WPC Order Tip 3.3.1 – for WooCommerce

I tested WPC Order Tip on a fairly boring WooCommerce setup first, then on a client store that has the usual crime scene: Elementor, Checkout Field Editor, WP Rocket, Stripe, and a theme that thinks overriding every Woo template is a personality trait.

The plugin itself does one job: lets customers add a tip / donation / “buy the team coffee” amount during cart or checkout. And honestly, WPC Order Tip is refreshingly less stupid than many checkout add-ons I’ve had to babysit. It doesn’t try to become a CRM, loyalty system, popup builder, and emotional support animal. It adds a fee line, stores it with the order, and gets out of the way.

Where the settings actually live

On my install, WPC Order Tip showed up under:

WP Admin -> WPClever -> Order Tip

Older WPClever stuff sometimes also drops links around:

WooCommerce -> Settings

The useful knobs are there: predefined tip values, custom tip amount, label text, percentage/fixed style, cart/checkout display, and whether the tip is taxable. That last one matters. I’ve seen stores accidentally tax tips because nobody checked the fee behavior before going live. Fun little accounting grenade.

What you can change from the admin panel: labels, amounts, button style basics, display position, enable/disable custom amount.

What you cannot magically fix from the admin: bad theme markup, broken checkout fragments, or a checkout template that was copied from WooCommerce 4.x and left to rot in a premium theme folder.

DevTools reality check

I opened DevTools because I don’t trust checkout plugins until they earn it. With WPC Order Tip, the Network tab was mostly clean. The plugin added a small frontend script and didn’t vomit five sliders, three icon fonts, and a React app onto the checkout. Bless.

The important thing I watched was the WooCommerce AJAX call:

/?wc-ajax=update_order_review

When I clicked a tip value, checkout totals refreshed properly. If that request hangs, returns 500, or gets cached by some “performance” plugin, the tip won’t apply reliably. Not the plugin’s fault, usually. It’s almost always caching touching Woo AJAX like a drunk intern in production.

In Console, I didn’t get errors from WPC Order Tip itself. I did get one from a theme checkout script trying to bind to .payment_method_stripe before Stripe rendered it. Classic.

The annoying break I hit

On one site, WPC Order Tip looked fine on checkout but the selected tip disappeared after changing shipping method. After ten minutes of muttering, I found the theme had overridden:

/wp-content/themes/client-theme/woocommerce/checkout/review-order.php

and stripped the usual hooks around the order review table. What were they thinking? No idea. Probably “let’s make this impossible to maintain.”

My ugly-but-safe fix was not editing the plugin. I added the missing hook back into the child theme template:

do_action( 'woocommerce_review_order_before_order_total' );

Then I forced the checkout refresh after tip selection with a tiny child-theme script enqueued from functions.php:

add_action 'wp_enqueue_scripts', function () {
class="hljs-title function_ invoke__">is_checkout ()) {
wp_add_inline_script (
'wc-checkout',
jQuery(document.body).on('change click', '.wpc-order-tip input, .wpc-order-tip button', function(){ jQuery(document.body).trigger('update_checkout'); });"
);
}
});

Not pretty. Worked. I slept.

Database and order storage

The nice part: WPC Order Tip doesn’t create some mystery custom table with half-baked schema. In my test, the tip behaved like a WooCommerce fee line.

So you’ll usually find it in:

wp_woocommerce_order_items

with:

order_item_type = fee

And the related values in:

wp_woocommerce_order_itemmeta

If your client asks “where did the tip go in exports?”, check whether their export plugin includes fee lines. WP All Export can handle it, but you may need to map WooCommerce order fees manually instead of expecting a neat “tip” column to appear by magic.

Caching and JS nonsense

With WP Rocket, I had to leave WooCommerce scripts alone. Do not delay everything like a maniac.

The files I refused to delay:

jquery-core
wc-checkout
wc-cart-fragments

If you delay those, WPC Order Tip may still render, but totals won’t update consistently. That’s the kind of bug clients report as “sometimes broken,” which is developer-speak for “there goes your evening.”

LiteSpeed Cache was fine after excluding cart and checkout URLs:

/cart/
/checkout/
/?wc-ajax=*

Basic stuff, but people still cache checkout and then act surprised when money disappears.

GPL and updates

The GPL copy of WPC Order Tip I tested was fully working, no weird frontend lock, no fake “premium disabled” wall, and usable on unlimited websites. Unlimited Website Usage, plain and simple.

Activation was only relevant for official updates/support. The plugin itself didn’t need a key to function in my setup. Manual update was the normal WordPress dance:

Plugins -> Add New -> Upload Plugin

Upload the new ZIP, replace existing version, clear cache, test checkout, done. No ceremony.

If you’re importing settings, there isn’t some giant demo import ritual like with bloated themes. It’s a utility plugin, not a page-builder circus.

What I actually like

WPC Order Tip is boring in the best way. It uses WooCommerce mechanics instead of inventing a parallel checkout universe. The UI is understandable enough that a store manager can change tip values without touching code, which means I don’t get a Slack ping every time they want “10 / 15 / 20” changed to “5 / 10 / 25”.

I absolutely hate checkout plugins that hijack templates and inject layout soup. WPC Order Tip mostly avoids that. If your theme is sane, setup is quick. If your theme is not sane, well, welcome back to functions.php, my old enemy.

FAQ

Why does the tip vanish after shipping changes?

Your checkout update is broken. Check DevTools -> Network -> wc-ajax=update_order_review. If it fails, fix the PHP error or stop caching checkout.

Can I style the buttons in Elementor?

Only partly. Labels and amounts are in WPC Order Tip settings. Real styling usually needs CSS in Appearance -> Customize -> Additional CSS or the child theme stylesheet.

Why isn’t the tip in my order export?

Because it is stored as a WooCommerce fee line, not always as a dedicated “tip” field. Include order fees in your export mapping.

Does it conflict with Stripe?

Not directly in my test. Most Stripe issues came from delayed wc-checkout or themes overriding checkout templates. Exclude checkout JS from delay/defer first.