Boost recurring donations this giving season with the upsell prompt!With the Auctions app, you can collect payment for a won item from the Fulfillments tab, charging the card the bidder saved to their auction profile. Depending on how the auction is set up this may already have happened automatically — this article covers both.
Automatic or manual
Two settings on the auction's Details tab decide how much of this you do by hand:
- Timing — whether payment is collected after each item is won or after the entire auction closes.
- Enable Auto-Charge — when Yes, winning bidders are charged automatically without anyone pressing a button. When No, you collect payment yourself from the Fulfillments tab.
With Auto-Charge on, use the Fulfillments tab to watch what happened and deal with anything that did not go through. With it off, the tab is where you do the collecting.
See Creating and managing an Auction for both settings.
Charging from the Fulfillments tab
- Open the auction and click the Fulfillments tab.
- Select the fulfillment you want to charge.
- Click Charge Bidder in the toolbar.
On success the row moves to Paid and a payment transaction is recorded against it. If you have not selected anything, the tab tells you to make a selection first.
What the bidder needs first
A charge uses the payment method saved on the bidder's auction profile. That means a bidder can only be charged if:
- They have a saved payment method for this auction
- They are linked to a Soapbox user account — a payment method cannot be added otherwise
- They have a phone number on their record
- Your site takes payments through Stripe
Important: Bidders created at a registration desk, and attendees enrolled automatically from an event, arrive without a user account, so they cannot be charged until one is linked or created. If you intend to charge cards at settlement, sort this out before the event rather than discovering it on the night. See Linking and unlinking user accounts.
When a charge fails
A failed charge leaves the fulfillment in Awaiting payment and shows the reason returned by the payment processor — a declined card, an expired card, or a bidder with no payment method saved.
Nothing is left half-done: the status only moves to Paid once payment has actually been taken, so the list stays a truthful picture of who has paid.
What to do next depends on the reason:
- Declined or expired card — ask the winner to add a different card to their My Preferences page, then charge again.
- No payment method — add one on their behalf from the bidder's detail panel on the Bidders tab, or link them to a user account first.
- Not collectable at all — see Marking a fulfillment complete or uncollectable.
Seeing what was charged
Each fulfillment keeps its payment transactions. Open the fulfillment's transactions view to see the amount and status of each attempt — useful when a winner queries their statement, or when you need to confirm whether a retry went through.
Related articles: