Excessive third-party API calls can quietly degrade WooCommerce performance, increase server load, and even trigger internal throttling. In this case, a WooCommerce site using the Avalara AvaTax plugin was generating a high volume of unnecessary product sync requests—despite not using that functionality.
Freshy stepped in to isolate and safely disable the source of the issue without impacting critical tax calculations.
Issue Background
The WooCommerce site was integrated with the Avalara AvaTax plugin for tax calculations. However, the plugin was also performing product sync operations related to “landed cost” functionality, which was not being used.
- The site did not use product-level tax sync or international landed cost features
- AvaTax confirmed this sync behavior could not be disabled via settings
- A high volume of API calls was being generated to endpoints like
/companies/{id}/itemcatalogueand/companies/{id}/items - WooCommerce flagged excessive updates to
wc_avatax_landed_cost_products_pending_sync
These unnecessary calls were consuming server resources and increasing background job load.
Diagnosis
Investigation revealed that the AvaTax plugin was:
- Triggering product sync jobs on product updates
- Queueing jobs in Action Scheduler
- Repeatedly writing to the
wc_avatax_landed_cost_products_pending_syncoption
WooCommerce had already begun throttling these updates, confirming the scale of the issue.
Importantly, the site only required core AvaTax functionality like tax calculation and address validation—not product sync.
Resolution Steps
1. Identify sync triggers
- Traced hooks tied to product save events
- Identified Action Scheduler jobs responsible for sync
- Mapped outbound requests to Avalara endpoints
2. Build a must-use plugin to override behavior
- Forced sync state to remain disabled
- Prevented writes to
wc_avatax_landed_cost_products_pending_sync - Removed hooks triggering sync jobs
- Cleared existing scheduled jobs
- Blocked outbound requests to unnecessary Avalara endpoints
3. Preserve critical functionality
- Maintained tax calculation (GetTax)
- Preserved address validation
- Ensured exemption certificate handling remained intact
4. Validate in staging and production
- Confirmed tax calculations remained accurate
- Verified sync queues were cleared
- Monitored for recurrence of excessive update warnings
Final Outcome
- Unnecessary AvaTax product sync calls were eliminated
- Background job load was significantly reduced
- Server performance improved
- WooCommerce no longer flagged excessive updates
- All essential AvaTax functionality remained fully operational
If your WooCommerce site is experiencing performance issues from third-party plugins or API overuse, contact Freshy to get expert help.
