Auction Settlement: What Happens at the Stroke of the Bell

New sales use direct payment only after explicit agreement. The buyer pays the seller outside ReVend; both pay 0% ReVend transaction commission. The buyer reports payment and the seller separately confirms receipt. Administrators and finance record these declarations in the purchase or sales dossier, with optional reference and a reason for corrections. ReVend does not check a bank account. Existing escrow dossiers retain their current handling.

The auction’s timer expires. The platform doesn’t wait for somebody to log in Monday morning to figure out what happened. A background job runs every 5 minutes and settles ended lots deterministically, in small locked batches, so that by the time anyone looks there is a row in the database saying exactly what happened.

The job

Each run claims lots whose end time has passed and that have not been settled yet — 10 per run, never more than 25, under an advisory lock so two runs cannot overlap, with a hard runtime limit and a job-run record for the health page. Settling a lot twice is a no-op, which is what lets the job, the manual button and the admin override all call the same routine without stepping on each other.

The steps

First, the outcome. The highest bid at or above the reserve wins; no bids or an unmet reserve are outcomes too. The result records sold, reserve_not_met or no_bids, winning and losing bids are marked accordingly, and the lot becomes settled. An unsold open lot follows the existing Market relisting route. An unsold private lot remains an Auction record and is not automatically published on public Market.

A sold lot creates a binding sale and an outbound order containing its items. The direct-payment terms accepted before bidding remain attached. The buyer reports paid and the seller confirms receipt in their dossiers. Prepayment requires seller receipt before dispatch; agreed credit terms remain possible. ReVend records declarations and does not move money.

For existing escrow dossiers only: Third, the timeout. A buyer who does not wire within 7 days loses the escrow: a daily job cancels those escrows (at most 25 per run), the deal reverts to a no-deposit cancellation, both parties are notified and a strike is recorded against the buyer’s company. The seller can put the stock back on Market or Auction.

When the job is not enough

A seller looking at a lot whose clock has run out sees Settle now on the lot detail; it triggers the same routine immediately. For a lot stuck in ended for whatever reason — a missed run, lock contention, a deploy in the wrong second — platform staff have a force-settle action that requires a reason of at least 5 characters and writes an audit event. Same routine, same idempotency, one extra line of accountability.

Invoices raised later from an auction deal keep the lot as their source: the draft, the line item and the internal note say the goods came from an auction lot, so finance never has to guess where a deal came from.

Why a job, not a webhook

Auctions can have hundreds of bids in their final seconds. A webhook-per-bid model is hard to make atomic; a job-per-lot is simpler. Claim a small batch of ended lots, run the deterministic flow, write the result, log the run. The bell rings once. The paperwork follows on schedule.

Your purchase after winning

Once your winning result is settled, open My purchases at /auction/purchases. Your purchase dossier brings together the agreed amount, payment reference and status, delivery progress, device details, shared documents and evidence, and messages with the seller. Core, Market and Escrow modules are not required to handle your own purchase. An old link to your own Auction deal also opens this dossier.

Active administrators, managers, commercial users and finance colleagues in the recorded buyer organization can read the dossier, send messages and download files shared for that purchase. The dossier remains available after a private invitation is withdrawn or the Auction module ends. That does not restore access to new private lot information or bidding. Suspended accounts and organizations or former team members do not receive this access.

Administrators and finance colleagues can report a problem or add a dispute response. For existing escrow dossiers only, accepting delivery authorizes release of the escrow balance; an open dispute prevents release. A release or refund decision does not prove a bank transfer. New direct sales use the buyer’s payment report and the seller’s separate receipt confirmation.