Child pages
  • Complying with the European legislation
Skip to end of metadata
Go to start of metadata

You are viewing an old version of this page. View the current version.

Compare with Current View Page History

« Previous Version 21 Next »

Table of contents

Introduction

This guide is intended to European merchants and explains how they can configure their shop and make sure it's compliant with European e-commerce legislation. 

Why you should bother about it

If you're based in Germany, Austria or Switzerland, or intend to sell in those countries, making sure your shop is compliant with the legislation is a mandatory requirement. Failing to do so could expose you to prosecution fees. To avoid these prosecutions, certification companies like Trusted Shops, EHI, Händlerbund and Protected Shops can audit your shop and provide you with a certificate that proves you're in conformity with legal requirements.

PrestaShop 1.7 is already pre-certified by these companies, which means it'll ease the process of getting the complete certification. To know more about this, you may read :

(TO DO) link to all 4 pre-certification pages on prestashop.com

How to configure your shop

The cornerstone of PrestaShop's compliance is the module "Legal Compliance" (technical name: ps_legalcompliance), which allows you to do 95% of the set up for a compliant shop. Some other elements are not part of this module and can be configured separately. We will go through every aspect of the Legal Compliance module and these other elements.

Configure the Legal Compliance module

Installation

Go to your back-office, in the Modules & Services page, and in the first tab "Selection" use the search bar to look for "legal compliance" and install the module.
You can then go in the second tab "Installed modules" and click on the "Configure" button of the module Legal Compliance.

Pre-set elements

When you install the Legal Compliance module, it actually triggers a lot of pre-configuration that happens behind the hood. Here's a list and you may click on the links to see more about each element.

  • Some static pages are created, thus providing you the means to indicate legally required informations to your customer. For more, see "Legal content management". The links to these static pages will automatically be part of the footer of the front-office, thus accessible for your customers at any time.
  • The final summary in the last step of the checkout is also enabled.
  • Newsletter subscription module
  • Tax settings: line with the total amount of taxes
  • "Free" shipping label : sometimes, the default carrier of your default country may be free and this information is displayed on the shopping cart page even if you haven't set your address and delivery method during checkout. Because the final shopping cost depends on the address and chosen carrier the Legal Compliance module will automatically add a mention "under conditions" which links to the static page "Shipping and Payment" where you should write every detail of the shipping conditions and costs.
    (TO DO : add screenshot)
  • (TO DO) Opt-in for ToS and revocation terms in checkout

Configuration

In this paragraph we'll go through every option inside the configuration page of the Legal Compliance module.

LABELS

Delivery time label (available products)

This is a global parameter that will be displayed on the detail page of every non-virtual product. We recommend you use a precise indication like "delivery time: 2 to 5 days" instead of vague indications "delivered in 3 days in normal conditions".

In back-office:


In front-office:

Delivery time label (out-of-stock products)

Same as above but for out-of stock products.

Additional information about delivery time

You may use this field to display additional information about the applicable conditions of the above-mentioned delivery time labels. For instance, the delivery time may only apply to Germany.
A link to the static page "Shipping and Payment" is also automatically added so that the customer may have access to the complete information about the shipping conditions.

In back-office:

In product detail pages:

In the footer of product detail pages:

 

'Our previous price' label

When a product is on sale, this option adds the label 'Our previous price' before the crossed price. It thus allows you to indicate that this crossed price comes from an active promotion and that it's not the manufacturer's recommended price nor the competitor's price.

In the product detail page:

Tax 'inc./excl.' label

This option displays whether the tax is included on the product page ('Tax incl./excl.' label) and adds a short mention in the footer of other pages (product listings).

In product detail pages :


In the footer of product listing pages:


Price per unit label

When this option is enabled, the unit price (price per kg, L...) will be visible next to the product price if available. 

See how to set a unit price here.

In the front-office:

'Shipping fees excl.' label

When enabled, this option displays a label "shipping excluded" both in product detail pages and in the footer of product listings. This "shipping excluded" label is a link to the static page "Shipping and payment", which is automatically created by the Legal Compliance module at its installation. Make sure the shipping and payment terms are associated to a static page (TO DO : see Legal content management).

In the product detail page:

In the footer of product listings:


Revocation Terms within ToS

This option will include the content of the revocation terms within the Terms of Service static page.

Revocation for virtual products

This option adds a mandatory checkbox at the end of the checkout process when the cart contains a virtual product (either a service or a digital good). It ensures that the client is aware that he looses his right to cancel once the download of digital good has begun or once the service has been fully performed.

'From' price label (when combinations)

If a product has combinations with different prices, this option adds a label "From" before the product price in product listings. Please note that the price displayed in product listings is not the lowest possible price but the default combination price.

In product listings:


Custom text in shopping cart page

This option allows you to add a custom text in the shopping cart, giving you the opportunity to inform the customers about how the order is legally confirmed and how the order data will be used and/or saved.

(TO DO: insert 2 screenshots) 

FEATURES

Enable 'Reordering' feature

This option allows customers to re-order in one click from their Order History. Disable this option if it is considered as unsolicited goods in your local legislation.

Proportionate tax for shipping and wrapping

When this option is enabled, the tax for shipping and wrapping costs will be calculated proportionate to taxes applying to the products in the cart. It allows you to define a fixed tax included shipping cost for each carrier, while the tax rate is computed from the average cart taxes. This option substitutes the default behavior in which you define a tax excluded shipping cost and choose a fixed shipping tax rule.

When enabled, make sure that the shipping fees you set are tax included:

  • carriers' shipping costs (in IMPROVE / Shipping / Carriers / your carrier)
  • handling charges (in IMPROVE / Shipping / Preferences)
  • additional shipping fees (in SELL / Catalog / Products / your product)

(TO DO: add the links to the other doc pages)

LEGAL CONTENT MANAGEMENT

Your country's legislation may require you to communicate some specific legal information to your customers, like your terms of service or revocation terms. For that purpose, you may use the static pages automatically created by the Legal Compliance module. It's your responsibility to fill these pages with the required legal content. For legal support about this content, you may get help from PrestaShop partners:

(TO DO: add the links)

To complete these pages, go to IMPROVE / Design /  CMS. (TO DO: add link to the corresponding doc)

The Legal Compliance has 7 pre-defined topics that serve different roles in different conditions. These topics are :

  • Terms of Service (ToS)
  • Environmental notice
  • Legal notice
  • Privacy
  • Revocation terms
  • Revocation form
  • Shipping and payment

Each of these topics can be assigned with a static page that corresponds to this topic.

To ensure that other options like 'Shipping fees excl.' label or Additional information about delivery time link to the corresponding content, make sure you have assigned a static page to the topics.

You may also leave it empty if you don't need a legal topic. For instance you may not need an 'Environmental notice' if you don't sell electronics.

By default, all of these topics that have been assigned a static page will be visible in the footer of the front-office:

(TO DO: add screenshot)

EMAIL CONTENT INCLUSION

This section allows you to include information from the "Legal Content Management" section above at the bottom of your shop's emails. For each type of email, you can define which content you would like to include. By default, several legal contents are already pre-configured to be included in some email templates. Please note that the list of email templates in this section does not contains email templates from external modules.

Configure other elements of PrestaShop

Order settings

GENERAL

Enable final summary

This option displays an overview of the order (delivery and billing addresses, shipping method and cart content) in the final checkout step before confirming the order. It allows your customers to check their order and modify it if needed. This summary is required in some european countries.

In the checkout process:

Terms of service

Enable this option to require customers to accept the terms of service during the checkout.

Product settings

Price per unit

Depending on your local legislation, your may be required to display a unit price for products that can be quantified with volume or mass (€/kg or €/L...). You may set this unit price in the configuration page of your product:

Product details summary

In the shopping cart summary (both in shopping cart page and final summary), by default only product combinations attributes will be displayed in the cart summary. You might be required to display other relevant details about the product at this step. To add this information, a workaround is to create attributes for this purpose.

For instance, let's assume you're selling a television and need to display its diagonal in the shopping cart summary.

  1. In SELL / Catalog / Attributes & Features, go to "Add new attribute", name it "Diagonal" with public name "Diag.", select attribute type "Radio buttons" and save.
  2. Back in SELL / Catalog / Attributes & Features, click on the newly created attribute "Diagonal" in the table.
  3. Then go to "Add new value", set up "138 cm (55'')" and save.
  4. In SELL / Catalog / Products / Television, check the radio button 'Product with combinations' in the first tab 'Basic Settings"
  5. In the second tab 'Combinations', check "138 cm (55'')" in Diag. (or type it in the text bar). Then generate.
  6. You now have an additional detail in the shopping cart summary:

Shipping settings

Custom carrier transit time 

If you've created a custom carrier (in IMPROVE / Shipping / Carriers), you should make sure that the field transit time does not contradict the delivery time label you may have set up with the Legal Compliance module.

Special customs fees

In countries like Switzerland, some additional fees may be added when the product crosses the border. To warn the customer about these fees, you may edit the transit time field of your swiss carrier (if you've created it manually). 

Newsletter subscription

how to configure it, what to put in the Privacy policy page about the newsletter

Customer reassurance module

What to put in it.

Bankwire module

remove the double invitation to pay

Static pages

Fill it in!

What is still your responsibility

PrestaShop's core and native modules will allow you to comply with most of the functional requirements from the certification authorities. However there are some elements that are specific to your shop that are your responsibility to configure or fill-in. These elements are:

  • the static pages that contain legal information
  • payment modules
  • newsletter modules
  • shipping modules

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  • No labels