Auction Engine for WooCommerce

Auction Engine adds auction products, bidding, winner checkout, auction fees, watchlists, customer auction history, lifecycle emails, and auction management tools to WooCommerce.

What Auction Engine provides

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• A dedicated `Auction` product type in WooCommerce.
• Six auction modes: Normal, Reverse, Sealed, Proxy, Unique, and Reverse Unique.
• Starting bids, reserve prices, Buy Now, estimates, item condition, and bid increments.
• Optional registration fees, bid fees, buyer’s premium, role restrictions, and payment deadlines.
• Anti-sniping extensions for bids placed near the auction end.
• Watchlists and a My Account > Auctions dashboard.
• Winner checkout, Pay All Won Auctions, Buy Now checkout, and optional saved-token auto-charge.
• Relisting for failed auctions.
• WooCommerce email notifications and payment reminders.
• An admin auction list, CSV exports, and cron health monitoring.
• Compatibility declarations for High-Performance Order Storage (HPOS) and Cart/Checkout Blocks.

Requirements

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Requirement	Minimum version
WordPress	6.5+
WooCommerce	8.2+
PHP	8.1+
Required plugin	WooCommerce

Create your first auction

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1. Create the product

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1. Go to Products > Add New.
2. Enter the product title, description, images, and catalog settings.
3. In Product data, select Auction product.

4. Configure the auction.
5. Open the WooCommerce tab > Auction.

2. Configure the auction

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Auction schedule

Field	Description
Auction type	Select the bidding model. See Auction modes.
Start datetime	The time at which bidding becomes available.
End datetime	The scheduled auction closing time. It must be later than the start time.

The date and time are entered in the site timezone and displayed using the timezone and date format selected in the plugin settings.

Pricing

Field	Description
Starting bid	The opening bid. It must be zero or higher.
Reserve price	Optional minimum acceptable result. The reserve amount is not displayed to customers.
Buy Now price	Optional price that lets a logged-in customer end the auction and proceed directly to checkout.
Estimate price	Optional guide price shown for information only. It does not validate bids.
Item condition	New, Used, Refurbished, or For parts.

For Normal, Sealed, Proxy, and Unique auctions, the reserve is met when the winning amount is at least the reserve price. For Reverse and Reverse Unique auctions, the winning amount must be at or below the reserve price.

Bidding rules

• Fixed amount uses the configured increment for every bid.
• Variable ladder uses the first matching from,increment rule from the saved list. For example: 100,5 500,10 1000,25
• Extend on late bid adds time when a bid is placed within the configured late-bid window.

Access and fees

• Require registration requires customers to register before bidding.
• Registration fee creates a WooCommerce fee order before registration is confirmed.
• Bid fee requires a paid bid-fee order before bidding is allowed.
• Buyer’s premium adds either a fixed amount or a percentage to the winner’s checkout.
• Payment deadline hours controls how long the winner has to pay.

Advanced settings

• Variable increment rules.
• Allowed user roles. An empty selection allows all logged-in users.
• Automatic relisting for failed auctions.
• Relist duration in hours.

Save and publish the product when the configuration is complete.

Auction modes

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Mode	How the winner is selected
Normal	The highest valid bid wins.
Reverse	The lowest valid bid wins. Each new bid must improve the current lowest bid.
Sealed	Customers can place bids, but bid amounts and bid history are hidden while the auction is active. The highest valid bid wins after closing.
Proxy	Customers submit a bid and a private maximum amount. Auction Engine automatically maintains the leading bid up to the highest maximum amount.
Unique	The highest amount submitted exactly once wins. An amount submitted by more than one bidder is not unique.
Reverse Unique	The lowest amount submitted exactly once wins.

In a Proxy auction, the winner pays the final public current bid, not the private maximum amount. If two maximum amounts are equal, the earlier bid remains ahead.

Customer bidding workflow

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1. The customer opens an active auction and signs in.
2. If registration is required, the customer registers or pays the registration fee.
3. If a bid fee is configured, the customer pays it before placing a bid.
4. The customer submits a bid. The server validates the auction status, user role, registration, fees, amount, increment, reserve rules, and Buy Now limit.
5. The auction page refreshes its status, current bid, countdown, and bid history through AJAX polling.
6. Customers can add or remove the auction from their watchlist.

Auction products cannot be added to the normal WooCommerce cart. They can only be purchased through Buy Now or the winner payment flow.

Auction lifecycle

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Status	Meaning
scheduled	The start time is in the future.
active	Customers can bid.
ended	The end time has passed and the result is being finalized.
awaiting_payment	A winner has been resolved and a payment is due.
paid	The winner’s WooCommerce order has reached a paid-compatible status.
failed	There is no eligible winner, the reserve was not met, or payment expired.
relisted	The auction is being prepared for another run.

The update cron starts scheduled auctions, ends expired auctions, resolves winners, and sends the corresponding notifications.

Winner payment and Buy Now

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Winner payment

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When an auction ends with an eligible winner:

1. The auction changes to awaiting_payment.
2. The winner receives an Auction Won email.
3. The winner can select Pay Now from the auction page or My Account > Auctions.
4. Auction Engine creates a WooCommerce order using the winning amount.
5. Any buyer’s premium is added as a WooCommerce fee item.
6. The customer is redirected to the WooCommerce payment page.
7. When the order is paid, the auction changes to paid.

My Account > Auctions also provides Pay All Won Auctions, which creates one order for all unpaid won auctions belonging to the customer.

Buy Now

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Buy Now is available while the auction is active and a Buy Now price is configured. Selecting Buy Now:

• Ends further bidding.
• Records the Buy Now purchase.
• Creates a WooCommerce order.
• Redirects the customer to payment.

Payment expiry

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If the winner does not pay before the deadline, Auction Engine can either promote the next eligible bidder or mark the auction as failed, depending on the Second-highest fallback setting.

Administrators can cancel an auction payment order. Customers cannot cancel auction payment orders through the standard My Account cancellation flow.

Admin interface

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WooCommerce > Auctions

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The auction list includes:

• Product, auction type, status, current bid, reserve state, leader, end time, and bid count.
• Filters for product category, auction type, auction status, and reserve state.
• Search by product title.
• Bulk actions to publish, move to draft, end, relist, mark failed, or move auctions to the Trash.
• A shortcut to create a new auction product.
• A sample auction action for testing.

WooCommerce > Settings > Auctions

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The settings are divided into:

• Settings — enable auctions, sandbox mode, polling, payment deadline, auto-charge, and second-highest fallback.
• Fees — global registration fee, bid fee mode, bid fee, and buyer’s premium defaults.
• Notifications — lifecycle emails, ending-soon reminders, payment reminders, and cron alerts.
• Advanced — uninstall data retention, CSV exports, and system health.

WooCommerce > Auctions > Advanced

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The Advanced screen provides:

• Bid log CSV export, up to 5,000 rows.
• Fee log CSV export, up to 5,000 rows.
• Last-run and status information for each auction cron job.
• A warning when the auction update cron is overdue.

Cron and scheduled jobs

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Auction Engine registers these scheduled jobs:

Job	Default schedule	Purpose
Update auctions	Every minute	Starts and ends auctions and resolves winners.
Relist auctions	Every five minutes	Relists eligible failed auctions.
Ending soon	Every five minutes	Sends reminders to bidders and watchlist users.
Payment reminder	Every five minutes	Reminds winners and handles expired payment deadlines.

If WordPress cron is disabled, configure a server scheduler to request these URLs:

https://example.com/?aewc_cron=update
https://example.com/?aewc_cron=relist
https://example.com/?aewc_cron=ending_soon
https://example.com/?aewc_cron=payment_reminder

Use the real site URL and configure the requests through the site’s firewall or hosting scheduler as appropriate. Review WooCommerce > Auctions > Advanced after setup to confirm that jobs are completing.

Emails and notifications

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Auction Engine registers these WooCommerce email notifications:

• Auction outbid
• Auction ending soon
• Auction won
• Auction lost
• Auction payment reminder
• Auction payment received
• Auction failed
• Auction registration confirmed
• Auction started
• Auction Buy Now sold
• Auction relisted
• Auction cron failure alert

Enable or disable auction email delivery under WooCommerce > Settings > Auctions > Notifications. Individual email templates remain available through WooCommerce’s email settings, where subjects, headings, recipients, and email status can be managed.

Customer pages and shortcodes

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My Account > Auctions

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The customer dashboard shows:

• Won auctions and payment links.
• Lost auctions.
• Watchlist auctions.
• Payment deadlines and auction status.

Supported shortcodes

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[aewc_auctions limit="12" ids="123,456"]

[aewc_ending_soon limit=”12″]

[aewc_future limit=”12″]

[aewc_past limit=”12″]

[aewc_featured limit=”12″]

[aewc_my_auctions]

[aewc_watchlist]

[aewc_part template=”bid-form” id=”123″]

[aewc_part template=”history” id=”123″]

limit controls the number of auction products displayed. ids optionally limits the list to comma-separated product IDs.

The aewc_part shortcode currently supports bid-form and history. The auction list output includes the auction card, image, title, and bid box. In version 1.0.0, aewc_ending_soon, aewc_future, aewc_past, and aewc_featured use the same auction-list renderer as aewc_auctions; they do not apply additional status or featured filtering. aewc_watchlist uses the same customer dashboard renderer as aewc_my_auctions.

Data, compatibility, and uninstall behavior

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• Bids, auction snapshots, registrations, watchlists, fee logs, and cron logs are stored in dedicated tables using the WordPress table prefix.
• WooCommerce CRUD APIs are used for auction orders and fee orders.
• IP addresses and user-agent values are stored as hashes rather than raw values.
• Auction products are identified by _aewc_* product metadata.
• Delete data on uninstall is disabled by default.
• If Delete data on uninstall is enabled, Auction Engine removes its custom tables and plugin options when uninstalled. Product metadata is not automatically removed.

Security and access rules

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• Bidding, registration, watchlist actions, and payments require a logged-in customer.
• AJAX requests use WordPress nonce verification.
• Admin actions require the manage_woocommerce capability and nonce verification.
• Bid amounts are validated on the server; browser-side minimum and maximum values are not trusted.
• Auction products are blocked from the standard cart flow.

Developer hooks

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The following hooks are available in the current implementation:

Actions

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do_action( 'aewc_before_place_bid', $auction_id, $user_id, $amount );
do_action( 'aewc_after_place_bid', $bid_id, $auction_id, $user_id );
do_action( 'aewc_auction_status_changed', $auction_id, $old_status, $new_status );
do_action( 'aewc_winner_resolved', $auction_id, $winner_user_id, $bid_id );
do_action( 'aewc_payment_order_created', $order_id, $auction_id, $user_id );

Filters

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apply_filters( 'aewc_validate_bid', $result, $auction_id, $user_id, $payload );
apply_filters( 'aewc_bid_response', $response, $auction_id, $bid_id );
apply_filters( 'aewc_item_conditions', $conditions );

Troubleshooting

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Known errors or issues and how to solve them.

FAQs

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Help customers by answering commonly asked questions.