Revocation button for § 356a BGB

WooCommerce withdrawal button plugin compliant with § 356a BGB

The WooCommerce Revocation Button Plugin from VASTCOB fully implements § 356a BGB without you having to modify your shop's code. The two-stage flow, the immediate PDF receipt confirmation, and prominent access from every page are available immediately after activation. The plugin thus provides everything that EU Directive 2023/2673 and the German legislator require from June 2026 onwards.

Specifically, this means that level 1 labeled "Revoke Contract" and level 2 labeled "Confirm Revocation" exactly follow the requirements of § 356a para. 1 to 3 BGB. The identification details are automatically displayed in the confirmation step, so no separate programming is necessary. The plugin integrates seamlessly into the WooCommerce My Account structure.

Accessibility without login is ensured via a permanent footer link and an optional floating button. Both comply with the requirement from § 356a para. 1 sentence 3 BGB as well as the ruling of the OLG Cologne with case number 6 U 62/24. This way you meet the requirement for prominent placement and can reliably avoid fines.

WordPress revocation button mandatory from June 19, 2026

As of June 19, 2026, the WordPress Revocation Button becomes a legal requirement for every online shop that concludes consumer contracts for goods, digital content, or digital services. The background is the implementation of EU Directive 2023/2673 into German law via § 356a BGB. By this date, shops must have fully implemented the required functionality.

In case of missing or faulty implementation, administrative offenses threaten with fines up to 50,000 euros or alternatively four percent of annual turnover. The requirement is enforced by the Federal Office of Justice as well as consumer protection associations, which can issue cease-and-desist letters. The effort for subsequent correction can quickly exceed the value of a timely plugin license many times over.

Timely implementation creates legal certainty and prevents stress shortly before the deadline. From June 2026 at the latest, the withdrawal button in the shop will be a mandatory element, similar to today's imprint, withdrawal policy, and privacy policy — purchase license, install plugin, configured in under 15 minutes.

License for 49 euros one-time per domain

The license for the Widerrufsbutton plugin costs 49 euros as a one-time fee per domain — lifetime use including all future updates and feature enhancements. A free version is not available; all features are included in the single available license. One license is required per domain, so multi-shop operators must purchase a separate license per installation. Updates are automatically deployed via the integrated license SDK.

Compared to potential fines of up to 50,000 euros or individual development of functionality, the license fee is negligible. The technical requirements are deliberately kept low and include WordPress 6.0 or higher, WooCommerce 7.0 or higher, and PHP 7.4 or newer. This means the Widerrufsbutton WordPress is compatible with practically every current shop installation and ready for immediate use.

Configurable revocation reasons and audit logging in the plugin

The plugin comes with a configurable selection of withdrawal reasons. Standard reasons such as "Item does not match the description," "Item arrived damaged," or "I changed my mind" are prepared and can be freely reformulated or reordered via drag and drop. You can add your own reasons in seconds via the admin interface.

Every submitted withdrawal is logged in its own database table. The Widerrufsbutton WooCommerce plugin captures order number, date, time, customer email address, reference number, status, and the selected reason. If desired, IP address and user agent are also stored, which is disabled by default for data protection reasons. The storage duration is configured centrally, with reference to § 147 AO and retention periods.

A CSV export makes the audit list available with one click, for example for internal reporting or handover to a tax advisor. The table displays ten, twenty, fifty, or one hundred entries per page. Via a cron job, older entries are automatically removed after the configured retention period, keeping the database lean and GDPR-compliant.

Revocation button WooCommerce with PDF and audit trail

The Revocation Button WooCommerce automatically creates a PDF document in the background as a permanent data carrier, as required by § 356a para. 4 BGB. This PDF contains the date, time, content of the revocation, order number, reference number, and item overview. It is sent to the customer by email and made available in parallel in the shop backend for download.

PDF generation is performed natively in PHP without external libraries such as TCPDF, FPDI, or Dompdf. This keeps the plugin footprint minimal, avoids dependencies, and reduces load times. The only limitation concerns special characters, which are converted to ASCII, for example ä to ae. For CJK languages, the use of a separate library is recommended.

In parallel with the receipt confirmation, the entire process is documented as an audit trail. In the backend, you will find a timestamp for each revocation, a unique reference number, the order reference, the selected reason, and the status. WooCommerce automatically generates an order note with the reference number and optionally notifies you by email. The order status remains unchanged by default — a deliberate protection against premature refund triggers in accounting integrations such as Lexoffice or sevDesk. If desired, an automatic status change (e.g. to "Cancelled" or "On-Hold") can be activated in the settings. Additionally, since version 1.2.4, every email dispatch is verified: both successful and failed receipt confirmations are recorded as order notes in the order. This ensures that the burden of proof under GDPR Art. 5 para. 2 is fully secured.

Accessible, cache-safe and transparent for customers

Since version 1.2.1, the withdrawal flow meets WCAG 2.1 AA requirements: focus trap and focus management in the modal, complete keyboard operability, visible focus outline, screen reader attributes, and support for prefers-reduced-motion. This aligns the plugin with the requirements of the Accessibility Enhancement Act (BFSG), which has applied to online shops since June 2025 — an aspect that many withdrawal solutions completely ignore.

The interaction with performance optimization is also solved: The plugin automatically recognizes 13 common caching systems from NitroPack via WP Rocket and LiteSpeed Cache to Cloudflare and displays a notice in the backend with the specific exclusion URLs of your installation. An automatic nonce refresh prevents the notorious 403 errors that would otherwise occur on cached pages after the nonce validity expires. The withdrawal button thus works reliably even in highly optimized shops with CDN.

For the customer page, the plugin provides transparent status display: After a withdrawal is submitted, the customer sees the processing status directly in their order details — received, in progress, refunded, or completed. If the withdrawal was disputed, the legal basis and justification are displayed. This reduces support inquiries and builds trust. The feature set is rounded out by completely custom button colors including hover states, three frontend shortcodes (form, pure button, email deep link), and YayMail support for custom email templates.

Product Type Detection for Individual Products

With automatic product type detection, the plugin solves a problem that no WooCommerce revocation plugin has addressed so far: distinguishing between standard goods and custom-made items per order line item. A T-shirt without engraving is normal revocable goods under § 355 BGB, but with the engraving "Hans Müller" it is a custom-made item that is excluded from the right of revocation under § 312g para. 2 no. 1 BGB.

Three detection strategies are available: plugin pattern matching with wildcard support for meta keys of known custom field plugins, a universal marker via CSS class for any configurators, and word component recognition for keywords in the option name. An exception whitelist allows you to specifically exclude non-custom items such as gift wrapping or express shipping. All strategies can be freely combined and work with a 15-minute transient cache for optimal performance.

Compatibility was verified against real meta structures from five popular plugins in a 22-point test suite: ThemeComplete WPC Extra Product Options, WooCommerce Product Add-Ons, YITH Advanced Product Options, WC Extra Custom Product Options, and Uni CPO. Edge cases such as empty optional sub-arrays, serialized PHP strings with empty content, and mixed multi-select values are fully covered.

Editing workflow for received revocations

The new processing workflow supplements the plugin with a colored status column in the WooCommerce order overview. Each order with a received revocation immediately shows the current processing status: Received, In Progress, Refunded, Objection Raised, or Completed. A filter dropdown allows quick narrowing down to specific status values.

In the individual order view, status buttons are available that only allow the respective sensible follow-up statuses — a defensive state machine prevents inconsistent transitions. Every status change is immutably documented as a WooCommerce order note: who set which status when, and in case of dispute additionally with which legal basis and justification. This creates a complete audit trail suitable for regulated industries and GoBD requirements.