What is Partial Bidding and how can I set this up in my Advanced Lot?

What is Partial Bidding and how can I set this up in my Advanced Lot?

What's the issue you're facing?

I would like to understand what partial bidding is and how I can use it in my Advanced Lot. 

Solution

Partial Bidding allows participants to enter prices for some but not all the line items within the lots. Without partial bidding turned on it is expected that participants will be able to provide pricing details for each line item. They will not be able to submit the lot pricing without entering all line item prices. With partial bidding turned on participants will be able to pick and chose which line items they provide pricing for. 
Partial bidding can be useful when you are running an event with multiple line items that potentially cannot be fulfilled by all participants. For example you could be asking for pricing over 3, 6 and 12 months and some participants may not have the ability to provide pricing over a 3 month period. It can also be useful to use partial bidding if you are in an exploratory phase and are looking for variation in line item options. 
  1. If you are wanting to make direct comparison of participants and rank them based on all line items do not use partial bidding as line item pricing will be optional. If partial bidding is selected and you have set up the lot to be ranked, any participant who has not entered a price for all line items will not be ranked as they will not have entered pricing for the complete lot.
  1. If partial bidding is turned on, participants won't need to provide details for each line item. For the lines that they do decide to bid on they will need to enter information into all of the columns.  
To enable Partial bidding there are 2 options. Either enable it when creating a new advanced lot, or edit an existing advanced lot to enable.
  1. Enabling partial bidding when creating a new lot - Click ‘New Lot’ under the Advanced lot section you can tick the box ‘Allow Partial Bidding’. See image 1. 
  2. Enabling partial bidding by editing an existing lot - If you are mid-way through creating and Advanced Lot and need to change your Lot to allow partial bidding you can enable partial bidding by clicking on the edit pencil button on the lot name and ticking the ‘Allow partial bidding’ box. See image 2.

Image 1: Showing when a new lot is created with ‘Allow partial bidding’ box ticked.


Image 2: Showing where to edit an Advanced Lot name to retrospectively change and Advanced Lot to allow partial bidding.


Top tip: If partial bidding is selected and you have set up the lot to be ranked, any participant who has not entered a price for all line items will not be ranked as they will not of entered pricing for the complete lot.