[SOLVED] WooCommerce products with taxes includes shows the wrong prices to guest users.

This morning we solved a tricky problem in the WooCommerce of a client, where the prices where configured for be introduced with taxes, but guest users gets the wrong price when they enter the site. In this post we give you the solution to this problem. It’s very easy!

The situation

The client has a WordPress with WooCommerce in the European Union where they sell physical products. For that reason, the products have taxes for certain countries, and this taxes are properly configured in the backend of this e-commerce.

WooCommerce have several options about how and where show taxes in an online shop. This company have chosen to show the prices with “taxes included” in all the shop. That way, buyers doesn’t receive a “surprise” in the check-out process and they don’t kill conversions for that reason.

It have sense from their point of view: if a product cost more than expected at the time of payment, the client gets angry and run away. So their configuration in the backend looks like this:

As you can see, prices are introduced with taxes, client taxes are calculated based in the shipping address, and in the shop, in the cart and the in check-out the prices are shown with taxes included, so the buyer always see the price like that.

Where is the problem

The problem came in the practical application of this configuration. If the buyer have an account and login, that person sees the correct price. However, when a guest buyer without a provided address enters the website, see wrong prices.

So the problem is that the website, when doesn’t know the location of a client, shows the price without the local tax applied. For a certain product, instead of the correct price of 6,20€ the price shown is 5,17€, and this is a huge problem because it blown ups the whole price strategy and configuration that the client wants.

However, if everything about taxes and prices is well and valid configured… Where is the problem?

The solution

The main problem is to think that the error comes from something that is configured wrong about prices and taxes. The incorrect parameter is inside “WooCommerce > Settings > General” where you are going to find a dropdown where you can select the default location for the shown prices of the product.

If we choose, for example, the shop’s location, the products now are going to show the correct price by default if the shop’s country have taxes applied, as is this case. The “correct price” for this client conception is the “price + taxes” in the home country of the shop. This is, in the product that we mentioned before, the 6.20€ price.

Conclusion

Sometimes big problems have easy solutions. In this case we solved the client’s problem just choosing the correct option in a dropdown. However, the hardest part is to analyse the situation, check everything and find the exact parameter that needs to be adjusted.

This particular problem appears in a certain necessity of this client to have certain configuration for conversion of their clients. WooCommerce is a so wonderful tool that can be configured in so many ways that can be adapted to almost any need.

I hope that you found useful this post, if you have a similar problem in your WooCommerce. If you need further help, you can write our support service. See you soon!