Knowledgebase
How to add Terms and Conditions to the checkout page in Magento
In Magento you can add a CMS page with the terms and conditions of your shop from the admin panel from CMS menu>Pages. Then you can put a link to that page on the frontend of your site. However, you can also add the terms and conditions to the checkout page, so that every time a customer goes through the checkout process the terms and conditions will be shown at the Order Review step, and the customer will have to accept the conditions before placing the order.
To do this first you need to create the terms and conditions. In the admin panel of your Magento go to Sales menu>Terms and conditions. On the page that opens click on the Add New Condition button. This will display a page with some settings that you have to configure. Type a name in the respective field, and if you want the particular terms and conditions to be shown on the frontend set the Status drop-down menu to Enabled. In the Content text area you can type the text that you want to be displayed as terms and conditions. There's no built-in text editor so if you leave the drop-down menu Show Content as to Text, you can use only plain text. If you set the Show Content as drop-down menu to HTML, then in the Content text area you can use HTML tags to format the text. From the Store View list you can select the store views that you want to display the terms and conditions. In the text area for Checkbox Text you can type some text to be displayed next to the checkbox that the customer has to mark to accept the terms an conditions. You can use the Content Height (css) option to change the height of the default text box that shows the terms and conditions on the checkout page. After you configure the settings click on the Save Condition button.
After you add the terms and conditions you also need to enable the option that displays them on the frontend. In the admin panel go to System>Configuration>Checkout button in the Sales section on the left>Checkout Options panel on the right. Set the drop-down menu Enable Terms and Conditions to Yes and click on the Save Config button.
For some more details and screenshots you can also read the tutorial on managing terms and conditions in Magento.