ActiveBid lots are special aggregate lots that compel bidders to provide better pricing for smaller volume lots than would otherwise be attained by forcing their percentage bids to apply to multiple lots simultaneously. This enables you to leverage your more valuable lots and provide more evenly distributed success throughout your project.

With FlexBid lots, the assumption is made that the bidders will provide favorable aggregate pricing in order to attain all of the business while keeping lot pricing static. ActiveBid lots hold no such assumption and force the lot pricing to be affected. 

ActiveBid lots apply percentage discount bids to the actual constituent lots. For example, a one percent bid in an ActiveBid lot is not stored as an ActiveBid bid in Bid Management. Instead, it is stored as separate bids for each constituent lot placed at the same time for one percent less than the bidder's currently low bids. When the bidder places a bid in the ActiveBid lot the system will calculate and confirm all of the discrete bids in the constituent lots that will be placed as a result of the ActiveBid bid.

Other rules and special behavior of ActiveBid lots are:

• ActiveBid lots only apply to Standard lots and do not contain individual items.
• ActiveBid lots are only supported for reverse auction projects. They are not supported for forward auction projects.

NOTE: For more information on how an aggregate lot works in a Live Event (from a supplier point of view), see Live Event.

»To add an ActiveBid lot

NOTE: Because ActiveBid lots contain only Standard lots, you must have at least one Standard lot containing at least one item before you can add an ActiveBid lot.

1. From the Create New Project or Project Properties wizard, click Next to navigate through pages to get to the Lots and Items window or expand the project in the Connections and Projects tree and click on the toolbar.
2. Click on the toolbar and select New ActiveBid Lot to open the ActiveBid Lot Properties window.

3. Enter information for the lot and click Finish to create the lot. See the following section for detailed information about individual fields on the page.

Fields in ActiveBid Lot Properties

• Lot Name: Enter a descriptive name that adequately identifies the contents of the lot for bidders during the bidding process. You may want to use a name that makes it obvious that this is an aggregate lot, e.g. Tools Discount.
• Allow ties for first place: Place a check mark if you want to allow bidders to tie for first place. Traditionally, buyers don't want suppliers to tie bids for first place because it minimizes the competitive pressure on suppliers to continue improving their bids. However, there are some cases where it makes sense to allow first place ties for a specific lot. For example, suppliers may be willing to offer a specific lot for no charge (training, freight, installation costs, etc.), resulting in multiple vendors tying for first place with a bid of $0.

Bidders see a tie indicator when they are tied for first place.

For users who import lots and items from a spreadsheet, you can create an Allow Tie Bids column with a "Yes” indicating that tie bids should be allowed for the lot or item in that row and a "No” preventing tie bids for first place bids.

• Do not open: Select this option if you want the lot to display for bidders during the Live Event but do NOT want to open it for bidding. You can get the same result by setting the start time and end time to the same time.

NOTE: This option is a powerful tool when used in conjunction with FlexRank or FlexBid. Closed lots do not open for bidding, but they can still be included in a bidder's analysis to show how they compare with their competitors. This is typically used for fixed costs, such as freight. You can also ask that final bids be submitted for unopened lots prior to the Live Event and, using Bid Management, submit the bids prior to the Live Event so bidders can compete with consideration to their bids on lots that are not open for live bidding.

• Advanced: Opens the Advanced Settings window. In most cases, the default settings are correct, but you may have situations where you need to customize settings for a specific lot. Some information captured in this window is used to populate fields in the Standard Template to create Project Documents. The Advanced Settings Page contains the following tabs: 

• Locale Settings (Lot)
• Contract Terms (Lot)
• Contact Information (Lot)

• Minimum Winning Bid Decrement: Enter the minimum amount that a bidder must "beat" the current winning bid in order to be ranked as the winning bid. The amount can be entered as a value, e.g. $100.00 or as a percentage of the start price, e.g. 1% of a $1000.00 start price would force a bidder to beat the best bid by at least $100.00. The Minimum Bid Decrement (or Minimum Bid Increment for forward auctions) prevents bidders from wasting extension time by bidding down pennies at a time when, for example, the total lot value is over a million dollars. If the minimum bid decrement is set too high, it stifles competition and causes the project to end sooner than necessary leaving possible savings "on the table." If the minimum bid decrement is set too low, it lets bidders place insignificantly better bids and causes the Live Event to extend needlessly. In most cases, Iasta recommends setting the minimum bid decrement to the nominal equivalent of a percentage of the lot start price, specifically, between 0.25% to 1% of the lot value. However, if you set the auto-extension time to a relatively long period, it makes sense to have a larger minimum bid decrement.

• Nominal (Monetary): The amount entered is the actual value by which a submitted bid must beat the current winning bid for the bid to be accepted.
• Percent: The amount entered is the percentage of the start price by which a bid must beat the current winning bid for the bid to be accepted.

• Minimum Bidder Decrement: Enter the minimum amount that a bidder must "beat" their own previous bid for the bid to be accepted. The amount can be entered as a value, e.g. $50.00 or as a percentage of the start price, e.g. .25%.

• Nominal (Monetary): The amount entered is the actual value by which a bidder must beat their previous bid in order for the bid to be accepted.
• Percent: The amount entered is the percentage of the start price by which a bidder must beat their previous bid for the bid to be accepted.

• Packaged Lots: Iasta SmartSource lists all Standard lots in the project. Select the lots you want to include in this aggregate lot.

Use these buttons to navigate:

• Finish: Saves the lot and returns to the Lots and Items Window where you can continue adding lot groups, lots, and items.
• Cancel: Exits the lot properties page without saving.
• Help: Opens Iasta SmartSource Desktop Online Help.

Related Topics

Adding a Standard Lot

Enabling Excel Bidding