Auctions — timed bidding on any product, and the Hammer & Yard designs

Switch a product to Auction: starting bid, steps, reserve, Buy-Now, soft close, approved bidders, and a winner who pays by link the moment the clock runs out.

7 min readUpdated 21 Oct 2026

In this guide

Every store on LentloSites can run timed auctions: switch a product to Auction, set the starting bid and the close, and customers bid live with a ticking clock. Phone-verified bidders, private maximum bids the system bids for, a soft close that beats last-second sniping, and the winner gets an order with a payment link the moment the clock runs out. Two designs are built around it — Hammer (an auction house for collectibles, antiques and estates) and Yard (a consignment yard for scrap, surplus and machinery) — but the same switch works on any store design.

Put a product up for auction

Switch on the auction

Products → open the product → Auction / Bidding → Enable Auction. A product is either an auction lot or a fixed-price item, never both; auction lots cannot carry variants.

Set the money

Starting Bid (₹) is where bidding opens. Min Increment (₹) is the smallest step between bids. Reserve Price (₹) is optional and private — buyers only ever see reserve met/ not met; leave it blank for no reserve. Buy Now Price (₹) lets someone take the lot outright until the first bid lands.

Set the clock

Auction Ends At is the close. Starts At is optional — leave it empty to open the lot as soon as you publish, or set a date to show it as Upcoming so buyers can watch it first. Sealed bids hides every bid until the close (buyers see only that bids exist).

Who can bid, and who can see the lot

Who can bid follows your site setting (below) until you change it on the product. The first choice, Everyone (default), means exactly that: follow the site setting — so if your site says Approved members only, this lot does too (and on a Members Only website bidders are always approved members). Pick Approved members only or Specific member groups (a strict invite list from your member pricing groups) when one lot needs to be stricter. Listing decides who can find it: Public, or Unlisted — off your homepage, shop, search and sitemap, so only the people you send the link to ever see it.

Put the facts buyers ask about — weight, grade, condition, papers — in Specifications. The Hammer and Yard designs print them on the lot card and lot page as facts.

Site-wide auction settings

Auctions appears in your sidebar as soon as one product is switched to Auction — before that there is nothing to run. Open Auctions → Auction settings (these apply to every auction on the website):

Who can bid on your auctions — Everyone (any customer who signs in with an OTP) or Approved members only (new bidders wait in your approval queue on the Members Access page; the website itself stays public).
Last-minute bid protection (minutes) — a bid inside this window extends the close by the same window, so nobody wins by sniping at the last second.
Winner payment time (hours) — how long the winner has to pay the link before you decide what to do (the lot is never cancelled by itself — you choose to relist or offer it to the next bidder).
Bidder names on your website — Partly hidden (“Rahul S•”), Fully anonymous (“Bidder 1, Bidder 2”) or Full names. However you set it, you always see full names and phone numbers on the Auctions page.
Bid steps by price (optional) — a ladder instead of one flat increment: up to ₹1,000 bids rise by ₹50, up to ₹10,000 by ₹500. Leave it empty and each lot uses its own step.

What buyers see

The lot page shows the current bid, the count of bids, the countdown and quick-bid buttons at the next steps.
Bidders sign in with their phone (one-time code) the first time. Blocked customers can never bid.
Set a maximum bid — the buyer names a private ceiling and the system bids for them, one step at a time, only as much as needed to stay on top.
Watch — a reminder when a watched lot opens or is ending soon (on the site and by app push; on WhatsApp from your own number when those messages are switched on).
Bid history lists the ten highest bids, each with the (masked) bidder name and how long ago it was placed.
When a lot ends, the panel shows the final bid and one line on how it ended — the winner is being contacted, it ended below your reserve, or it ended with no bids.
My Bids on the customer's account page shows every lot they are bidding on — leading, outbid, won or ended.

When the clock runs out

The highest bid above your reserve becomes a real order for the winner with a secure payment link, sent on the site and on WhatsApp. Pay-by-link works with every gateway you have connected. If the reserve was not met the lot does not sell — from the Auctions page you can relist it (you pick for how many days) or contact the highest bidder, whose verified phone number is on the row. Sold lots count as normal orders everywhere else — invoices, shipping, analytics.

The Auctions page

Auctions is a live board that refreshes itself every few seconds, in five groups: Live now, Starting soon, Waiting for payment, Unsold and Completed. Each row carries the current bid, the bidder count and the time left.

On a live or scheduled lot: 60s finale (sudden death — 60 seconds on the clock, and late bids still extend fairly), +1 hour, End now, and Bids (n) — every bidder's name and phone number, with a Remove that instantly re-crowns the next-highest bid and is noted in your activity log.
On a sold lot: Copy payment link to send the winner again, and View order.
On an unsold lot: Relist — you type how many days it should run.
If you cancel a winner's unpaid order, Offer to next bidder appears — the runner-up gets an order and a payment link at their own bid.
On consignment lots, the seller and your commission, what you owe after the sale, and Mark settled with seller — see the Yard guide.
The Sell requests list (Yard design) — requests from your Sell page, newest first, with a link to your Form Inbox.
+ New auction (via Products) at the top takes you to Products — lots are always created on a product.

The messages bidders get

Customers who watch or bid on a lot get these automatically, as an app notification (free) and on your own WhatsApp API number when you have one connected and the matching message is switched on:

Auction started — to everyone watching the lot.
Outbid — someone bid higher, with the new price and a link back to the lot.
Ending in an hour — to everyone watching.
Auction won — pay now — the winning amount and the payment link.
Lot closed — this one comes to you: sold, unsold, or a winner who has not paid.

Hammer or Yard — which auction design?

Both run the same bidding engine, and any store design can run auctions on a product. These two put auctions first, and they are built around two genuinely different businesses.

Hammer — you own the lots

An auction house look: collectibles, antiques, watches, art, coins, liquidation stock.
You buy or hold the goods, list them, and keep what they sell for.
Lot pages lead with the piece and its story.

Yard — you sell on someone's behalf

A consignment yard: scrap metal, surplus, salvage, used machinery, e-waste.
Sellers send you material through a Sell page; you weigh it, list it, and owe them the proceeds minus your commission.
Adds a Sell request form, a seller-and-commission record per lot, and bidder approval before anyone can bid.

If someone else owns the goods you are selling, you want Yard. If you own them, you want Hammer.

Everything in this guide works identically on both — and on any other store design where you simply switch a product to Auction. The consignment side is covered in Yard — consignment auctions.

Common questions

Can a customer bid without signing in? No. Every bid carries a phone number verified by OTP.

Is the maximum bid visible to anyone? Never — not to other bidders, not on the site. Only the bids it actually places are shown.

Can I run fixed-price products alongside auctions? Yes, in the same store. Bidding never uses the cart — the lot is won and the winner pays by link. The one exception is Buy Now: until the first bid lands, a buyer can take the lot straight to checkout at your Buy Now price.

Do auction lots appear in Google Shopping or Meta catalog feeds? No — auction items are excluded by those platforms' policies; your fixed-price products list normally.