Organising a kids' bazaar

Anyone who has run a bazaar with paper lists knows the evening afterwards: sorting slips, adding up amounts, filling envelopes. The app does that now.

Your sellers get a list online, enter their items themselves and print labels and list sheets at home. On the day, you and your team accept the boxes, sell and pay out. The app keeps track of what was sold, whose it was and how much everyone gets.

What it costs: nothing for the preparation. After the bazaar you pay 1% of the revenue plus VAT. With €10,000 revenue that is €119. There is no fee per seller, and if nothing is sold, it costs nothing.

What you need: a laptop or tablet per till, internet via Wi-Fi or a phone hotspot, and ideally a scanner. At a pinch everything works with a phone. Nothing is installed; everything runs in the browser.

• 3–4 months ahead: date and venue, team, fees and number of lists, create the event (chapters 6–9).
• 6–8 weeks ahead: open list requests, find helpers, advertise, sort out the equipment (chapters 10–13 and 15).
• 1–2 weeks ahead: mail to all sellers, test the equipment on site, change, plan where the boxes go (chapters 14 and 15).
• Bazaar day: drop-off, till, sorting back, pickup, cash count (chapters 16–23).
• Afterwards: reconcile the money, deal with what was left behind, statistics, say thank you, announce the next date (chapters 24–28).

1. Tap Register and choose Host a flea market (1).
2. In the first step enter your Organization, for example “Friends of Sunshine Nursery”, or your name (2), plus email and password.
3. Tap Next and enter the Billing address (3). The invoice goes there later.
4. Tap Create organizer account and confirm the link in the email.

Later you change everything via your profile at the top right under My profile.

Already have a seller account? Then simply add the organizer role under My profile at My roles. At the top of the app you then switch between the two.

At listenflohmarkt.org/demo there is a ready-made children's bazaar with lists, items and sales. You can try it without signing up, as an organizer (1) or as a seller (2). You can't break anything; it is reset every night.

In the demo, Try this (3) suggests a few tasks: scan an item, take cash, keep selling offline, pay out a list, print the helper plan, look at the statistics.

• At the top right you choose the event (1) you are working on. Everything else refers to it.
• All events: your bazaars and “Create new event”.
• Dashboard: the key figures, live on the day (2).
• Sales: Register, Check-in / -out, Payouts, Cash count, Test scanner.
• Lists & items: Manage lists, Free lists, Articles, Helpers & bring list.
• Analytics: Statistics.
• Communication: Email to sellers, Ratings.
• Profile at the top right (3): My profile, My invoices, Referrals, Sign Out.

On a laptop you can collapse the menu on the left. Then the till has more room.

This is where you decide where, when and under which rules your bazaar runs. From it the app builds the public page, the list requests and in the end the settlement.

1. Under All events, tap Create new event.
2. Name, place and contact (1). The name is what people search for, for example “Children's Bazaar Sampletown Spring”. Search for the address and pick it from the list; then the bazaar appears on the map. Replies to your mails and questions from sellers go to the contact email.

1. Time slots (2): at least one each for Drop-off, Selling time, Event and Pickup. Several selling times work too.
2. Fees, lists and categories: see chapter 7.
3. What you can also add later, under Optional: a password for list requests, whether email, phone and ratings are public, notes for the public page, seller information as a PDF and a flyer as an image.
4. Tap Create event. If the bazaar is less than 14 days away, you also tick a box that it may start before the withdrawal period ends.

Nobody can see the bazaar yet. It only goes public when you activate it (chapter 9).

This is where you decide how many goods come in and what is left for the club.

Fees (1):

• Selling fee (%): the share of each item's sale price you keep. That is what the bazaar lives on.
• List price (€): a fixed amount per list.
• Buyer fee (%): a surcharge buyers pay on top at the till, for example for a good cause. 0% means none.
• Card payment: if you switch it on, the till can also take “Card”, with a small surcharge if you like. Payment runs on your own card terminal.

Below it there is a worked example. It shows you straight away what buyers pay and sellers get.

Lists (2):

• Max. lists: online and handed-out lists together. You can always increase it, and decrease it only down to the number already given out.
• Max. online lists: this many are handed out by the website. You hand out the rest yourself (chapter 11).
• Max. articles per list: the same for everyone.
• Max. lists per person: how many one person may have.
• Price step: for example €0.50. Prices then only go in this grid.

Categories (3): with + Category you set what is accepted. What isn't listed here, sellers can't enter at all. There must be at least one category.

Each category is a card of its own with a Max. count. It applies per list and comes on top of Max. articles per list. There are three cases.

No limit: leave Max. count at 0 (4). 0 means unlimited; then only Max. articles per list counts. For books that is usually right.

A limit for a category: enter 10 for toys, for example (5). Then at most ten toys fit on a list, even if there is room otherwise.

Limits by size: for categories with sizes, such as clothes, first choose the Size group, for example children's sizes. With From size and To size (6) you set which sizes are accepted. For a second limit tap Another size range (7). A second card for the same category is added. It starts right after the first range and has its own limit. An example:

• clothes, size 50 to 92: at most 15,
• clothes, from size 92/98: at most 10.

The ranges must not overlap, not even at the boundary size. Sizes outside every range can't be chosen by sellers.

What sellers see: the page of your bazaar lists the categories with their limits. When entering items, the form shows below category and size how many items are allowed and how many are still possible. Once the limit is reached, the item can't be added.

Under Workflow settings you decide how closely you check at drop-off:

• Single check-in (1): on means every item is scanned at drop-off. Off means the list is accepted as a whole.
• Single check-out (1): the same for the return.
• Email required, Phone required (2): sellers must have provided these.

Two more switches affect the workflow:

• Pay list after event, with the conditions (chapter 7): on means the list price is deducted from the payout. Off means you collect it beforehand.
• Sellers may connect lists, under Optional: sellers may combine neighbouring lists into one big one.

Publishing: Activate event (1) on the dashboard puts your bazaar online. It appears under “Find Flea Markets”, gets its own page, and list requests start at your times.

Changing: via Manage event. That works until the first payout, at the latest one week after the bazaar. Lists already given out keep their fees. You change single lists in list management (chapter 11).

Repeating (2): under More actions, Duplicate event takes over all settings for the next bazaar, and you only change the dates. Short links and printed QR codes then lead to the new date by themselves.

Cancelling (3): if the bazaar is called off, cancel it under More actions. Then nobody can request a list any more, and the page says it is cancelled. Send your sellers a mail anyway.

Most sellers get their list online. They request it on the page of your bazaar, confirm by email and get a number and password. You don't have to do anything for that.

Who gets a list when, you control with two things. They can be combined:

• List request time slots: requests are possible from then on. You create them like the other time slots (chapter 6), several if you like, say an early one for regular sellers and a later one for everyone.
• Request password: in the form the field is called List password and sits under Optional (1). If it is set, only those who enter it with their request get a list online. It applies to the whole bazaar.

You can also hand out lists yourself (chapter 11), for example to helpers, regular sellers or people without internet. They get the number and password from you and add the list to their account with it. What that looks like for sellers is in the handbook for sellers.

Manage lists has three tabs: Load list, Create lists and All lists.

All lists: here you see every list with seller, number of articles and status. Search by number or name (1). Each list shows how far it has got (2): Handed out, Fee paid, Checked in, Checked out, Paid out. When you open a list you can:

• collect the list fee, if it is paid in advance,
• check in, pay out, hand the goods back,
• change the list price and sell percent for this list, for example to 0 for someone on the team. This applies to all connected lists together, and only until one of them has been paid out,
• reprint labels,
• release the list again,
• see the seller's phone and email.

Load list: open a list directly by scan or number.

Create lists: this is how you hand out lists yourself. Choose the number, a different price if needed, then Create … lists. Afterwards you have numbers and passwords to pass on. How many are still possible is shown above.

Not every list given out gets used. So that no list stays empty while others wait for one, look regularly at Free lists in the tab Unused. It shows every list without a seller or without articles. The filter (3) shows only Without seller or only Without articles.

What you find there and what to do:

• Released (4): a seller gave the list back. It is already empty and back in the online requests. You don't have to do anything.
• 0 articles with a seller (5): the list is taken but still empty. Name, email and phone are shown. Most people only enter items in the last few days. A week ahead you check in, by mail to everyone without articles (chapter 14) or directly.
• No seller (6): the list currently belongs to no account. Either you handed it out yourself and nobody has added it to their account yet. Or a seller chose Only remove from my account instead of Give back. Then the list stays as it is, with articles and password, until someone takes it over with number and password. Often they passed it on, but sometimes they simply forgot.

Empty lists and lists without a seller don't go back by themselves. You do that by hand with Release list (7).

If a seller is still attached to the list, the app warns you with their name (8). They lose the list, all articles are deleted, and this can't be undone. The list gets a new password and goes back into the online requests. The same works under All lists when you open a list.

The website only hands out a released list once all new online lists are gone. Until then, people requesting get new numbers. Releasing therefore mainly helps when all lists are taken and requests are still open.

No helpers, no bazaar. Under Helpers & bring list you plan shifts, thank helpers automatically and collect pledges for cake, coffee or clothes rails.

The first time, in three steps:

1. Switch on and set the thank-you (1). What do helpers get? You can choose a list before everyone else, a cheaper or free list and a lower selling fee, each per shift or once for all.
2. Get a shift plan proposed (2). From your times the app makes a plan with set-up, drop-off, till, sorting back and so on. You adjust places and times.
3. Spread the word (3): share the link, print a notice with a QR code or send a mail.

After that there are three tabs.

Shifts shows who has signed up and where there is still room (4). You can also sign someone up yourself: with a name you find your sellers, with the full email any account. For each helper you can Take out of shift, record Did not show up or Block as helper. You print the plan for yourselves with phone numbers or as a notice with a QR code.

Bring list (5) shows what you need, with the quantity, for example “Cake, 20 pieces”. If you like, with a question such as “Which cake?”. Everyone sees the answers, but without names.

Under Settings (6) you decide whether the bazaar page advertises for helpers or only your link leads there, whether people may bring things without an account, whether there are Lists for helpers only and until when people can sign out, normally 24 hours before.

The app does the rest: helpers get a confirmation, a calendar entry and a reminder. Their thank-you is credited to their lists. If someone signs out, it is dropped and the difference is settled at payout. Anyone who signs out or doesn’t turn up three times in a row is blocked at all bazaars.

More on this and a template to print: guide Planning helpers.

At the very bottom of your event's dashboard you find Share & promote (1). Tap it and the section opens. It contains:

• a link for visitors (2) that leads to the public page,
• a link for sellers (3) that leads straight to the list request,
• a QR code to download for both,
• a poster (4) in A4 with date, place and a large QR code, in colour or black and white for the copier. It is printed in your app language.

As soon as you activate it, your bazaar also appears under “Find Flea Markets” and on the map. Anyone who subscribed to you or uses a search agent nearby gets an email.

Under Email to sellers you write to everyone with a list.

1. Choose the recipients (1): All sellers or Only sellers without articles.
2. Write the subject (2) and message. Below the message there are Placeholders: with them the app fills in each person's own name or list number.
3. Send and confirm.
4. The mails go out in the background. The tab History (3) shows whether everything arrived.
5. Replies go to your contact email.

Each seller gets the frame of the mail in their own app language; your text is sent as you wrote it.

What you need:

• A laptop or tablet per till. On a large screen you see cart and change at a glance. A phone works too, but it is cramped.
• A scanner that reads QR codes. Pure barcode scanners aren't enough. Suitable ones start at about €30, for example this one on Amazon (affiliate link, advertising: if you buy through it we receive a small commission; the price stays the same for you). Without a scanner you use the camera.
• Internet: Wi-Fi in the hall or a phone hotspot. If it drops, the till keeps selling (chapter 18).
• Several tills are no problem. Each gets its own number.

Testing the scanner: open Test scanner and scan the test code on the page. Within seconds the app checks five things (1) and tells you what still needs changing on the scanner. Usually it is two settings: German keyboard layout and no line break at the end (“No Terminator”). You set both with codes from the scanner's manual. If it is set to English, the till copes with that too.

At drop-off you accept the boxes and check the lists in. After that the seller can't change anything, and the goods go on sale.

1. Open Check-in / -out (1). At the top it says whether Check-in or Check-out is running (2). That follows your time slots; you don't have to take care of it. Below you see how many lists are already checked in.
2. Scan the list sheet on the box or type the number under Load manually (3).
3. Depending on your settings (chapter 8): Simple means you tap Check all in (4) and confirm, done. Individual means you scan every label. From 80% you can check in. The app shows afterwards what is missing.
4. The box goes to its place.

You can also hand this chapter on its own to your till helpers.

Opening the till:

1. Tap Checkout (1) and choose the number of this till (2), for example Till 1.
2. The bar at the top (3) shows whether the till is online or offline and whether all sales are secured.

Selling:

1. Scan. With a hand scanner you don't need to click anything; the till listens by itself. With the camera you tap Camera at the Barcode scanner (4). If neither works, type the number from the bottom left of the label into the field Article number from the label, for example “a5f”.
2. Every item appears under Current sale (5); the total is on the left. A buyer fee is already included.
3. Cash: enter what the customer gives you, or tap Exact, then Cash (6). The change is shown in large type.
4. Card: tap Card (6) and take the amount on the card terminal first. Only when the terminal has gone through do you tap Payment succeeded. Otherwise Declined.
5. Done, the till is ready for the next customer. The last change stays visible for checking.

If a customer doesn't want anything after all, Reset empties the cart.

The till keeps selling without internet. It stores the sales on the device and sends them as soon as the connection is back.

• The top then shows Offline and how many sales are not yet secured (1).
• When the network is back, the till asks whether to sync now (2). Tap it.
• If the network is very shaky, you can work without it on purpose with Go offline. Then the till doesn't keep waiting for an answer.

Very rarely two tills that are both offline sell the same item. The app doesn't book it twice. It shows it as a conflict at the till and under Offline conflicts with a note on what to do, usually: give the money back. Afterwards you tap Mark resolved.

The price doesn't match the label. The seller changed it after printing. The till shows both prices. The one in the app always applies; you confirm with Add at … (1). So an old or home-made label can't change the price.

An item was scanned twice. If it is already in the cart, a note appears and it isn't charged twice. If it has already been sold, the till asks whether you want to take it back.

A customer brings something back. Scan the item again. The till asks Refund sold article?. With Refund the customer gets their money, and the item counts as unsold again. Once the list has been paid out, this is no longer possible.

The label can't be scanned. Type in the number at the bottom left.

The label is gone completely. Under Articles you search by description or list number (2). From there you put the item straight into the cart or print a new label (3).

A label from the last bazaar. The till doesn't accept it. If the seller entered the item again, you find it under Articles.

The hall is still full, but selling time is almost over? Then extend it. After the end the till accepts nothing more.

1. At the till a badge shows whether selling is open and until when (1).
2. Tap it and choose how long: 30 minutes, one or two hours (2).
3. All tills keep selling until the new time.

After the sale, everything left over has to go back into the right box. The app doesn't do that for you. But every label carries the list number, and that is what you sort by.

Handing goods back: under Check-in / -out in Check-out mode, scan the list and hand over the box. If you set single check-out, you scan every item.

Paying out:

1. Open Payouts (1) and scan the list or type the number (2). The seller shows the top part of their list sheet for this.
2. You see the settlement (3): revenue, fees, a helper adjustment if any, and the Payout.
3. Hand over the money and tap Pay out. The list is now paid out and can't be paid out a second time.
4. Under Not paid out yet (4) you see who is still missing. The last five lists are shown alongside for checking.

If a helper got a cheaper list and then signed out, the app includes the difference here by itself and shows it.

Closing each till:

1. Wait until the top says Last secured and nothing is shown as Not saved yet. Otherwise tap Sync.
2. Tap Close the till. You see how many sales there were on this device, the refunds and how much money from sales should be in the till (1).
3. Confirm. Afterwards the device is empty; everything is safely on the server.

Cash count for the day:

1. Open Cash count. Expected per register (2) shows for each till how much cash should be in it, and what was refunded.
2. Count the money and enter it under Counted (3). The app shows the difference.
3. The counted figure stays on your device only; it is not stored.

Under Free lists you find two tabs:

• Unused (1): lists without a seller or without articles. Before the bazaar you release them so others can move up (chapter 11). Afterwards you see here which lists weren't used at all.
• Not checked in (2): lists with articles that weren't dropped off. If needed you check them in here.

You settle boxes not collected and open payouts directly with the seller. Phone and email are in list management.

Statistics shows all the key figures of your bazaar (1): lists, articles, revenue and fees. There is also:

• the comparison with an earlier bazaar (2),
• further down the course of the sales day, i.e. when it was busiest,
• the category comparison, what sold well and what was left,
• an export as CSV for the club treasurer (3).

On the day itself the Dashboard shows the figures live.

After the bazaar you get an invoice by email for 1% of the revenue plus VAT. Invoices are always in German.

You find all invoices via the profile at the top right under My invoices (1). If one is open, a note in the app reminds you. If your bazaar is free thanks to a referral or a promotion code, it says so with the event.

Sellers and buyers can rate your bazaar with stars and a comment. You read them under Ratings in the tab Event ratings (1). Whether they appear on your public page, you decide in the event. In the tab Rate the platform (2) you can tell us how you get on with Listenflohmarkt.org.

Do you know others who run a bazaar? Recommend Listenflohmarkt.org to them. Their first bazaar costs nothing, and you get one bazaar credited.

1. Via the profile at the top right go to Referrals.
2. Accept the promotion terms once; then you see your referral code (1).
3. Pass on the code or link, for example to the nursery next door (2).
4. Under Organizers you referred and Your free bazaars (3) you see what has come of it.

• ☐ Fix the date and venue
• ☐ Sort out the team and who does what
• ☐ Set fees, number of lists and articles per list
• ☐ Create the event and have two people check it

• ☐ Activate the event, open list requests
• ☐ Create the shift plan, find helpers
• ☐ Posters, posts in groups, parish newsletter
• ☐ Organise laptops, scanners, Wi-Fi or hotspot

• ☐ Mail: times, new labels at actual size, one sturdy box per list, no lids and no bags, top part of the sheet
• ☐ Reminder to everyone without articles, then check empty lists and lists without a seller under Free lists and release them
• ☐ Test the equipment in the hall
• ☐ Get change
• ☐ Plan tables, clothes rails and box places by number, have a few empty boxes ready for repacking

• ☐ Set up drop-off, check in lists
• ☐ Open the tills: a number per device, charging cables, a spare device
• ☐ Sort back by number
• ☐ Pickup and payout
• ☐ Sync and close all tills, count the money in pairs

• ☐ Compare the cash with the cash count
• ☐ Settle boxes not collected and open payouts
• ☐ Look at the statistics and discuss them as a team
• ☐ Thank the helpers, ask for ratings
• ☐ Announce the next date: duplicate the event

The checklist is also available on its own as a PDF in the guide Organising a children's bazaar.

• Event: your bazaar with place, times and rules.
• Time slot: the time for drop-off, selling, the event, pickup or list requests.
• List: a seller's number with a fixed number of articles.
• Online list, handed-out list: given out via the website, or passed on by you with number and password.
• List password: a seller uses it to add a list to their account. Not a login.
• Give back, release: the list goes back into the online requests, empty and with a new password. The seller gives back, you release.
• Limit (Max. count): how many items of a category or size range may go on one list. 0 means unlimited.
• Request password: a password for all online list requests.
• Connected lists: a seller's neighbouring lists with one box, one sheet and one settlement.
• List sheet: the seller's part at the top, the part for the box at the bottom.
• Check-in, check-out: accepting and returning the goods.
• Payout: the seller gets their money. After that the list is closed.
• Selling fee: the share of the sale price you keep.
• Till number: tells your tills apart at the cash count.
• Offline, sync: selling without internet and transferring later.
• Conflict: an offline sale that couldn't be booked, for example because the item was already gone.
• Cash count: what should be in the tills compared with what you count.

• Frequently asked questions: listenflohmarkt.org/help
• Language – Sprache: The app is available in English and German. To switch: tap Deutsch at the top right next to “Sign In”, in the profile menu at the top right once signed in, or at the very bottom of every page. Your sellers switch for themselves; labels and invoices are always in German.
• Guides: Organising a children's bazaar with checklist and Planning helpers with a shift plan template
• Practise: listenflohmarkt.org/demo
• For your sellers: give them the handbook for sellers.
• About Listenflohmarkt.org: The email address is on listenflohmarkt.org/help under “Show e-mail address”.