Warranty Cart – Extended Warranty, Claims & Renewals for WooCommerce

FAQ

How do I set up my first warranty product?

1. Open Products → Add New (a regular WooCommerce product).
2. Give it a title, description and price. Tick Virtual so the order completes automatically.
3. Click the Warranty tab in the Product data box.
4. Set Status: Enabled, Type: Main warranty, Duration: 1, Duration unit: years, and fill in Coverage details.
5. Under Offer alongside, choose which products this cover is sold with — any product, chosen categories, or named products.
6. Publish. The warranty now appears on the product page of everything it covers.
7. Optionally create Additional service products the same way (set Type: Additional service and pick the main warranty under Associated warranty), and drop [warranty_cart] on a page to sell cover separately as well.

How do I offer a warranty on the product page?

Open the warranty product, go to the Warranty tab, and set Offer alongside:

• Any product — the cover appears under Add to cart on everything in the shop.
• Products in chosen categories — and in any category beneath them, so a rule on «Appliances» covers «Appliances → Kitchen».
• Chosen products only — naming a variable product covers all of its variations.

Under Warranty Cart → Settings → Storefront you can show the offer on the product page, in the cart, in both, or nowhere. Product page only is the default.

Can I price a warranty as a percentage of the product?

Yes. On the warranty product, set Price to Percentage of the covered product and enter the percentage — 10%, say. Optional Minimum and Maximum keep it sensible at both ends: 10% of a £40 kettle is not worth administering, and 10% of a £5,000 television asks for more than anybody will pay.

A fixed price works for a catalogue where everything costs about the same, and breaks immediately where it does not — £29 of cover is most of the value of a £40 item and a rounding error on a £2,000 one.

The price is worked out against the product being covered at the moment cover is added to the cart, and held there: if you reprice the product afterwards, a customer’s existing cart keeps the figure they were quoted. Rounding follows your store’s own currency settings.

On the [warranty_cart] selector page there is no product to take a percentage of, so the warranty’s own price is shown, with a note saying what the rule is.

Can customers file a warranty claim?

Yes. Customers see their cover under My Account → Warranties and can file a claim against anything still active, describing what has gone wrong. Claims arrive on the Claims screen in the admin, where you move them through Pending, In progress, Approved, Rejected and Resolved — and the customer is emailed at every change, with whatever note you wrote.

Can customers renew a warranty before it expires?

Yes. A Renew button appears on their account page as cover approaches expiry, and for a grace period afterwards; both windows are settings, 30 days each by default. The expiry reminder email links straight to it.

Renewing goes through the cart, so it produces a real order and you are paid for it. Renewing early adds the new term to the time already left rather than restarting the clock — a customer with two months remaining who renews for a year ends up with fourteen months, not twelve.

Every warranty renewal is recorded against the policy: when it happened, how far the term moved, what it cost and which order paid for it.

Can I upsell a warranty in the cart as well as the product page?

Yes. Under Warranty Cart → Settings → Storefront, choose where the offer appears: the product page, the cart, both, or nowhere. Product page only is the default.

The product page catches the customer while they are still deciding what to buy; the cart catches the ones who skipped past it. An extended warranty upsell is pure margin either way — there is no stock to buy and nothing to ship.

Is this an RMA or returns plugin?

No. Warranty Cart sells product warranty cover and runs what follows it — claims, renewals, expiry and reminders. Whether a claim ends in a repair, a replacement or a refund is your decision to make; you record it as the claim’s resolution and the customer is emailed it. What the plugin does not do is issue return authorisations, print return labels or restock inventory, so if you need a returns workflow, an RMA plugin is the right tool and the two sit alongside each other.

Can I ask for a serial number or an install date?

Yes, that is what checkout fields are for. On the Checkout Fields screen you define what a warranty needs registering — serial number, model, install date, engineer’s name — and the answers are stored against the policy, so the product registration details are on the record when a claim arrives.

Does this work with variable products?

Yes. Naming a variable product under Offer alongside covers every one of its variations, so you set the rule once rather than per size or colour.

Will this work with my theme?

The offer renders through WooCommerce’s own template system and is styled in relative units, so it takes your theme’s type scale rather than fighting it. Every template can be overridden from your theme in the usual way — copy it into yourtheme/warranty-cart/.

How do I display warranty products?

Use the [warranty_cart] shortcode on any page or post. The shortcode accepts one attribute, layout:

[warranty_cart layout="grid"] or `[warranty_cart layout="list"]`

To scope which products show (category, custom meta, etc.) use the warranty_cart_shortcode_products_query filter.

What payment methods are supported?

Whatever your store already takes. Warranty records are created when a WooCommerce order reaches Completed, so any gateway WooCommerce supports works — Stripe, PayPal, Square, Mollie, WooPayments, bank transfer, cash on delivery.

The plugin handles no payment itself and has no gateway-specific code. Warranty Cart → Settings → Payments lists every gateway on your store and what each one supports.

Do I need to do anything to support my payment gateway?

No. Warranties are created when an order is marked complete, which WooCommerce does whatever took the payment — card, PayPal, bank transfer, cash on delivery. Settings → Payments lists every gateway on your store and what each one supports.

How do I access the admin dashboard?

After installation, click the top-level Warranty Cart menu in your WordPress admin sidebar (shield icon). This provides access to all warranty management features: dashboard, warranty product catalog, warranty records, orders, reports, settings, and tools.

What are the different admin sections for?

• Dashboard: sales metrics, recent orders and popular warranties
• Warranties: create warranty products, set their terms, choose what they cover
• Records: every warranty sold and its current status
• Claims: work through customer claims and reply to them
• Orders: warranty orders with customer details
• Reports: charts showing sales performance and trends
• Settings: offer placement, claims, renewals, emails, checkout fields
• Tools: import and export data, diagnostics, maintenance

How do warranty certificates work?

The plugin automatically generates PDF certificates for purchased warranties using DomPDF. They are attached to the order completion email and can be re-downloaded from Warranty Cart → Orders. PDFs are stored under wp-content/uploads/warranties/. Toggle the feature on or off under Warranty Cart → Settings → Enable PDF certificates.

When are warranty records created?

When a WooCommerce order containing one or more warranty products reaches the Completed status. That is a WooCommerce core event, so it fires whatever took the payment. Each warranty product in the order produces a row in wp_warranty_cart_warranties with status active and an expiration_date calculated from the duration.

How are the reminder and expiration emails scheduled?

Two daily WP-Cron events handle the lifecycle:

• warranty_cart_check_expirations — marks active warranties as expired on or after their expiration_date and sends the Warranty Expired email.
• warranty_cart_send_reminders — emails customers N days before expiration (default 30, filterable via the warranty_cart_reminder_days filter).

If your host disables WP-Cron, set up a real system cron job (every 5–15 minutes hitting wp-cron.php) and add define('DISABLE_WP_CRON', true); to wp-config.php.

How do I import warranty products in bulk?

Go to Warranty Cart → Tools, download the sample CSV, fill it in, and upload via the Import CSV card. Each row creates a WooCommerce product with the Warranty tab pre-filled.

I activated the plugin but emails or PDFs aren’t sending — what now?

Common fixes:

• Make sure Warranty Cart → Settings → Enable email notifications and Enable PDF certificates are on.
• wp_mail() is unreliable on default WordPress installs. Install an SMTP plugin (WP Mail SMTP, FluentSMTP) and connect a real transactional provider.
• DomPDF needs the PHP gd or imagick extension and ~128 MB memory.
• Ensure wp-content/uploads/warranties/ exists and is writable by your web server user.

Is the plugin secure?

• All input is sanitized and validated, and REST requests are nonce-checked.
• Customers can only see, claim against and renew their own warranties. Ownership is enforced in the domain layer, so it holds however the request arrives.
• The plugin processes no payments and stores no card data — WooCommerce and your gateway handle that, so there is nothing sensitive here to leak.
• Uploads are validated and restricted to safe types.