WooCommerce

Please add natively support historical product price tracking and automatically calculate the legally required lowest prior price when merchants announce discounts.

Under EU consumer protection legislation, merchants must generally use the lowest price applied during at least the 30 days preceding a price reduction as the reference price.

Currently, WooCommerce supports regular prices, sale prices, and scheduled discounts but does not provide a built-in system to track historical prices or automatically determine the legally required reference price.

This creates unnecessary compliance risks for European merchants and forces them to rely on third-party plugins or custom solutions.

EU Legal Requirements

1. Directive 98/6/EC — Price Indication Directive

Article 6a(1) requires merchants to indicate the prior price when announcing a price reduction.

Article 6a(2) defines the prior price as the lowest price applied by the merchant during a period of at least 30 days before the reduction.

Article 6a(3–5) allows Member States to introduce specific rules for:

– Products liable to deteriorate or expire rapidly.
– Products marketed for less than 30 days.
– Progressively increasing discounts during the same promotional campaign.

2. Directive (EU) 2019/2161 — Omnibus Directive

Article 2(1) introduced Article 6a into Directive 98/6/EC.

These requirements have applied across EU Member States through national implementing legislation since 28 May 2022.

3. Directive 2005/29/EC — Unfair Commercial Practices Directive

This directive prohibits misleading commercial practices, including misleading pricing and discount representations.

4. Court of Justice of the European Union — Case C-330/23 (Aldi Süd)

On 26 September 2024, the Court clarified that advertised percentage discounts and promotional statements highlighting a reduced price must be based on the legally defined prior price.

This reinforces the importance of correctly calculating discount percentages rather than automatically using WooCommerce’s regular price.

Requested Features

WooCommerce should introduce:

– Automatic price history tracking: Record all actual product prices and price changes, including scheduled sales, variations, and updates through the REST API.

– Lowest prior price calculation: Automatically determine the lowest applicable price during the legally required reference period, normally at least 30 days preceding the start of an announced reduction.

– Legally accurate discount calculations: Calculate advertised discount percentages using the applicable prior price rather than automatically using the regular product price.

– Country-specific compliance settings: Support national exceptions and differences permitted under Article 6a, including new products, perishables, and progressive price reductions.

– Product variation support: Track individual variation prices independently and determine their applicable reference prices.

– Promotion history: Distinguish continuous promotional campaigns from separate successive discounts, retaining the correct reference price when legally permitted.

– Compliance warnings: Notify merchants when a displayed crossed-out price, promotional claim, or discount percentage may violate applicable price indication rules.

– Auditable historical records: Maintain timestamped price history for compliance checks, including changes originating from external integrations.

– Frontend and API integration: Expose the legally applicable prior price through WooCommerce templates, product blocks, REST API, and Store API, allowing themes and extensions to display it consistently.

– Configurable display: Provide an option to automatically display the required prior price alongside applicable sale announcements, without requiring custom code.

Example

A product has the following price history:

– Original price: €100
– Promotional price 15 days ago: €80
– Current announced sale price: €70

The legally relevant prior price is €80, not €100.

The advertised reduction should therefore be calculated as 12.5%, rather than 30%, under the general 30-day rule.

WooCommerce should automatically recognize this and prevent merchants from unintentionally displaying a misleading discount percentage.

Why This Should Be Part of WooCommerce Core

Price history and discount calculations are fundamental e-commerce functionalities directly connected to WooCommerce’s existing pricing system.

Native support would:

– Help merchants comply with EU consumer protection legislation.
– Reduce dependence on third-party compliance plugins.
– Prevent misleading discount calculations.
– Improve price transparency for consumers.
– Ensure consistent behavior across themes, blocks, and integrations.
– Provide a standardized solution for European WooCommerce stores.

This would be a valuable improvement to WooCommerce’s core pricing functionality, especially considering that these EU requirements have been applicable since 2022.