Use Envelopes at Checkout

The auction is closed. All bids are tabulated and all invoices printed. Your next step is the checkout, where some guests will want to pay with cash or check.  (If you are using PayStation, then others will likely have pre-swiped their credit cards earlier at check-in).

Here’s where this small, but useful tip comes in. Bring along a box of standard letter-sized envelopes. Fifty should be enough. Make sure each cashier has some.  Whenever a guest pays by check or by cash, cashiers will slip the payment into its own envelope and mark the outside with the guest’s bidder number and the amount paid. Each envelope then goes into the cash box.  That’s it.  A simple, but effective step to help the later stages of your auction run smoothly.

The payoff comes when it’s time to sort out the cash boxes and reconcile the payments inside.  With the envelope method, this will be a very simple and quick process.  Each envelope containing its own payment is easy to deal with. Without separate envelopes you’ll have a pile of unsorted cash and checks to deal with, which often takes quite a long time to sort out. What might have taken hours to do will now take just a few minutes. It will also likely be more accurate.