For two decades, a lot of small auction houses ran their whole back office on Gavel Buddy — catalog in it, clerk in it, print invoices from it. In 2025 it shut down, and its users learned the hard lesson of desktop-era software: when the vendor stops, the product stops with it.
If that was you, the good news is that your data didn't die with the program. Gavel Buddy exported plain CSV files, and anything that reads CSV can carry your customers, consignors, and inventory forward.
What to look for in a replacement
Web-based, not installed. The reason Gavel Buddy could strand you is that it lived on one computer. Software that runs in a browser can't be lost to a dead hard drive, and everyone on your crew can be in it at once on sale day.
No percentage of your hammer. The dominant replacement path bundles back-office software with a bidding marketplace that takes 2% of hammer plus per-bid fees. Marketplaces are worth listing on — but your back office shouldn't take a commission.
An importer that respects your history. Twenty years of customer and consignor records is the asset. A real importer shows you a dry run before it commits anything, reconciles totals against your export to the cent, and can be rolled back if something looks wrong.
How the move actually works
- Export your data from your last working Gavel Buddy installation (or from the backup folder — the CSVs are readable even if the program won't start).
- Run the import dry-run and review what it found: every customer, consignor, and inventory item, with anything ambiguous flagged for your call.
- Check the reconciliation totals against your export.
- Commit — and run your next sale on software that can't be discontinued out from under you.
SoldSheet's importer reads Gavel Buddy exports directly — their columns, not ours. The switching page covers how the dry-run and rollback work, and the demo is open if you want to see the whole loop on sample data first.