CARB stands for the California Air Resources Board. They regulate emissions for products sold in California and other states that adopt their standards, especially automotive parts.

Products that are intended to bypass emissions control systems or produce excessive pollution must be tested and certified by CARB for environmental impact.

Let's explore why and how you need to mange such products.

Integrating CARB compliance into your store provides multiple benefits, including avoiding legal penalties and enhancing your brand's reputation.

Selling non-compliant products (without CARB certification) to California customers can lead to legal problems. To avoid this, label your products as non-CARB compliant. This will prevent California customers from purchasing them.

Being CARB-compliant also helps build trust 🤝🏻 with customers, as more consumers are focused on environmental standards when buying automotive parts.

Before we look at how to label non-compliant products in your X-Cart Store, let’s answer some common questions about CARB.

CARB compliance in X-Cart is handled through several global product attributes, which you can manage in two ways:

CARB-related attributes are automatically added when you import or update products from your data provider or warehouse distributor (e.g., Turn14, Keystone, or Premier).

Follow these steps to add CARB attributes to your products:

After saving, switch to the Product Import tab and select the integration you'd like to use to download CARB information (e.g., Keystone).

📥 Click Re-import Brands to complete the process.

The import process may take some time, as it updates not only CARB attributes but all others provided by the chosen data provider.

You can manually manage CARB product attributes in your X-Cart Admin when adding new products or updating existing ones. To do that:

X-Cart uses several attributes to help you track CARB compliance for each product.

While all of them are visible to customers on the product page, only three can prevent sales to California customers: Not CARB Approved, CARB Acknowledgment Required, and CARB EO Number.

The list below explains how each attribute works and the options you can choose.

Some products maybe completely CARB-compliant, but lack CARB EO Number in their product data when imported, which can cause them to be blocked from sale.

You can control whether products missing CARB compliance information can be sold to California residents. This applies to products with CARB Acknowledgment Required set to YES but no CARB EO number, which serves as proof they passed emission tests.

Here's how to manage this setting:

When enabled, customers will see a specific warning on a checkout page, but will be able to purchase item no matter where they are located. When disabled customers in California won’t be able to complete the checkout process.

X-Cart automatically shows warnings on the cart and checkout pages for products that don’t meet CARB standards or are missing required information. If the shipping address is in California, orders can’t be placed for non-compliant products.

Let's see how it works in detail.

If a customer adds an item to their cart with Not CARB Approved set to YES , they will see a warning label :

In most states, the label doesn’t stop purchases. Instead, it helps customers understand the product’s compliance status before ordering. They will see an explanation message as well:

In most states, the warning won’t prevent the purchase, but it can help customers understand the product’s compliance status. The message will say:

However, if the customer’s address is in California, they won’t be able to proceed past the shipping stage in checkout.

However, if the customer’s shipping address is in California, they won’t be able to proceed past the shipping stage in checkout.

The Place Order button will be disabled, and a message will appear:

Products that are CARB compliant but lack a CARB EO Number will also display a warning label . You’ll see it in:

Customers in most states can still buy these products, even without CARB info.

For customers in California, the ability to purchase these products depends on the Sell products missing CARB compliance info setting in your Admin area:

Customers can view all compliance-related attributes on the product page, under the Specifications tab, in the Safety & Compliance section.

If an attribute is left empty in Admin area, it won’t be displayed here.