Anyone used it that happens to be a registered user with more than 1 post? LOL

We have used Auction Systems for 4 years. It was a good investment of money. I highly recommend it.

It allows you to download your catalog into a WORD document, so that you can desktop publish the heck out of it.

And its a very easy program to use.

We also use Auction!, and it is very inexpensive and very useful!

We do use an auction program, it is called Auction! It is put out by Auction Systems and their website is www.auctionsystems.com . This is the 3rd year we have used this in conjunction with the school auction and have found it to be easy to use, and robust enough to meet our needs. I think you can download a trial version. ***Just a disclaimer--I am not an employee of this company, just a satisfied user.***

Kathleen

JHB makes very good points regarding legacy of information. Most people are more confortable with word and excell and everything that you need to do for your auction can be accomplished using those 2 programs.
Even thought I did develop the database myself, I was happy to teach my successors how to use it. Others, unfortunately, are not as willing to hand off technology that they think they 'own.

So, I think the upshot from all this dialog is that you can use standard computer programs to create your bid sheets and auction program. While it's great to have these kinds of dialogs, they only way for you to really learn is for someone to teach you, hands on style and cyberspace doesn't allow for that. Why don't you mentor with another school in your area, see if you can learn from them?

Like OshKoshBGosh, we use Excel and Word, utilizing merge functions. For PTO/PTA support functions, we try to stick to tools that are more commonly used and understood by our members and don't require extra licenses to run. Many of our members have Word and Excel.

It's nice to have parent's with expertise in more sophisticated tools, but you may have to weigh the benefit for THIS year versus if the information will be portable/reusable.

For instance, one year we had a parent volunteer do most of our flyers in a publishing package none of the rest of us had access to. The flyers did look nice, but we had to wait on her for every little edit. Then next year, all that work was lost as she was no longer with us. Frankly, I'd have been happy with slightly less sophisticated flyers done in Word that could have been used as the basis for other documents or updated.

I'm not saying NOT to use something like Access, but just be sure to consider all the implications, where the program/data will be stored, and how dependent you might become on a single volunteer.