Scheduled actions in WooCommerce: the essential guide

When working with WordPress and WooCommerce, sooner or later you’ll need to run background tasks. Whether it’s sending an automatic email, processing recurring payments, or cleaning up old data, you need an efficient way to schedule tasks. While many developers use WP_Cron, today we’ll show you why Scheduled Actions are a better choice, especially with WooCommerce.

What are Scheduled actions?

Scheduled Actions are a more reliable and powerful way to schedule background tasks in WordPress. Unlike WP_Cron, which relies on website traffic to trigger tasks, scheduled actions are managed by Action Scheduler, a task queue library included with WooCommerce.

This system stores pending tasks in the database, runs them in the background, and retries them automatically if something fails. It also provides a user interface where you can view, cancel, or reschedule actions from the WordPress admin.

What is WP_Cron in WordPress and how to use it

Why Use Scheduled Actions Instead of WP_Cron?

How does WooCommerce use it?

WooCommerce uses scheduled actions for almost everything that happens in the background, such as:

• Sending automated emails
• Cleaning up expired cart sessions
• Processing subscription renewals and payments
• Generating reports or syncing with external services

You can view scheduled actions in your site by going to: WooCommerce > Status > Scheduled Actions

How to create your own scheduled actions

1. Schedule a one-time action

<?php
if ( function_exists( 'as_schedule_single_action' ) ) {
    as_schedule_single_action(
        strtotime( '+10 minutes' ), // Execution time
        'send_welcome_email',       // Hook name
        [ 'userId' => 123 ]         // Optional args
    );
}

2. Register the callback

<?php
add_action( 'send_welcome_email', 'sendWelcomeEmailCallback' );

function sendWelcomeEmailCallback( $args ) {
    $userId   = $args['userId'];
    $userData = get_userdata( $userId );

    wp_mail(
        $userData->user_email,
        'Welcome!',
        'Thanks for joining our platform.'
    );
}

3. Schedule a recurring task

<?php
if ( function_exists( 'as_schedule_recurring_action' ) ) {
    as_schedule_recurring_action(
        strtotime( 'tomorrow 00:00:00' ), // First run
        DAY_IN_SECONDS,                   // Interval
        'clean_temp_data'
    );
}

And its callback:

<?php
add_action( 'clean_temp_data', 'cleanTempDataCallback' );

function cleanTempDataCallback() {
    global $wpdb;
    $wpdb->query( "DELETE FROM {$wpdb->prefix}temporal_data WHERE created_at < NOW() - INTERVAL 1 DAY" );
}

4. Cancel or check a scheduled action

<?php
$timestamp = as_next_scheduled_action( 'clean_temp_data' );

if ( $timestamp ) {
    as_unschedule_action( 'clean_temp_data' );
}

Best practices

• Use as_schedule_single_actionfor one-time tasks and as_schedule_recurring_actionfor repeating jobs.
• Always check if as_schedule_* functions exist before calling them.
• If you’re using WP-CLI, you can run tasks manually with: wp action-scheduler run

Scheduled Actions are a powerful and reliable tool for managing background tasks in WooCommerce. They’re more dependable than WP_Cron, support automatic retries, and scale well on high-traffic sites. If you’re building features that require background execution, this is the recommended approach.

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