Last year, I wrote about building an auction clerking tool with AI as a favor for a client running fundraiser auctions at his church. It was a vibe-coding experiment — a prototype, not a product.
But something happened after that post went up. Auctioneers started reaching out.
"Can you make this into something real?"
"I've been using software from the late '90s and the company that built it doesn't exist anymore."
"My clerking app hasn't been updated since Windows XP."
The pattern was clear. A lot of professionals still conduct live, in-person auctions — estate sales, benefit auctions, livestock sales, charity events, equipment on the block — and the software they relied on for decades is disappearing. The companies behind it have gone out of business, been acquired, or pivoted entirely to internet-only platforms. The old-school clerking tools got left behind.
But the auctioneers didn't.
Pen and Paper Isn't Enough Anymore
If you've ever clerked a fast-moving live auction with a pad and a calculator, you know it works — until it doesn't. Transposed paddle numbers. Illegible notes under pressure. Reconciling at the end of the night with a stack of chicken-scratch carbon copies and a growing headache. It gets the job done, but barely, and the margin for error is real.
These auctioneers weren't asking for a full-blown SaaS platform. They just needed a clean, fast way to capture sales, generate invoices, and run a few reports — without a subscription, without the internet, and without fighting their tools.
So we built it.
Introducing ClerkBid
ClerkBid is a browser-based auction clerking application built by AuctionMethod and released today as a free tool for the auction community. No subscription. No payment. No catch.
It's a progressive web app (PWA), which means you can install it directly from your browser onto your laptop, tablet, or phone — and it works offline. That last part matters a lot. If you're clerking at a fairground, a barn, a church hall, or anywhere else without reliable wifi, ClerkBid still works because your data is stored locally on your device.
Here's what it does:
Events — Create and manage multiple auction events. Each one has its own bidders, consignors, lots, sales, invoices, and reports. Switch between them from the sidebar.
Bidders & Consignors — Register bidders with paddle numbers and consignors with commission rates. Import them in bulk via CSV if you've got a list ready to go.
Clerking — This is the heart of it. Record lot number, hammer price, paddle, quantity, description, consignor, and clerk initials. Hit Enter to submit. Esc to clear. It's built for speed, with configurable tab order so you can match your floor workflow.
Pass-Out Bidding — One of the most-requested features. Enable it and use Shift+Enter to create suffix lines (12A, 12B, 12C) when a lot gets passed out to multiple buyers. If you know, you know.
Invoices — Generate per-bidder invoices from your sales data with buyer's premium and tax calculated automatically based on your event settings. Print-ready PDFs.
Reports — Revenue summaries, lot status, bidder totals, payment methods, consignor commission breakdowns, accounting CSV exports, and printable run lists.
Cloud Backup — Optional. If you create an account, you can push your event data to the server for safekeeping and pull it down on another device later.
Built for the Floor, Not the Office
Everything about ClerkBid was designed around how auctioneers actually work at a live sale. The clerking screen is keyboard-driven because when the auctioneer is selling fast, you don't have time to reach for a mouse. There's an immediate undo window after each sale entry in case you fat-finger something under pressure. And the whole thing runs without wifi because that's the reality for a huge number of live auction venues.
We also included features like configurable tab order (because not everyone enters fields in the same sequence), dark mode (for those dimly-lit evening sales), and adjustable font sizing (because a lot of clerking happens on smaller screens or from a distance).
Free and Open Source
ClerkBid is completely free to use at clerkbid.com. There's no premium tier, no trial expiration, no credit card required. AuctionMethod is providing this as a courtesy to the broader auction community.
We've also released the full source code under the MIT License on GitHub. If you're a developer and want to fork it, modify it, or learn from it, go for it. But honestly? We'd rather you just use the app and tell us what to fix.
We Need Your Feedback
Today is release day. The app has been tested, but it's new — there will be rough edges, missing features, and things we didn't think of. That's where you come in.
If something is confusing, broken, or missing, hit the Feedback link inside the app (it's in the sidebar, the footer, and the Help page — we made it hard to miss on purpose). Tell us what's working and what isn't. Tell us what you wish it did. Every submission goes directly to the AuctionMethod team, and we read all of them.
This is an app built for auctioneers, by an auction technology company. The only way it gets better is if the people using it in the field help us shape it.
Try ClerkBid Today
Use the app: clerkbid.com
View the source: github.com/curiousdaniel/clerkbid
Send feedback: Use the in-app Feedback link or contact us
If you're still running a clerking setup from 1998 — or worse, a legal pad — give ClerkBid a shot. It's free, it's fast, and it was built for exactly what you do.
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