Release 11 - May 2026

Release 11 brings a redesigned Auction Manager, the debut of Handbid AI, smarter bidding, and a wave of payment and reliability improvements.

Highlights

A Redesigned Auction Manager

We modernized the Auction Manager from the ground up — a cleaner, faster, more responsive interface for building and running your events, including a refreshed item grid that’s quicker to work in.

Meet Handbid AI

Our first built-in AI tools help you move faster: draft polished item descriptions and automatically enhance item photos, right inside the Manager.

Dynamic Bid Increments

Bid increments can now scale automatically as an item’s price climbs, keeping momentum going without manual adjustments.

How to set up dynamic bid increments

Handbid TV Auction Ticker

A live ticker for Handbid TV, showing bids as they come in. Useful on a big screen at the event.

More improvements

Re-list items — move an unpaid item into a new auction, with an optional restocking fee
Hide the “Get Started” screen — a new per-event setting lets you skip the intro page and button when you don’t need them
Max Bid is back in the Manager item grid, so you can see max bids at a glance again
Bulk price edits now apply correctly across all selected items at once
Smoother guest-list imports — required fields must be mapped before validating, and your data is no longer lost if a column is unmapped
Company Name column can now be added to the Purchases report
Two-factor authentication works again in the mobile apps
Handbid TV — closing timers show more than seconds, and the Top Items chart filters correctly by category
More reliable payments — safeguards against duplicate charges while a bank transfer is processing, correct Amex fees when paying via Apple Pay, and a cleaner path to retry a declined card
White-label & enterprise — organization owners can now grant Managers permission to process refunds directly, with a full audit trail of who issued each refund (available to white-label partners with a connected Stripe account)
Under the hood — modernized the events site’s underlying framework for better long-term performance, strengthened login security, and improved email deliverability, including clearer sender identity and reliable unsubscribe links on invitation emails; also moved charity (EIN) verification to a new provider with no change to how it works for you

Fixes

Failed card payments were being recorded as successful. A payment failure notification was skipped. This is the most important fix in this release.
Bidder registration could hang and never complete.
Text invoices reported as sent but were not received.