insights → Deal Room Analytics.

Commission concession cap

The marketplace-wide cap on concessions is set under Settings → Business Settings, on the Commerce tab, in the Commission Exceptions section:

• Max Commission Concession (% of accepted price): the most staff can waive. The default is 0, which disables concessions.
• Max Commission Concession by Category (category_id → %): optional per-category caps, keyed by category ID.

Set a cap above zero before you expect to use Apply Commission Concession.

Conversations

Auction Ops → Conversations shows private message threads between buyers and sellers about a lot, so staff can step in when a sale needs help. Threads start when a buyer messages a seller; you cannot start one from here. Conversations with unread messages are shown first, and the sidebar counts them.

Which threads you see depends on how the sale is run. You see threads where your marketplace is the seller, and threads linked to orders sold under an assisted or seller-of-record sales model. Threads on lots sold under a seller-led model stay between the buyer and seller. See Fees, commission and sales models.

• Send reply (or Reply on the thread) posts a message to the buyer-facing thread and marks the conversation as read.
• Open in Moderation Queue appears when a message in the thread is being held for moderation.
• View Order and View Listing open the related records.

Message content is shown with personal details masked.

Questions

Auction Ops → Questions lists public questions buyers have asked on your lots. Your answer is published on the listing for every later visitor, so one good answer saves the same question being asked again.

• Answer question publishes a Public answer. On a question that already has one, the button reads Update answer. Answering also releases any moderation hold on the question.
• Open in Moderation Queue appears when the question is being held for moderation.

Use the Awaiting answer, Held by moderation and Follow-up filters to work through the list.

Moderation queue

Auction Ops → Moderation Queue collects flagged conversation messages, questions and ratings that need a decision. You need the permission to moderate content. The sidebar shows how many are pending.

Filter by status, item type and flag reason (Spam, Harassment, Inappropriate, Fraud, Other). For a pending item:

• Approve Content publishes it, with optional Notes.
• Reject Content keeps it hidden. A Rejection Reason is required.
• View Context shows the surrounding conversation.
• Open in its own queue takes you to the item in Conversations or Questions.

For how messaging and notifications are configured, see Notifications and messaging.

Events

Auction Ops → Events is for planning and running live and hybrid auction events. It depends on your plan: it only appears if your account includes live auctions, and only for team members with the permission to manage live auctions or the Auctioneer role. The standard Admin role does not include the live auction permission by default, so ask an Admin to grant it if you need it.

To create an event, click New Event and fill in:

• Event Name, Event Type (Physical, Hybrid or Virtual) and Venue.
• Timezone and Start Time. The start time is entered and shown in the event's time zone.
• Bidding Mode: Simulcast (Floor + Online), Floor Only or Online Only.
• Optional Configuration for streaming, event roles and event-specific settings.
• Status: Draft, Scheduled, Live, Paused or Ended.

Open an event to manage its Lots tab: Add Lots adds listings to the running order, and you can drag rows to change the sequence. From the events list, Start Event and Pause Event control a running event. You can edit an event while it is draft or scheduled, and delete draft, ended or scheduled physical events.

The auctioneer's live console, where lots are clerked and hammered, is opened from the overview's Open auctioneer console button. Show sessions for live commerce share this screen on a Shows tab; see Live commerce.

Hammer events

Auction Ops → Hammer Events is a read-only log of every lot hammered down in a live auction: the lot sequence, winner, hammer price, the time it was hammered and a video timecode. Use it to check or reconcile the outcome of a live sale afterwards. Filter by Event. It needs live auctions on your plan and the permission to view hammer events.

Common questions

Where is the button to start an auction?

There is not one. Approving or scheduling a listing opens its auction automatically. If a lot is not on the Auctions screen, check its status on Sell → Listings.

I can see the Sealed bids tab but no amounts

Expected. Sealed amounts and bidders are withheld until the auction reveals, for every user.

An unsold lot has no deal room yet

Deal rooms open after a delay, 24 hours by default. If one never appears, deal rooms may be switched off for your account; contact Hammerd support.

Apply Commission Concession fails

Check the concession cap under Settings → Business Settings → Commerce → Commission Exceptions. A cap of 0 disables concessions.