PrestaShop Marketplace Seller Auction {User Guide}

In the eCommerce domain, equal participation of customers in the buying process is very much important.

Although, in daily shopping of normal products, it’s very much present. But, in the case of competitive shopping of products, it’d be very much necessary to keep things in check.

For the same purpose, we thought of providing the functionality of product auction to sellers of our marketplace too. And, the result of that thought is PrestaShop Marketplace Seller Auction.

The module with its numerous useful functionalities provides the seller of a marketplace to offer their products on auction.

Auction functionality let sellers offer products for the public bidding process. There are even multiple types of bidding process too that is available in the module.

You will get to know more about those processes in detail in the upcoming sections of the following document.

• Add auction can on the active products, i.e. products approved by the admin.
• Choose to disable bidding on the product anytime.
• Display bidder name on the front end.
• Choose to enable incremental bidding.
• Enable or disable automatic bidding as per the requirement.
• Customers can set automatic bidding for the product.
• If an auction is available on any product, even then a buyer can buy from the “Buy now” button if “buy it now” is active from the backend.
• Enable or disable “Increase Auction Time” and “Increase Buy Now Price”.
• Customize the winning message to display to the bidder.
• Admin can enable/disable the selling of product after the auction ends.
• Choose to continue/discontinue the auction even after the customer purchase the auction product via “Buy now” button.
• Choose to create a new auction for sellers.
• Admin can edit/delete the auctions.
• Seller/admin can allow buyers to bid on more than one auction on the store.
• The seller can set the status of the auction as running, completed or stopped.
• Different types of bidding supported.
• The seller can search the product for auction in any language.
• Admin can also search the seller product for auction in any language.
• The seller can view the list of customer who bought the product through buy it now button on the auction update page.
• The seller can also view the bid detail on the auction update page.
• Admin can allow/restrict sellers to bid on their own products.

Note: The module is multi-shop compatible with PrestaShop Advanced Multi-Vendor Marketplace version 7.x.x.

In order to install the module, you need to install the PrestaShop Advanced Multi-Vendor Marketplace module first.

After installing the marketplace module, you can now proceed to install the Marketplace Seller Auction module.

1. Firstly, go to the module manager in back office and click on ‘upload a module’.
2. After that, drag and drop the module file or select the file from the system.
3. In this way, the module installation will be successful.

After the successful installation of the module, you can now proceed to configure the module.

Customer Configuration

Allow Winner(s) to Bid– If enabled by admin, a customer who has won the bidding but did not purchase a product can participate in other bid running on the site.

Allow All Customers For Bid

If “Allow Winner(s) to Bid” is inactive, then the admin can reset it by allowing the customers who have either purchased a winning product or their order got cancelled.

Note: This setting can not be changed when the auction is running on a product.

Increase Buy Now Price And Time

Enable Increase Auction Time– If enabled, the admin has to set a timer by entering “Close by Time” and “Increase Time By“.

“Close by Time” is the time remaining for the auction and after that auction will be closed.

For example, if admin has set “Close By Time” as 35 minutes and “Increase Time By” as 10.

If there are 35 minutes or less remaining for the auction and a customer has placed a bid then the auction time will increase by 10 minutes.

Enable Increase Buy Now Price- If set as yes, the admin has to set “Enter close by Price” and “Increase buy now price by“.

“Close by price” is the difference between the “highest bid” and the “Buy Now” price.

For example,

• “Buy Now” price of a product is $ 750.
• “Close by Price” is $50 and
• “Increase buy now price by” as $ 100.

Now if a customer places a bid of $ 700, then “Buy Now” price of a product will increase from $ 750 to $850.

Cron Setting

Note:

The admin has to set a cron task by entering the link mentioned below. So that if there are any changes in the auction, then those changes will also update on a server when a cron runs.

url – 0 * * * * curl “https://www.sitename.com/modules/mpauction/updateauctiondetails.php”

Types of bidding supported:

1) Standard Bidding

In this bidding process, if the starting price for the bid is say 50$. Then any customer can come bid higher than 50$ and the increment can be of any amount.

2) Incremental Bidding

In this type of bidding, admin will set the price range and the minimum increment value for the price range.

Let’s take an example-
Starting price for the bidding is 45$
Admin has set these ranges for incremental bidding:

Now, the bidder will bid on the product with minimum increment of 5(increment value), till the time the value reaches the second range.

So, the buyer will start the bid from 50$ (as 50$ is in range between 1$ to 100$) and the minimum increment is for 5$.

Next bidder will bid minimum 55$ and so on till the bidding time ends or the admin completes the auction.

When the bidding amount reaches to 100$, then the next buyer will bid on 110$, then next bidding price will be minimum 120$ and so on.

3) Automatic Bidding

In this type of bidding, the bidder will bid the maximum amount that the bidder is willing to pay for the product. Then rest of the bidders will bid as per the minimum increment value.

And if the bidding value reaches the automatic bid amount, then the automatic bidder will receive an email about the bid crossing the value.

Example:
If there are 4 customers A, B, C and D. All of them will bid for product X. The starting bid for product X is 50$.

A starts with 60$, then C places an automatic bid of 150$ for and then B places the bid with 65$.

Then an automatic bid of 70$ will place for C. And now if A again places the bid for 75$, then again a bid will place for C of 80$.

Till now C is winning and can also win this auction if all the bids placed are below 150$ and the auction time ends.

Suppose D comes and places an automatic bid for 200$, so now C has lost and D is winning till the time A or B places the bid higher than 200$.

After the successful installation of the module, a new tab ‘Manage Auction’ gets available in seller’s account. From this tab, the sellers can:

• Add and manage auction products.
• View auction product orders
• Allow customers for bidding/one time bidding

Auction Products

Click on ‘Add new button’ to add auction on product.

Note- Seller can set the auction status as running, completed or stopped. Seller can stop and then restart auction according to his convenience using “stopped” status.

Use of “Buy it Now” button – When “Buy Now” is enabled, then the seller will fix the price for the product and the product is also available for buying without participating in the auction.

And as soon as the bidding price exceeds the price of the product, then the product will not be available for buying. Then, the product can only be purchased through bidding.

Note:- Once the bidder bid the auction product using automatic bid option, the bidder cannot bid normally again on that product.

If want to bid normally, bidder can delete the automatic bid set before.

On editing any running auction, seller can view the running bid details as well as list of buyers, if buyers have bought the product through “Buy now” button.

Auction Product Orders

Under this tab, the seller can view a list of products ordered via auction.

This way, seller can get the list of products that are purchased from auction or directly from “add to cart” button.

Auction Customer Configuration

From here seller can see the list of customers participated in the bidding. Seller can even restrict the customer from bidding further.

In case “customer configuration” is enabled, while configuring the auction module. So both “allow for bidding” and “one time bidding” would be enabled by default, for the first time.

In case the customer wins the auction then allow one time bidding would be disabled until the customer buys the winning product.

In case the seller does not want a particular customer to bid , then he can disable “Allow for bidding”

NOTE – By default, If “Allow for bidding” is disabled then “One time bidding” will also be disabled.

Customer Configuration Disabled

If you disable “Customer configuration” while configuring the auction module,  both “Allow for bidding” and “One time bidding” would be enabled by default for the first time.

In case the customer wins the auction then “allow for bidding” and “allow one time bidding” would be disabled.

When the customer buys the winning product then both “allow for bidding” and allow “one time bidding” would be enabled.

Now the seller wants to allow the customer to bid but only for one time. Then can disable “allow for bidding” and enable “one time bidding”.

Sellers can also bid on other seller products that are for auction. You can view the details in the “Auction Bidding details” menu under my account.

At the admin end, new tabs added – Manage auction and Auction product order

Manage auction: Admin can view the list of products on which bidding placed. Admin can also add auctions from here. Admin can edit/delete the auction also.

Marketplace management->Auction product order – Here admin can view the list of orders placed for products on auction

Admin can manage the auction customer configuration – From here admin can see whether customer participated in the bidding or not. Admin can even restrict the customer from bidding further.

Under Marketplace management > Manage Seller Profile, view the customer profile to manage the auction customer configuration.

Customer Configuration Enabled

Enabling “Customer configuration” in the auction module automatically activates both “allow for bidding” and “one time bidding” by default.

In case the customer wins the auction then “allow one time” bidding would be inactive until the customer buys the winning product.

If the admin wants to disable the particular customer from bidding then they can disable “allow for bidding”.

And if “allow for bidding” is inactive then “one time bidding” will be inactive automatically.

It is possible, that the “Customer configuration” is disabled while configuring the auction module. So both “Allow for bidding” and “One time bidding” would enable by default for the first time.

In case the customer wins the auction then allow for bidding and allow one-time bidding would be disabled.

Now when the customer buys the winning product then both allow for bidding and allow one-time bidding would be enabled.

Now the admin wants to allow the customer to bid but only for one time. Then can disable “allow forbidding” and enable “one-time bidding

So, this was all about PrestaShop Marketplace Seller Auction Module. I hope this document will help you in checking the functionality of the module in a better way.

Also, do let us know about your views in the comments.

For any kind of technical assistance or query, please raise a ticket at http://webkul.uvdesk.com or send us a mail at support@webkul.com

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