Auction Database

First off total newbie but trying hard to learn. I have searched endlessly for an app like this but have never found one so decided to try to build one of my own.

I want to make an app to help manage an annual live auction for a very small club I belong to. I need to be able to assign paddle numbers by choosing from a names picklist. Then add sold items by paddle number, item number and price and then generate a total the items each paddle number purchased. I’ve been playing around with Glide for several hours but haven’t gotten very far. I have some spreadsheet skills but not apparently enough for this I would really appreciate Any starting advice on how to set up my spreadsheet from those of you who are skilled at this.

1 Like

I would first create of sheet of all of the auction items. In the Auctions sheet, add a column for winner and a column for amount.
Then I would create another sheet to hold the names and paddles. You would fill in the names via the app or in the sheet. I don’t know if you would auto assign paddle numbers (could use =ROW()) or if you would manually assign names to paddles or paddles to names. Lot’s of ways to handle that, but I think that would be pretty easy.
During the auction, once an item is sold, you can open up that item in the app, edit the record and add the paddle number and amount. On the sheet with the names and paddles, you could use a =SUMIF formula to sum the amount owed for each paddle number from the items sheet.

As an alternative, you could use a form button and choice components to select the item and winning paddle number and cost. The results from that form will be written to a third sheet. You could still use the same SUMIF formula to get the total cost for each paddle.

Thanks Jeff, part of the problem unfortunately is that I have no idea until the day of the auction what the items will be. We assign item numbers as they come in the door. Same with paddles. So I need to make forms so that I can enter things on the fly. We currently use an Access database but I am trying to find a way to simplify this so that members who are less technically oriented would be able to take it over without a lot of training. I think I need to learn more about Excel/Google sheets to make it all work.

I really appreciate your help and am still amazed that no one has built something like this. As far as I can tell there’s an app built for almost every purpose, but I’ve never found one for this.

You would just need a form button or use the add (+) button to add items the item list. This can be done as items are arriving. Same with the paddles/people. This would be a pretty basic set up. As items are then sold, you can edit the item records that were created earlier with the winner and cost. The whole process could be handled inside the app.

1 Like

Thank you Jeff for all your help and suggestions. I managed to add the (+) button but then got bogged down again. I think for the moment this is beyond my skills but I’ll keep learning more about Excel/Googlesheets and keep plugging away at it.

Give it some time an play around. I’m sure your app will keep morphing as you learn more. This is a good video that explains the entire process of building an app. Hopefully it can help you out. If you still have specific issues after that, I’m sure many of us can help you out.

1 Like