Renew Forge – UK Subscription Rules for WooCommerce

The UK Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 brings in new rules for subscriptions: customers must be able to leave online as easily as they joined, get a written confirmation when they cancel, and see the key terms before they subscribe. The UK government announced in August 2026 that the rules come into force in January 2027; the regulations that fill in the details are not published yet. Renew Forge helps a WooCommerce Subscriptions store get ready now, and keeps a record of what happened when a customer cancels. Wording and behaviour are configurable, so you can match them to the final regulations and to your own terms. It is a tool, not legal advice, and it does not guarantee compliance on its own. What it does

• Compliance check — 14 items about your store, each with its status, what we found, what to do and the provision it is about.
• Print report — a clean copy of the Compliance check, laid out for paper or a PDF, with the shop, the date and how many items need attention.
• One-click cancel button in My account → Subscriptions and on each subscription page. One press cancels; there is no "are you sure?" page.
• Confirmation email with the date the subscription ends, sent as soon as the customer cancels.
• Evidence journal of every cancellation: who, when, from which screen and whether the confirmation email was sent. IP address and browser are stored only as keyed hashes.
• Alerts to the shop when a cancellation is refused or its confirmation email cannot be sent.
• CSV export of the journal, exactly as stored.
• Print a subscription's record — a button on the Journal, filtered to one subscription, that opens its records as a document to print or save as a PDF: the shop, the period and the number of records, then the records oldest first.
• Subscription summary on subscription product pages: price, billing period, renewal, free trial and how to cancel.
• Subscription cancellation block and shortcode for account pages built with blocks or a page builder.

Renewal reminders, cooling-off refunds and a pre-contract acknowledgement at checkout are part of Renew Forge Pro, a separate plugin. How cancelling works The customer presses Cancel subscription. The subscription moves to "Pending cancellation" at once: the customer keeps access until the end of the period already paid for and no further payment is taken. The page confirms it and shows the date access ends, and the confirmation email goes out. A second press changes nothing. Cancellations made another way — with the WooCommerce Subscriptions Cancel link, by a shop manager in wp-admin, by a payment gateway or through the REST API — are confirmed and journaled too, once per cancellation. By default the WooCommerce Subscriptions Cancel link is replaced by the Renew Forge button, so customers have a single way to cancel; you can keep it in the settings. If something goes wrong If WooCommerce Subscriptions refuses a cancellation, or the confirmation email cannot be sent, the shop is told straight away: an email to the shop, a note on the subscription and a notice on the Dashboard and the Renew Forge screens until someone marks it handled. A confirmation email that failed is tried again three more times within 24 hours. A fault in the journal never stops a cancellation. The journal is evidence Records are only ever added. Nothing in the plugin edits or deletes a record, and the CSV export writes each record as it was stored. A recorded compliance check shows what your store looked like on a given day. Your data stays on your site The plugin makes no external requests and loads nothing from third-party servers. It schedules nothing on activation; its only background task is the retry of a confirmation email that failed to send. It adds suggested wording about the journal to the privacy policy guide under Settings → Privacy.

0.3.1

• Changed: the journal table gets an index on the order number. A table from an earlier version is brought up to date in wp-admin, by WP-Cron or when the plugin is activated, one request at a time and never on a visitor's request; a table that is missing is created at once. No record is changed.
• Developers: the journal can be read by order number (EventFilter::$orderId; the Journal screen has no such filter). A paid order carries the unit its amounts were recorded in (PaidOrder::$decimals), so 99.50 in a shop that now shows whole units is not rounded to 100, and an amount with more than six decimal places is refused with an exception that names the order. The subscriptions gateway gains paidOrderDates() and lastPaidRenewalExact().

0.3.0

• Added: a "Print this subscription's record" button on the Journal when it is filtered to one subscription. It opens that subscription's records as a document to print or save as a PDF: the shop and its address, the subscription number, the period, the number of records and when the document was prepared, a line saying how this journal is kept and what it records about removals, then the records oldest first with their details open, and the page number at the foot of every sheet. At most 500 records are listed; a line says so and points to the CSV export, which has all of them. Nothing is loaded from or sent to another site.

0.2.2

• Changed: Renew Forge notices appear only on the Dashboard, the Plugins screen and the Renew Forge screens, and only to people who can act on them. A cancellation that needs attention still leaves a private note on the subscription and, where a person must act, an email to the shop.

0.2.1

• Added: a Print report button on the Compliance check, and a print view of that screen: "3 of 14 need attention" at the top, the shop and the date, every status as a word, each item kept on one page. Nothing is loaded from or sent to another site.
• Changed: the start of the UK subscription rules is given as the UK government announced it in August 2026, January 2027, in this readme and on the Compliance check, with the note that the regulations that fill in the details are not published yet.

0.2.0

• Admin screens redesigned in the Forge design system: branded header, cards, status pills, settings tabs. No behaviour change.
• Fixed: the reason WooCommerce Subscriptions gives when it refuses a cancellation is journaled word for word. It was stored with its quotes turned into HTML entities, which the Journal showed as they were; records already written stay as they are. The notice about a journal entry that could not be written shows the database's message as it is, too. The notice, the email to the shop and the subscription's note about a refused cancellation no longer put a second full stop after the reason.
• Fixed: the Settings screen confirms a save ("Settings saved."). WordPress shows that message by itself only on the screens of its own Settings menu.
• Fixed: when the journal cannot be written, "Record this check in the journal" says why on the Compliance screen instead of ending with an error page.

0.1.2

• Fixed: items that other plugins add to the Compliance check through the rnwf_compliance_checks filter were left off the Compliance screen when those plugins load after Renew Forge. The list is now read when the screen is shown.
• Developers: the subscriptions gateway says whether a subscription synchronised to a payment day had a free or reduced first period (concessionaryFirstPeriod()); each paid order carries whether it was an early renewal, and the whole order's total and refunds — including a refund entered as an amount without order lines —, so its refundable amount is never more than the order has left.

0.1.1

• Changed: a store whose subscriptions can have a minimum term (set by an add-on) keeps it when a customer presses the cancel button: the request is recorded, the subscription ends at the end of the term and the payments until then remain due. The customer is told the date on screen and by email, My account shows it instead of a second button, and the journal records it (new record type "Cancellation requested: ends at the end of the minimum term"). Without such an add-on the button works as before.
• Developers: the cart's subscription terms include what each renewal will take (recurring delivery, fees and tax) and the end date of a fixed-length subscription, taken from WooCommerce Subscriptions' recurring carts, which are built first when WooCommerce has not calculated them yet.

0.1.0

• First release: compliance check, one-click cancel button with confirmation email, evidence journal with CSV export, subscription summary on product pages.