🛒 WooCommerce Category-Based Minimum Order Rules — Documentation
Require customers to purchase a minimum amount and/or quantity from specific product categories before they can check out. This page explains what every setting in the admin panel does and which part of the store it controls.
Setup & Menu Location
This plugin requires WooCommerce. After installing and activating both plugins, the settings screen can be found here:
TAB Dashboard
The landing page of the plugin. It gives a quick, at-a-glance summary of your rules and links straight to rule management.
| Card | What It Shows |
| Active Rules | The number of rules currently set to "Active" |
| Rules Currently Blocking Orders | How many active rules are unmet right now, based on the most recent cart validation across your store |
| Categories With Requirements | The number of unique product categories covered by at least one active rule |
| Last Validation | How long ago the cart/checkout rules were last evaluated on the storefront |
A shortcut card listing your rules with a button that takes you straight to the Rules tab to create a new one.
TAB Rules
The core of the plugin. Here you create, edit, duplicate, reorder and delete your category-based minimum order rules.
- Search rules — instantly filters the list by rule name.
- Status filter — show only Active or only Inactive rules.
- Bulk action — apply Activate / Deactivate / Delete to every selected rule at once.
Opens the Rule Builder modal shown below. The same modal opens in edit mode when you click an existing rule's Edit action.
- Toggle switch — turns a single rule on/off without opening the modal.
- Edit — opens the Rule Builder pre-filled with the rule's current values.
- Duplicate — creates an inactive copy of the rule named "(Copy)", so you can adjust it safely before activating.
- Delete — permanently removes the rule after a confirmation prompt.
🧩 Inside the Rule Builder Modal
- Rule name — an internal label to help you recognize the rule in the list (e.g. "Food Minimum Order").
- Status — Active / Inactive toggle. Inactive rules are never evaluated against the cart.
Search and select one or more WooCommerce product categories this rule applies to. Multiple selected categories are combined: their cart totals are summed together to check against a single minimum.
| Option | What It Does |
| Minimum amount | Requires the cart subtotal from the selected categories to reach a set money amount |
| Minimum quantity | Requires a set number of items from the selected categories |
| Both | Requires the amount and the quantity thresholds to be met at the same time |
- Everyone — the rule applies to all shoppers.
- Guests only — applies only to shoppers who are not logged in.
- Logged-in customers only — applies only to signed-in accounts.
- Specific role(s) — reveals a role picker so the rule only applies to selected WordPress/WooCommerce roles (e.g. Wholesale Customer).
Search and pick individual products that should never count toward this rule's totals, even though they belong to a selected category (for example, gift cards or sample items).
- Custom message — an optional override for this specific rule. If left empty, the global templates from the Messages tab are used instead.
- Category link — the URL used for the "View Products" call-to-action shown next to an unmet rule. If left empty, the first selected category's own archive page is used automatically.
A numeric sort order (lower runs first) used when listing and evaluating rules. Purely organizational — every active, applicable rule is always evaluated, regardless of priority.
TAB Display
Controls where and how the requirement notices and progress bars appear on the storefront.
- Show on Cart page — toggles the notice panel on the WooCommerce Cart page.
- Cart placement — Above cart / Below cart.
- Show on Checkout page — toggles the notice panel on the Checkout page.
- Checkout placement — Above checkout / Below checkout.
When enabled, a compact warning is added inside the WooCommerce mini-cart / cart widget whenever an active rule is not yet met. Off by default.
- Enable progress bar — shows an animated fill bar with a percentage toward the amount and/or quantity goal.
- Enable success messages — when off, rules that are already satisfied are hidden entirely from the panel instead of showing a "requirement met" notice.
When enabled, adding a product from a restricted category on a category archive page shows an instant popup (title, message, button) if the amount requirement for that category is not yet met — without needing to visit the cart.
TAB Messages
The default text templates used across the store whenever a rule doesn't specify its own custom message.
Every text field below accepts these tokens, which are automatically replaced with live cart values:
{category_name}
{current_amount}
{required_amount}
{remaining_amount}
{current_quantity}
{required_quantity}
{remaining_quantity}
{currency}
- Minimum amount not reached — used for "amount"-type rules.
- Minimum quantity not reached — used for "quantity"-type rules.
- Amount + quantity not reached — used for "both"-type rules when either condition is unmet.
- Requirement met — the success text, only shown if "Enable success messages" is on in the Display tab.
- Popup title — the heading shown in the add-to-cart popup.
- Popup message — the body text, with the same placeholders available.
- Popup button text — the label of the popup's action button.
TAB Advanced
Calculation behavior, rule defaults, debugging, and uninstall behavior for store owners and developers.
- Product subtotal after discounts — uses WooCommerce's computed line totals, which already reflect sale prices and cart-level coupons/discounts. (Default.)
- Product subtotal before discounts — uses each product's regular price, ignoring any sale price or coupon.
The starting priority value pre-filled for newly created rules in the Rule Builder.
When enabled, the add-to-cart popup AJAX response includes extra diagnostic data (matched category IDs, rule counts) to help troubleshoot why a popup is or isn't appearing. Leave off on a live store.
How long (in seconds) short-lived internal caches such as the dashboard statistics are kept before being refreshed.
Delete all plugin data on uninstall — off by default. Your rules, settings, and the plugin's database table are preserved even if the plugin is removed and reinstalled later.
Manual Placement via Shortcode
To show requirement notices in any page, post, or widget area, use the following shortcode:
Optional attributes let you narrow down what the shortcode displays:
| Attribute | Purpose |
category | Only show the result for rules covering this category ID |
rule | Only show the result for a specific rule ID |
show_progress | yes / no — show or hide the progress bar in this instance |
[ideamo_minimum_order_rules category="24" show_progress="yes"]
Frequently Asked Questions
No. The plugin works fully after installation with no license, account, or external API required.
No. Rules and settings are never deleted or reset during an update. Uninstalling the plugin also preserves your data unless you've explicitly enabled "Delete all plugin data on uninstall" in the Advanced tab.
Yes. Validation runs through the WooCommerce Store API as well as classic checkout hooks, and compatibility with Cart/Checkout Blocks and High-Performance Order Storage (HPOS) is officially declared.
Yes. Cart totals automatically roll up from a child category to all of its parent categories, so a rule scoped to a parent category is satisfied by purchases made anywhere within its subcategories.
Yes. Each rule has its own "Applies To" setting — Everyone, Guests only, Logged-in customers, or specific WordPress/WooCommerce roles — so you can run several independent rules side by side for different audiences.