Renew Forge → Reminders. Off until you tick Send reminders. By default reminders follow the Act as passed:
- before the first payment after a free trial or after a coupon limited to a number of payments (s. 258(3)(a)); with renewals synchronised to a payment day, a free or reduced first period counts too (“Your first full payment is on …”);
- before the renewal payment that ends each six-month period — the first period starts the day after the contract, the next the day after the last payment a reminder was required for (s. 258(1)–(2), (5));
- an additional, earlier reminder for renewals twelve months or more apart (s. 259(6)–(8)).
Other discounted periods are not recognised; tick Every renewal to cover them.
| Setting | Default | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Days before the payment | 7 | Not set by the Act: s. 259(4) asks for a “reasonable” period. State the same period in your terms |
| Earlier reminder, days before | 30 | For renewals twelve months or more apart. The Act asks only that it comes before the regular reminder, at a reasonable time |
| Remind at least every (months) | 6 | The Act as passed (s. 258(2)); a higher number means fewer reminders than the Act requires, and the screen says so |
| Earlier reminder for gaps of (months) | 12 | The Act as passed (s. 259(7)–(8)) |
| Trial or discount ending | on | Switching it off means fewer reminders than the Act requires |
| Every renewal | off | Also remind before renewals the Act does not require a reminder for |
| Minimum term | off | Tick only if fixed-length subscriptions cannot be ended early: payments inside the term cannot be avoided by cancelling, so they are not renewal payments (s. 258(7)) and need no reminder; the reminder before the first payment after a trial says what the term costs; the checkout names the term; the cancel button ends the subscription at the end of the term |
Example, from the demo data Renew Forge’s own planner computes with these defaults: a monthly plan that started on 3 April 2026 gets a reminder on 26 September 2026 for the payment on 3 October; the next goes on 27 March 2027 for the payment on 3 April 2027, and the five payments in between get none. A yearly plan renewing on 14 November 2026 gets the earlier reminder on 15 October and the regular one on 7 November.
How reminders are sent:
- Planned when WooCommerce Subscriptions changes a subscription and in a daily run (Plan reminders now queues a run straight away); each reminder is planned once per payment and logged with its result in the Reminder log on the same screen.
- A failed email is retried after 15 minutes, 2 hours and 8 hours — never after the payment date.
- When the earlier reminder’s usual date has already passed (a free trial shorter than the earlier-reminder period, or a subscription seen late) it goes at once, with the reason in the log, and the regular reminder follows it — a day later, or half-way to the payment when that is sooner. It is recorded as Missed only when the regular reminder for that payment has already gone out. A reminder whose payment date passed before any send ran is also recorded as Missed, in the log and the journal.
- The emails are Renewal reminder and Trial ending reminder under WooCommerce → Settings → Emails.
- What a reminder says (Sch. 23 Part 3): the renewal date and amount, the previous payment and any increase, the payments that follow, the minimum total, the next payment date or the end date, and how and by when to cancel. Each sent reminder keeps what it said — the amounts, the next or end date, the cancel-by date, a keyed hash of the recipient and whether a theme template replaced ours — in the log and in the journal. When the payment rises after a reminder went out, an updated reminder goes at once.
- A free trial shorter than the reminder period: the reminder goes when the trial starts; the checkout says so, and the Reminders screen and the Compliance check name such products.
- If WooCommerce Subscriptions also sends its own customer reminders, customers get two emails before a renewal; the screen warns — switch one of them off (WooCommerce → Settings → Subscriptions → Customer Notifications).
Reminders are sent only while the licence is active.