Prices and cycles

The starting price is your board's minimum bid: the smallest amount a business can pay for a new spot. It is in whole dollars and at least $5, the platform's floor. When you create a board, $50 a week is filled in for you, and you can change both.

You can change it at any time in the board editor's settings ("Minimum bid (whole dollars)"). The change applies to new spots straight away. A spot already on the board below a newly raised starting price keeps its place and can still be raised.

A service fee, shown to them before they pay. Advertisers pay the service fee on top of the spot’s price. It is not taken from your price: the price is the bid, and the bid is yours. What the advertiser sees is set out in Prices and fees for advertisers.

When businesses compete for the top spots. Spots are ranked by what each business has paid in the current cycle, so a business that wants to pass another has to pay more than that one's total. If the top spot holds $50 and your minimum raise is the standard $1, the next business needs a total of $51 to take it.

A business already on the board pays only the difference: its next payment adds to the total it already has. Nothing moves prices but those payments. On your board's page, every spot has a button showing the total that would take its place, so businesses can see what it costs to move up.

In words: each business's spot has a total, the sum of everything it has paid in this cycle. The spots are listed from the highest total down. A payment adds to its spot's total and the order is worked out again at that moment. Two spots with the same total stay in the order they reached it. Nothing else counts: not how long a spot has been listed, not what you think of it, and not the service fee.

The advertisers' side of this, with what they see when they are passed, is in Ranking and outbids.

The minimum raise is the step every total on your board moves in. It is $1 unless you set it ("Minimum raise (whole dollars)" in the board's settings). With a $5 step, every total on the board is a multiple of $5, so passing a $50 spot takes $55. Your starting price has to be a multiple of your minimum raise too.

A coarser step means bigger jumps between places. Changing it mid-cycle can leave a total that is not on the new step; that spot keeps its place.

When you create a board you choose whether it starts over, and how often:

Whether the board starts over is fixed when you create it. How often it starts over can be changed later, and the change applies from the next cycle, never the one running. Cycles start and end at midnight in your board's time zone, or at the opening hours of a daily board that has them.

Think about how often the same people see your screen. A café, a gym or a bar, with regulars every week, may suit weekly spots; a barbershop, a salon or a shop people visit less often may suit monthly ones. A daily board suits a place where each day is its own audience. There is no right answer, and the cycle's frequency can be changed later.

A daily board can take bids only inside a window you set, from one hour to 22 hours long, and the window may run past midnight. Outside it the board takes no bids. Leave both times blank and it runs all day. These are the board's hours, not your venue's: your venue's business hours are set separately and only feed the busy-hours estimate.

• New bids close for the final minutes of the cycle (currently 10), so that no payment lands after the cycle it was meant for. A payment that still completes after the end is refunded to the business automatically, everything but the card processing.
• The final order is recorded in your board's Round Archive, a permanent public record. A settled cycle's order never changes afterwards.
• Every total goes back to $0 and the next cycle starts from nothing.
• Each business that paid in the cycle is emailed a record of its placement.
• A spot still held for your approval is released, and the business's card is not charged.

Spots do not renew on their own. A business that wants to be on the next cycle pays again.

Unless you turn it off, every paid spot live at the end of a cycle is copied into the next one as a carried row: listed at $0, marked "Carried", below every spot that has money on it. It is a courtesy, not a paid spot: it holds no money, cannot pass anybody and cannot be passed, and its previous business has no claim on it. The first business to pay your starting price for that website takes it. A carried row nobody pays for lapses when the cycle ends.

Carried rows never appear on your screen, which shows paid spots only. To stop carrying them, untick "Carry listings into the next round at $0" in the board's settings.

It has one cycle that never ends. Totals add up for as long as the board exists, there is no reset, no archive and no closing minutes, and a spot lasts as long as its total keeps its place. This is fixed when the board is created: a board that never starts over cannot be changed into one that does.

Yes. A new starting price or minimum raise applies straight away. A new cycle length or new opening hours apply from the next cycle, so the one running finishes on the schedule it started with.