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Customers Can Buy More Than the Purchase Limit

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If customers can buy more than the limit you set in Maximum Products per User for WooCommerce, their earlier orders are usually not counted yet. The most common fix: go to WPFactory > Max Products per User > General, add Processing (and On hold) to Order statuses, then run Tools > Recalculate sales data.

Causes and fixes #

All settings below are at WPFactory > Max Products per User (also reachable at WooCommerce > Settings > Maximum Products per User).

  1. Only completed orders are counted. A purchase is added to the customer’s total only when the order reaches one of the statuses in General > Order statuses, and the default is Completed only. Orders still in Processing do not count, so during a busy launch a customer can place a second or third order before you complete the first one.

    Fix: add Processing and, if you use offline payments, On hold to Order statuses and save. Adding Pending payment would also count unpaid orders that are never finished, so leave it out unless you want that. Then run Tools > Recalculate sales data so existing orders are counted with the new statuses. This is free.

  2. Each variation has its own limit. When General > Use variations is ticked, every variation is limited separately, so a customer who reached the limit on a medium blue shirt can still buy the large one.

    Fix: untick Use variations (default: off) to count all variations of a product together. With Pro and Limits > Per product enabled, you can also set Use variations to Yes or No for a single product on its edit page, then update the product.

  3. You expected one total for the whole store. The All products limit applies to each product on its own. A limit of 5 lets a customer buy 5 of every product, not 5 items in total.

    Fix: to cap several products together, put them in one category or tag, enable Limits > Per product category (or Per product tag) and set the limit on that term. Category and tag limits count every product in the term together. These are Pro features. See how to limit purchases by category or tag.

  4. Guests are not tracked. With Guests set to the default Do nothing, guest orders are never counted. When you identify guests, you choose one method: Identify guests by IP address or Identify guests by checkout billing email address (which only applies at checkout). A guest who switches network or types a new email starts again from zero.

    Fix: for a strict limit, set Guests to Block guests from buying products so customers must log in, and limits follow their account. See how to handle guest purchase limits.

  5. Older orders are missing from the data. Sales data is recorded automatically only from the moment the plugin is enabled. Orders placed before that, or before you changed Mode, Date range or Order statuses, are not in the totals.

    Fix: run Tools > Recalculate sales data. See how to recalculate and reset sales data.

How to confirm it is fixed #

  1. Log in as a test customer (not an administrator account you use for other tests) and buy the product up to its limit.
  2. In WooCommerce > Orders, move that order to one of your selected Order statuses.
  3. As the same customer, add the product to the cart again. The limit message should appear, and checkout should refuse the order.

For a broader checklist, see best practices and troubleshooting.

Still stuck? #

Need a hand? Our team answers every ticket on the Maximum Products per User support forum. Tell us your Mode, Date range, Order statuses and Guests settings.