Adding a Processing Fee (Optional or Required)

There are two places that you can choose to have Admin Fees collected, on the Pre-event purchase (tickets, sponsorships, donations and item sales) and on event purchases (auction, donations and item sales).

What is an Processing fee:  This can be a fee used to offset some of the cost associated with the running of the event (most commonly credit card processing).  If you choose to offer this, whether required or optional, a message will be populated at registration for bidders to either accept (if required) or opt-out (if optional, default will always be opted in).
How much should my organization charge?  This is different for every organization and the fees various usages.  To cover your credit card fees, we recommend setting it somewhere between 3-5% to help mitigate your costs.  Your organization will need to determine what costs they are trying to cover and assign it accordingly.
***Please make note that any monies received from any admin fees requested or required on the site are sent to the organization directly.  Merchant and/or Credit Card processing fees will be debited/billed the following month. It is up to the Organization to budget the deposited fees appropriately for the future payment.

You can set us a processing fee in 2 places, if you are selling tickets for your event.  The General Processing fee is something they will accept when registering for the online portion of the event.  The ticketing Processing fee will be accepted on the payment page for tickets.  

Setting up a General Processing fee:

The Processing fee that is set in the General Settings section affects fundraising/auction contributions and will not affect purchases made on the ticketing page.

Using your Admin login click on General Settings > Advanced Settings in the dashboard menu, on the  General Settings page you will see the Processing Fee Section.


A. Required, Optional Donation and None:  This is where you choose how you would like this fee handled.

  • Required: You can require it to be added to all statements by clicking Required. They will not be able to complete registration without accepting the fee. *** If you select required, all users will automatically default to excepting that fee. This is true even if added manually by an admin in the dashboard. If you need to remove it for any users you can do that in the event statement page.
  • Optional Donation: Will give the supporter the choice of accepting the fee as a donation to the organization.
  • None: If you don’t want to include a fee at all, just select None.

B. Fee Percentage:  Enter in this text box the percentage you would like to charge participants.

C. All Fundraising Activity: This will auto toggle for any option but None.

Notice in this example, the 3.40% fee will be required.

Setting up Fees for Pre-Event (Ticketing Page Option) :

Using your Admin login click on the Ticket Settings in the dashboard menu, on the  Ticket Settings page on the top right you will see the Ticket Processing Fees Setting Box.

A. Required, Optional and None:  This is where you choose how you would like this fee handled.

  • Required: You can require it to be added to all statements by clicking Required. They will not be able to complete registration without accepting the fee. *** If you select required, all users will automatically default to excepting that fee. This is true even if added manually by an admin in the dashboard. If you need to remove it for any users you can do that in the event statement page.
  • Optional Donation: Will give the supporter the choice of accepting the fee as a donation to the organization.
  • None: If you don’t want to include a fee at all, just select None.

B. Fee Percentage:  Enter in this text box the percentage you would like to charge participants.

How to Remove or Add an Admin Fee from a Guest Statement

Using your admin login choose  Statements and Payments from the Dashboard menu.  Here you will be able to see if the supporter has opted into the fee or not.  You can also choose to add or remove the fee from the statement by checking or unchecking the fee checkbox. **Remember to view whether a supporter has accepted the fee, they would have to have a contribution on their statement. 

The fee can only be calculated as 100% or not at all.  If a payment has already been made, and you wanted to remove the fee to charge a balance, you could take the fee amount paid on a previous payment and log it as a donation to make the statement balance.


Processing Fees Paid Tab

Under the Dashboard, Statements & Payments, All Payment Transactions, Process Fees Paid Tab


How will my guests be notified of this fee?

If your organization is utilizing the Mobile Bidding platform, your guests will be notified of this during online registration.

Example 1: Fee marked as Optional

Example 2: Fee marked as required. The box defaults to selected, but participants can not move forward without the box checked.

MSA Option

If you are on the My Simple Auction (MSA) platform, bidders can opt in via a CC Authorization form (CC-Auth.pdf ) in person, during check in.  This form is found in your dashboard under Event Resources, then CC Authorization.  It is important to note, while using the MSA platform, if the fee is marked as required, ALL donors will have the fee assigned.  This can be removed on individual donors as shown previously in this article.


Example 1: CC Authorization form with the fee marked as required.

Example 2: CC Authorization form with the fee marked as optional. **You would then need to manually check the box in the system for these guests.

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