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Before a customer can place a bid, you (the tenant admin) need to decide who can bid, open specific scopes and pricing rules on each lead type, and decide which cap/budget controls customers should see. This guide walks through those switches end-to-end. For how bidding actually resolves auctions (smart pricing, positions, status rollups), see the Bidding feature page. For the customer-side UI, see the Bids page in the customer portal reference.

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Prerequisites

  • Admin role access to your tenant.
  • At least one lead type configured. Bidding rules are per-lead-type, so you can’t open auctions without one.
  • A sense of pricing. What’s the minimum you’d accept for a lead? The maximum? What’s a reasonable step increment?

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1. Open the Bidding settings page

Click the settings gear in the rail on the far left, then choose Bidding under Application. The page groups four sections (Global Bid Settings, Customer Bidding Access, Lead Cap Settings, and Budget Settings). Change whatever you need across all four, then click Save changes on the floating save bar that appears at the bottom.
Bidding settings page with the Disable all customer bidding switch and the Customer Bidding Access fieldsBidding settings page with the Disable all customer bidding switch and the Customer Bidding Access fields

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2. Configure global bid settings

The first section, Global Bid Settings, controls whether customers can bid at all. Leave it off for normal operation. Flip it on when you’re migrating platforms, pausing operations, or running a fully tenant-managed pricing model.

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3. Configure customer bidding access

The Customer Bidding Access section decides who can use bidding, and what everyone else sees.
To grant or revoke access one customer at a time, use the Can Access Bidding toggle when you edit the customer. The threshold plus modal is the right tool when you have a consistent policy (e.g., “must deposit $500 before bidding”).

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4. Decide which lead caps are available

Scroll to Lead Cap Settings. Each switch controls whether that cap type is available as a form field. Turning one off hides the field, and limits of that kind stop being enforced, even if customers had values saved. The usual pattern is to enable monthly and daily (weekly rarely matters), but this is a product decision, so enable whatever your customers will actually use.

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5. Decide which budgets are available

Budget Settings mirrors the cap section, but for dollar amounts instead of lead counts. Budgets and caps are independent, so a bid stops on whichever hits first. See Budgets and caps for the full interaction model. Click Save changes on the save bar when you’re done with Steps 2–5.

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6. Enable scopes on each lead type

Tenant settings are done; now move to the per-lead-type bidding configuration. Open Lead Types under Ingest in the sidebar, click a lead type, then click the Bidding tab. The tab shows a Bidding Scopes table of the scopes that currently exist on this lead type. If there are none, customers can’t bid on it yet. Click New bidding scope in the top-right.
Lead type Bidding tab with county, state, and nationwide scope rows and a New bidding scope buttonLead type Bidding tab with county, state, and nationwide scope rows and a New bidding scope button
The dialog has these fields. Click Create. The scope appears in the table. Repeat for each scope you want to open (county, state, nationwide).
A scope row is what makes that scope available to customers. If your lead type only has a County row, customers can only place county-level bids, and state and nationwide locations won’t offer this lead type at all.

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7. Set per-customer limits and bids (optional)

If a specific customer needs a tighter cap or budget, set it on the customer rather than the tenant.
  • For account-level limits, open Customers, pick the customer, and click Edit. The Bidding Limits section shows whichever account caps and budgets you enabled in Steps 4 and 5.
  • For bid-level limits, open the customer’s Bids tab and edit a bid. The Bidding limits section on the bid form shows whichever bid caps and budgets you enabled.
A customer's Bids tab with each bid's status, amount, top bid, position, lead type, caps, and budgets, and a New bid buttonA customer's Bids tab with each bid's status, amount, top bid, position, lead type, caps, and budgets, and a New bid button
The Bids tab is also where you can create, edit, pause, or delete bids on the customer’s behalf (useful when Disable all customer bidding is on, or for hands-on account management). Click New bid, search for a location, pick a lead type, and choose an amount. The tenant form also lets you go below the minimum or enter a custom amount.

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8. Verify a customer can bid

Log in as a test customer. The customer’s sidebar should show Bids. Clicking it opens the bid table; clicking New bid opens the bid form. Check that the bid form shows these things.
  • The lead types you expect for a location
  • The price options you configured
  • Cap/budget fields matching what you enabled
If it does, you’re good. If something’s missing, double-check the lead type’s Bidding tab, since most “I can’t see my lead type” issues trace back to a missing or disabled scope row there.
Not sure where to set your minimum bids? Operators compare notes on lead pricing in That Agency Group, our free Skool community.

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What happens next

Once bidding is open, here’s what happens.
  • Customers place bids through the customer portal. They pick a location, a lead type, and an amount within your min/max/step rules. See the Bids page for the full customer walkthrough.
  • Auctions resolve in real-time when matching leads arrive. The highest eligible bid wins, with smart pricing applied so the winner only pays one increment above the runner-up.
  • Statuses cascade. Bids reflect their own health (Active Paused Limited Exhausted Archived), so customers can debug why they’re not winning by reading the status column.
  • Distribution stages control how bids compete with other distribution methods. Make sure your Highest Price stage has Enable Bids turned on, otherwise your carefully configured bids never enter the auction. See Distribution.
Here’s the full pipeline. You decide who can bid → you configure scopes and pricing → customer funds their wallet (Managing customer finances) → customer places bids → leads flow in and auctions resolve. From here, natural next steps are adding partners for non-auction fallbacks, or Configuring distribution stages if you want a multi-stage pipeline.