Surplix

Documentation

How Surplix works

Everything you need to know about buying and selling on Surplix — from creating your account and roles, to placing bids, negotiating offers, tracking orders, and managing contract terms.

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Overview

What is Surplix?

Surplix is a B2B marketplace where verified companies buy and sell excess stock. Whether you are clearing surplus inventory or sourcing discounted goods in bulk, Surplix connects you with trusted trading partners through auctions, fixed-price listings, and direct negotiation.

Every account on Surplix belongs to a company. Your company membership determines what you can do on the platform — buy, sell, manage listings, or administer your team. This structure is designed for how real businesses operate, where procurement, sales, finance, and warehouse teams all need appropriate access under one company account.

Getting started

Creating your account & roles

To get started on Surplix, create an account using your business email address. During signup, you will be asked to:

  • Verify your email address using a verification code.
  • Set up two-factor authentication (2FA) using an authenticator app such as Google Authenticator or Authy.
  • Save your one-time recovery codes in a safe place — these are single-use backup codes to access your account if you lose your authenticator device.

Once your account is created, you can sign in using your email address and password, followed by your 2FA code. If you forget your password, use the password reset option on the sign-in page.

Membership Roles

A user's specific company role determines their access permissions on the platform:

  • Owner: Full administrative rights, including company settings and team membership controls.
  • Admin: Day-to-day administrative access to manage listings, listings details, and view orders.
  • Seller: Focused on creating listings, modifying active inventory, and managing sales.
  • Buyer: Tailored for procurement, with permissions to browse live prices, place bids, make offers, and complete purchases.
  • Finance: Access restricted to viewing orders, tracking transaction histories, and managing payment tasks.

Verification

Getting your company verified

Before you can trade on Surplix, your company must be verified by our team. When you first register your company, it will be placed under review. During this period you can set up your company profile, but trading features — listing stock, placing bids, purchasing, and messaging — will remain locked until verification is complete.

If a company is suspended for any reason, all users under that company will be temporarily unable to access trading features. This helps us maintain a safe and trustworthy marketplace for all participants.

Buying

Browsing the marketplace

You can browse all active listings on Surplix without signing in. Public listing information includes the guide price, category, quantity, images, seller name, and general location. Use the search bar and filters to narrow results by category, condition, sale type, location, or currency.

To see live auction pricing, place bids, add items to your watchlist, message sellers, or make purchases, you will need to sign in with a verified company account.

Sorting & Supported Currencies

Results can be sorted by newest listings, oldest listings, price (low to high), or price (high to low). Surplix supports 12 major currencies for B2B trading: GBP, USD, EUR, CAD, AUD, NZD, CHF, JPY, SGD, HKD, AED, and CNY. Listings are settled in the seller's selected currency.

Selling

Creating a listing

To list stock for sale, go to the List stock page from your dashboard. Each listing is designed to give prospective buyers enough detail to make an informed decision before reaching out.

Required information

  • Category, title, description, condition, and location (city or town).
  • Quantity available, minimum order quantity (MOQ) or full-lot-only, unit label, and currency.
  • At least one product image (up to 20 images, with a combined limit of 15 MB).
  • Trade details including VAT status, stock attributes, shipping or collection terms, and inspection availability.

Optional commercial details

  • Recommended retail price (RRP), public guide price, buy-now price, or auction terms.
  • Stock attributes such as boxed, palletised, loose, mixed, tested, untested, customer returns, shelf-pulls, liquidation, expired, or damaged packaging.
  • Restricted goods warnings, where applicable.

For privacy and security, listing locations should only include your city or town. Do not include full addresses, postcodes, or unit numbers in the listing location field.

Auctions

How auctions work

Auction listings have a scheduled start time, end time, starting price, optional reserve price, and a minimum bid increment. Only signed-in users from verified companies can place bids, and sellers cannot bid on their own listings. All bids represent a legally binding agreement to purchase the stock if won.

Surplix includes a built-in anti-sniping protection window of 3 minutes. If a bid is placed in the final moments of an auction, the end time is automatically extended by 3 minutes to give all bidders a fair chance to respond. You will see a live countdown on every auction listing so you always know exactly how much time remains.

Auction End Scenarios

  • Successful Close: If the auction ends with bids that meet or exceed the reserve price, the highest bidder wins. An order is automatically created, the buyer is notified, and all outbid participants receive a closing update.
  • Unsuccessful Close: If no bids are placed, or the highest bid is below the reserve price, the listing is closed without an order and moved to the seller's inactive archive.

Bidding Process Flow

graph LR A[Buyer Places Bid] --> B{Valid Bid?} B -- No --> C[Display Error] B -- Yes --> D{Final 3 Minutes?} D -- Yes --> E[Extend Auction +3 Min] D -- No --> F[Update Current Price] E --> F F --> G[Alert Outbid Bidders] F --> H[Confirm Bid Status]

Buy now

Fixed-price purchases & Fees

Buy-now listings allow you to purchase stock immediately at the seller's listed price. The listing page displays the total price alongside a calculated cost-per-unit where applicable, making it easy to evaluate value at a glance. Quantity selections must comply with the seller's Minimum Order Quantity (MOQ).

Purchased stock quantities are automatically decremented from the active listing. When the available quantity reaches zero, the listing status transitions automatically to Sold.

Platform Fees

To support the operations, security, and verification workflows of the marketplace, a transparent 2.5% platform fee is applied to the subtotal of all fixed-price Buy Now purchases. This fee is calculated and clearly detailed as a line item on the checkout review page prior to your final order confirmation.

Offers

Negotiating on buy-now listings

If a listing is available at a fixed price, you can submit an offer to the seller. Offers appear within the message thread for that listing, so the full negotiation history is kept in one place. The seller can accept, decline, or counter your offer, and you can respond to any counter-offer from the same conversation.

When an offer is accepted, an order is created automatically. You will receive a notification and can proceed to payment from your dashboard.

Negotiation Flow

graph LR A[Buyer Sends Offer] --> B[Seller Reviews] B --> C[Accept Offer] B --> D[Decline Offer] B --> E[Counter Offer] C --> F[Order Auto-Created] D --> G[Negotiation Ends] E --> H[Buyer Reviews Counter] H --> I[Accept Counter] H --> J[Decline Counter] H --> K[New Counter Offer] I --> F J --> G K --> B

Orders

Order lifecycle

When you win an auction or complete a buy-now purchase, an order is automatically created and added to your dashboard. The diagram below shows how a listing progresses from publication through to a completed transaction:

stateDiagram-v2 direction LR [*] --> ActiveListing: Listing Published state ActiveListing { direction LR [*] --> Auction: Type = Auction [*] --> BuyNow: Type = Buy-Now } Auction --> AuctionClosed: Time Expires AuctionClosed --> OrderCreated: Winning Bid Exists BuyNow --> OrderCreated: Buyer Clicks Buy state OrderProcessing { direction LR PendingPayment --> PaymentSecured: Buyer Pays (Escrow) PaymentSecured --> Shipped: Seller Dispatches Shipped --> Received: Buyer Accepts Received --> FundsReleased: Escrow Payout } OrderCreated --> OrderProcessing: Handed to Payments OrderProcessing --> [*]: Transaction Complete

You can track the status of all your orders — both as a buyer and a seller — from the Orders section of your dashboard. Notifications for key events such as auction wins, payment confirmations, and dispatch updates will link directly to the relevant order.

Order Cancellations

If an order must be cancelled, administrators handle the resolution and process the stock based on the situation. Cancelled stock is either returned to active status for resale, held reserved for the seller, or permanently archived.

Payments

Secure escrow payments

Escrow payments are deliberately not integrated yet. The current order and escrow records are placeholders for tracking the transaction lifecycle before real-money checkout is connected.

The intended escrow model is designed to protect both buyers and sellers. Once a regulated provider is connected, funds should be held safely by that provider until the goods have been received and inspected.

The diagram below shows the full payment journey from purchase to payout:

sequenceDiagram participant Buyer participant Surplix as Platform participant Escrow as Escrow Provider participant Seller Buyer->>Surplix: Wins Auction / Buy Now Surplix->>Escrow: Create Checkout Session Escrow-->>Buyer: Send Hosted Payment Instructions Buyer->>Escrow: Submit Payment Escrow-->>Surplix: Funds Secured Surplix->>Seller: Notification: Dispatch Goods Buyer->>Seller: Complete contractual obligations Seller->>Buyer: Complete contractual obligations Seller->>Buyer: Ship Physical Goods Buyer->>Surplix: Mark Received & Accepted Surplix->>Escrow: Authorize Release Escrow->>Seller: Payout Funds

Disputes

Resolving order disputes

If a buyer or seller encounters an issue that cannot be resolved directly, either party can open a formal dispute from the order detail page. This locks the transaction until a mediator reviews the case.

To raise a dispute, click "Open Dispute" on the order page, choose a category reason, describe the situation, and upload supporting files (up to 5 MB per file) such as shipping documents, photos of damaged goods, or test reports.

Dispute Resolution Process

Once a dispute is raised, the order and associated escrow funds are placed in a locked status. Our support team reviews all submitted evidence, gathers any necessary clarifications from both sides, and implements a resolution — resulting in either a full or partial refund to the buyer, or releasing the funds to the seller.

graph LR A[Issue Identified] --> B[Open Dispute with Evidence] B --> C[Order & Escrow Locked] C --> D[Staff Reviews Claims] D --> E[Resolution Implemented] E --> F[Disburse Funds or Refund]

Contracts

Terms of sale & templates

Sellers can attach legally binding commercial agreements to listings to define specific transaction terms. Reusable Sale Contract Templates can be created and stored in your dashboard to speed up listing creation.

Contract Presets

We provide 5 commercial presets matching common excess inventory scenarios:

  • Standard Surplus: General excess inventory, brand new or pristine.
  • Untested Returns: Raw customer returns sold strictly "as-is, where-is".
  • Liquidation Lot: Broad clearance lots from warehouse shut-downs or business insolvencies.
  • New Overstock: Factory-fresh items exceeding demand, without warranty restrictions.
  • Branded/Restricted: Stock subject to specific resale boundaries, geographic controls, or brand channel protections.

During listing creation, sellers answer key questions to generate a robust, 18-section legal agreement covering delivery, risk transfer, inspection periods, default rules, and warranties. Alternatively, custom PDF contracts can be uploaded directly.

Dashboard

Dashboard tools & Seller views

The dashboard is your company's operational hub. It is subdivided into sections where you can update profiles, manage active auctions, track orders, edit contract templates, adjust member parameters, and review security profiles.

Seller Activity Monitoring

Sellers have access to advanced tracking tools via the My Listings dashboard page. This page displays metrics for every listing, including the count of watchers, active bids, message conversations, open negotiations, and linked orders. Clicking on any listing exposes a detail panel containing full offer lists and negotiation tools.

Messages

Company-to-company chat

Messaging on Surplix is available to signed-in users under verified companies. To start a conversation, visit any listing page and use the contact option — all conversations are linked to a specific listing so context is never lost.

  • Your inbox displays conversations in a clean, chat-style layout with listing details visible alongside the thread.
  • Conversations update in real time while you have the page open.
  • You can attach files up to 5 MB each to share product documentation, invoices, or other relevant materials.

Notifications

Notifications & Alerts

Our notification system keeps you updated on every major event in your trade journey. The unread notification count is visible on the bell icon in the top header bar, which opens a quick popover containing your 5 most recent updates.

Clicking "View all" takes you to the full notifications list in the dashboard where items are organized and marked as read once viewed. Key transaction events also trigger branded HTML emails to your registered inbox.

Watchlist

Saving listings for later

Found a listing you want to keep an eye on? Add it to your watchlist with a single click. Your watchlist supports the same search and filter options as the main marketplace, making it easy to compare multiple lots before making a decision. This is especially useful for procurement teams evaluating several options at once.

Company profiles

Your public company page

Every verified company on Surplix has a public profile page that displays your company name, country, and active listings. From your dashboard, you can choose what additional information to share — such as your address, VAT number, or company registration number. If your profile is set to private, these optional details will be hidden from other users.

Adding a company logo helps make your listings and messages more recognisable to potential trading partners.

Security

How we keep your account safe

Surplix is built with security at every level. Your account and your company's trading activity are protected by multiple layers of verification and access control:

  • Two-factor authentication (2FA) is mandatory for all new accounts.
  • Email verification is required before you can complete signup.
  • Sensitive actions such as changing your password require 2FA confirmation.
  • Company memberships control exactly who can buy, sell, manage finances, or administer your team.
  • Suspended companies are immediately blocked from all trading activity.
  • File uploads are restricted by type and size to prevent misuse.