Release 16 - August 2026

Release 16 adds a curated catalog of travel and experience packages you can drop straight into your auction, payment methods you define yourself, and a refreshed guest list — plus faster bidding and stronger bidder privacy.

Highlights

Handbid Marketplace

Browse a curated catalog of travel and experience packages from Winspire without leaving your auction manager, and add one to your auction in a few clicks.

It’s consignment, so there’s no risk: you owe the package cost only after it sells and your winner has paid, and anything that doesn’t sell returns to the catalog at no cost to you. Filter by experience type, destination, group size, duration and price to find packages that fit your event.

How Handbid Marketplace works →

Your Own Offline Payment Methods

If your organization accepts payments that aren’t cash, check or card — payroll deduction, an internal transfer, a purchase order — you can now define those methods yourself and turn them on for a specific event.

Bidders choose one at checkout, you confirm or decline the payment from the auction manager, and it appears in your financial reporting with its own type, so it reconciles like any other payment.

A Refreshed Guest List

The guest list has a new look, including updated flows for registering bidders and adding credit cards, and a Sponsor Tables view. This is the first step of a larger set of guest-list improvements coming over the next few releases.

Guest list overview →

Private Events on the Web

Guests who have an invitation code can now get into a private event directly from a web browser. Previously the code prompt didn’t always appear, and some guests couldn’t get in without the app.

More improvements

Bidding is faster — bids process more quickly, and outbid notifications reach your bidders sooner. Most noticeable on large events with heavy bidding.
Stronger bidder privacy — when your event has bidder name display turned off, names are now correctly hidden everywhere, including live bid activity and the “highest bidder” shown on promoted items and livestream displays.
Item pages load faster when browsing from one item to the next.
Bid Box — managers can complete a Buy Now on a purchasable lot directly from the auction manager, and the Award action is now available on purchasable items.
iPad Activity board now shows bidder names, paddle numbers and item names to managers.

Fixes

Payments and checkout

Adding a credit card on the events site could fail and stay broken until the page was reloaded.
Ticket purchasers were being added to the auction before their purchase was finished.
“For Sale” purchases made from the auction manager now correctly apply the credit-card requirement and spending limits configured for the event.
Invoices and receipts show the correct payment name for Apple Pay, Google Pay and Stripe Link instead of a blank label.

Auctions and items

Selling an item now cancels its pending close timer. A leftover timer could previously stop auction-level timers from running.
Duplicating an item repeatedly now continues numbering (#2, #3) instead of restarting at #1.
Your event banner could be replaced by your organization’s banner on the web.
Fundraising thermometers now update live on the events page instead of waiting for a refresh.

Auction manager

Opening the auction page could produce an error for any auction that had bidders.
Several fixes for purchasable Bid Box lots, which could show as unavailable or out of date after a sale, or silently revert a status change made by a manager.

Coming soon

More guest-list improvements, including clearer guest statuses and messaging selected guests
Consolidated winner notification emails — one summary email per bidder instead of one per category