4 weeks before the sale, we provide you with Bidder paddles that go into a window envelope. The paddle will have the buyers mailing address and bidder number on it. You add your letter and gate passes and/or meal tickets into the envelope, seal it up and send it on its way. No labels required. Your buyer receives everything they need to walk in and start bidding. No need to stop at the table and register. This reduces the bottleneck at the registration table that sometimes leads to a delayed start of your sale.
Weigh in day(s): We are there to capture all of the weights, genders, breeds and id numbers of the animals as they come onto the fairgrounds. Once weigh in is complete, we provide your superintendents with a list of their animals in order for them to split classes. They review the list, and indicate where the class splits should be, then we provide them with clerking sheets for recording the results on show day.
Once judging is complete, these sheets come back to us so that we can enter the placings and begin the process of developing your sale bill.
Preliminary sale bills are printed and distributed to your key personnel for approval. Once approved, we print a master copy for printing and send a PDF of the sale bill to the person in charge of your website. Once they are available on the website, we encourage the front office to make periodic public address announcements letting everyone know that they can get them on line (this helps reduce the number of copies you need to make).
Sale day: We set up a sufficient number of terminals (normally 3 or 4) for registering buyers and check out after the buyer is done. Each terminal has its own dedicated printer. Clerks will be able to print bidder paddles on the fly, along with payment receipts and invoices. In addition to these terminals, we set up at least one, self service kiosk that both buyers and exhibitors can use. It also has a dedicated printer. Exhibitors can get a print out of who purchased their animal, and buyers can see what they have purchased along with being able to select destinations for each purchase. We also provide a sufficient number of large screen displays (usually 2 or 3 depending on the size of the arena). These screens are used to display messages when there is nothing selling, and the current lot and buyers of the previous lot when the sale is underway.
Group buys and add a bids: Clerks will have the ability to set up groups of buyers and enter support dollars (add a bids). “Group” buyers get assigned to individual lots so that it speeds the process during the sale. If a group of buyers want to go together to buy a specific lot, they get assigned a “group” buyer number. The clerk will then print out a group buyer worksheet where the buyers will be listed along with a place for them to indicate how much each buyer is contributing. If they win the bid, they hold up one bidder paddle and all of the buyers in the group are pulled in for that lot. Also, speaking of groups and add a bids, there is NO LIMIT to the number of buyers or support buyers for a given lot.
And, while on the subject of lots, many fairs use the auction for special fund raising purposes. Our system will handle all of these types of items just as easily as it does the animal lots, and it is all in the same system. No need for separate accounting for these types of lots.
Check out process: As buyers come up to check out, the clerks are presented with a screen where they enter the destinations for each lot that the buyer was on. Once this is done, the next screen allows them to either accept a payment or generate an invoice that they can give to the buyer (we suggest making sure that the person who asks for an invoice, will actually get it to the person who will write the check. Invoices will automatically be generated for all lots with an unpaid balance at the end of the fair.) Also, if you have a set price from your resale house for each species, we can “net out” your buyers. So if the buyer purchased an animal in the sale for $500 and they want to resell it, they will only pay the difference. $500 purchase, and the animal has a resale value of $100, they will only pay $400. Instead of the resale house cutting checks to every buyer that resold their purchase, they will only write one check to the organization (your resale house will appreciate this !).
Accounting on sale day: Periodically throughout the day, we will “batch out” the payments. It will list the payments by payment type with subtotals for each category (All cash payments will be grouped together, all check payments grouped together). Once the report is printed, the contents of the cash box should pulled out and reconciled against the report. Once the cash and checks balance to the report, it should all be put in an envelope and sent to the front office (or given to whoever is in charge of accounting for all of the funds).
Once the sale is over and all of the buyers have made it through the check out process, we will print a “homeless” report. This will list all of the lots that do not have a destination declared. It will list the lot information along with the buyer and their phone number. This allows for efficient follow up calls to the buyers to find out where they want their animals to go.
Once the destinations have been determined, we will give you a report for each destination showing the total number of animals for each species and the total weight. This allows for your crew to start making trucking arrangements.
Load out: When load out day arrives, (late afternoon or early evening) we provide the barns with “marking” sheets that they can use to mark animals with their destinations. We then create trucking reports for each species and destination. Printed by ID number, it has the ID number and weight for each animal that will be on the truck. This is basically a bill of lading that the trucker should have in the event he is pulled over or there is an accident. For processors that slaughter for other processors, they are provided a slaughter list for each processor they are killing for.
Processor reports: Each processor will receive a report that is sorted by who bought the animal. So if a buyer bought multiple species, they will all be together on the report. The processor won’t need to sift through multiple sheets trying to put it all in place before calling the buyer.
So at this point, the bulk of the work is done. The animal barns are all empty, the clean up crews have cleaned up all the manure and bedding left behind, but we are still there with you. At this point we are printing invoices for any lots with a balance, and making sure we have all of the exhibitor deductions in order. This includes check off dollars, and any exhibitor fees and percentage deduction for the organization. Once this has all been checked and is correct, WE PRINT THE EXHIBITOR CHECKS !
Our goal is to leave your facility the morning after load out and leave you with everything you need to close out the sale. Full accounting reports, invoices for the resale houses that took the resale animals, invoices for buyers that have not paid their bill in full and a list of all payments that were taken in during the previous days. Also a “Thank You” list for each animal sold. It shows the dollars received and the buyers names and addresses (including all add a bids).
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