Custom software for auction houses
Take on more lots without drowning the office.
A free audit finds the manual job setting the pace of your sale week. Then we build the one tool that removes it, around how your team already works.
- 30 minutes, free either way
- Not a bidding platform
- £500 a day, one day minimum
Pick a time that suits
30 minutes. Free whether you hire us or not.
What the audit gives you
- The one job capping the saleroom, named
- What it costs a year, from your own hours
- What we would build, in plain English
30 minutes. Free either way.
- Morning triage, one shared inbox
- 2 hrs down to 10 min
- Time handed back to the team
- 0.0 people
- Producing a probate valuation
- 0% faster
Across three staff, at a regional saleroom.
More lots the next quarter, without a hire.
At Gorringe's. Details entered once.
What we build
The sorting happens on its own. The answer is still a person's.
Enquiries arrive, get read for sale, lot and question, and land with the one person who owns the reply. Nothing forwarded by hand, nothing answered twice.
An illustration of the flow, not a client's screen.
Which of these happen in your saleroom?
0/9
Tick what happens in your saleroom.
Most owners get to three before the end of the list.
Nothing off the shelf
We build the tools nobody sells you.
Pick where your sale week jams. This is the job we would go looking for, and the shape of the thing we would build to remove it.
The job we go looking for
Condition, collection, commission and phone bids all land in one shared mailbox. Three people take turns reading it, and the same message gets answered twice or not at all.
The tool we would build
A board every enquiry flows into on its own, read for sale, lot and question, then handed to the person who owns the answer. Built for a regional saleroom in three days.
Two of these are built and measured. The rest are the jobs we go looking for in a saleroom, drawn as sketches, not screenshots. Which one is yours is exactly what the free audit finds out.
The maths that decides it
Sale-week volume decides what the office can handle.
The enquiries swell towards sale day, and the sorting swells with them. It is the hours that set the ceiling, not the people.
One sale week in the office
24 hrs sorting the inbox
Email, website form, anything the office has to read and place.
Reading it, finding the lot, forwarding or retyping it. Not the reply itself.
Weeks with a sale in them, when the volume arrives.
Wage plus National Insurance, pension and the desk. A £25,000 salary lands near £15.
Illustrative estimate, not a promised saving
27 hrs
of office time on enquiry admin, every sale week
- Working days a year
- 107
- Employment cost a year
- £12,000
- Of one person's year
- 46%
800 hours, at 7.5 an office day.
Paid for sorting, not for selling.
Against a 37.5 hour week over 46 working weeks.
How this is worked out
- Hours a sale week = enquiries × minutes ÷ 60
- Hours a year = hours a sale week × sale weeks
- Working days = hours a year ÷ 7.5
- Cost = hours a year × hourly cost
- Share of a person = hours a year ÷ 1,725 (37.5 hrs × 46 weeks)
This estimates the size of the problem. The free audit shows which part of it can actually be removed.
What the audit involvesBuilt for a regional saleroom · 3 days
One inbox, three staff, every lot enquiry retyped by hand.
We built a board every enquiry flows into on its own, tagged by lot, sale and question, then routed to the right person. The team took on more lots the following quarter without adding a hire.
Read the case study“It used to be the first two hours of everyone's morning. Now it's ten minutes.”
Saleroom manager
- Lot 214 - condition?Opened by Jo, Sam, AliAnswered twice
- RE: RE: collection SaturdayForwarded to desk, again
- Fwd: Fwd: clock for valuationWaiting for the right specialist3 days
- Telephone bid lot 302Which sale? Searching
- Commission questionOpened by Jo, Sam
- Lot 214 condition report pleaseSame as row one. Nobody knows yetDuplicate
- Consignor form - Mrs HTo be typed into the system
- Can I collect lot 88?UnreadUnanswered
Before: a shared inbox read by three people, with the same lot enquiry answered twice, a valuation waiting three days for the right specialist, and a collection question unread. Around two hours of triage every morning. After: the same enquiries on a board, each tagged by lot and sale, each with one owner and a visible status. About ten minutes.
| Room | Item | Low | High |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drawing room | Georgian bureau, mahogany | 400 | 600 |
| Drawing room | Pair of Staffordshire dogs | 80 | 120 |
| Hall | Longcase clock, oak | 600 | 900 |
| Bedroom 2 | Victorian brass bed | 150 | 250 |
| Total | =SUM? | check by hand | |
Probate_valuation_FINAL_2.docx
Client and estate details typed again. Every line retyped. Formatted by hand.
Walk-round notes from the house, deciphered back at the desk.
Same details entered three times. An afternoon of typing around a morning of judgement.
Before: estate and item details typed into a spreadsheet, typed again into a document, with totals checked by hand and paper notes deciphered at the desk. After: details entered once, and the finished valuation document produced with totals handled. Around 70% faster.
Built for Gorringe's · 1 day, then 2 more, charged as 1
Probate valuations assembled by hand, across spreadsheets and paper.
We built a tool that takes the details once and produces the finished document, formatted, totals handled. What something is and what it is worth stays with the valuer.
Read the case study“A valuation that used to take an afternoon now takes the drive home to think about, not to type.”
Valuer, Gorringe's
Follow an enquiry
Pick one. Watch where it goes.
01 · Arrives
Arrives by email on the Tuesday before the sale. Captured the moment it lands; nobody has to open it to know it exists.
The offer
A free auction-house systems audit.
- 1
Thirty minutes on how a sale week runs
By phone, video or in the saleroom. You describe how enquiries, valuations and sale-day admin actually move. We listen for where it jams.
- 2
We watch the job, if it needs watching
Sometimes the call is enough. Sometimes we observe the process, or the team logs where a week's hours go, so the answer runs on numbers rather than guesses.
- 3
You get the answer either way
The one repeatable job setting the pace of the sale, what it costs a year, what we would build, and a fixed price. No requirement to commission anything.
What you walk away with
- The one job capping the saleroom, named
- What it costs a year, from your own hours
- What we would build, in plain English
- A fixed price and a day count, if a build makes sense
- Anything you should just change yourselves, free
Nothing is bought, signed or quoted until all of that is in front of you.
If you go ahead, the number is agreed before we start.
- £500
a day
Day count agreed before we start, minimum one day. Most builds run three to five. No part days, no hourly rate.
- £0
if we overrun
Gorringe's tool was quoted at one day and took three. They paid for one.
- 100%
yours
The code is yours to keep. No licence, no per-lot fee, no lock-in.
Worth saying plainly
This is not about replacing your specialists.
A specialist's time should go on judgement, on client relationships and on winning consignments. What we remove is the sorting, forwarding and retyping around that, so the same experienced team handles more lots.
Stays with your people
- What a lot is and what it is worth
- Condition, as seen by the specialist
- The conversation with a consignor
- Every reply that needs a person
Handled by the tool
- Working out which lot and sale a message is about
- Forwarding it to the right desk
- Copying details from one place into another
- Keeping the list of what is still open
A good fit
- A regional auction house with a saleroom team of four or more
- Regular sales, with enquiry volume that arrives in sale weeks
- A shared inbox, spreadsheet or one person's memory setting the pace
Not a fit
- Looking for a bidding platform or a complete auction-management system
- Hoping to automate valuations or replace specialist judgement
- A one-person operation, or a house with no genuine time problem
Book the free audit.
Thirty minutes to start. Tell us roughly how a sale week runs and we will do the rest.
Or tell us where it jams
We reply within one working day, usually sooner.
Pick a time