Product Limit by Yearly Doesn't work

-- HikaShop version -- : 4.2.2
-- Joomla version -- : 3.9.13

I have some products set to limit the quantity yearly but it only limits per cart. The limit works fine in a single cart but the customer can come back and create a new order as often as they like. We need the limit to be a yearly total.

A screen shot of the settings is attached. As you can see there should be a limit of 4 products from the selected category per year for users in the Vita-FT user group.

The product is directly in that category but we are talking about variants of the product. The limit as set works on individual carts, just not as a yearly limit.

Thanks Nicolas. I just caught on another project but will come back to you on this.

Finally back on this project. Further testing confirms that the limit by product category doesn't work but we resolved this by listing the products instead.
Update, on further testing this is not working either. It seems to be that product variants are not limited beyond the number allowed in the cart. Previous orders even of the same variant are not being counted in the yearly total. I created a limit for a single product with no variants and the limits work as expected whether I selected the product or the product category in the limit config. When I change the category or product to one where the products have variants, the yearly limits are ignored. I've set up a test site for this client and will send the access and ftp details via contact page

Thanks Nicolas, that seems to have solved the problem so long as we nominate the category the product is in rather than the product but its easy to create an additional category when needed so this is all we need. The client is testing further but my tests have all worked.

Hey Nicolas, I just noticed some strange behaviour with the limits. We have more than one product with limits based on categories and they all work as expected. The popup messages are also working correctly except in this one circumstance.

1. I have added a product that is subject to a limit to the cart succesfully (correct behaviour).
2. I try to add a different product that has its own limit (completely separate rule to the first product) to the cart but I choose too high a quantity for this product's limit. This product is not added to the cart (correct behaviour) but no popup message appears.

The popup message works in all other instances including when products that are not subject to any limits are in the cart.

Note that the site is using the modified limits.php file that you provided earlier.

Thanks Nicolas,
Does 4.2.3 include the changes in the limit.php file or do I need to replace it again?