Delivery regions: where you deliver and what it costs

A delivery region, or delivery zone, is a line on your map. It tells your site which addresses you deliver to, and it lets you charge a different delivery fee for near and far. Set them up once and every address a customer enters is checked for you.

Find them under Locations & Delivery > Delivery Regions.

How a region is drawn

A region matches an address by any of these. Mix them as you like:

  • Zip Code: type each zip and press enter. The simplest, most predictable option.
  • City, County or State.
  • Radial distance from origin (in miles): a circle around your kitchen.
  • Driving distance from origin (in miles): real road miles, for towns where a river or highway makes a circle misleading.

Distances are measured from the delivery origin on your Company Info page.

The switches on each region

  • Active: the region is in use.
  • Deliveries to this Region Allowed: addresses in this region can get home delivery. Leave it off to draw a "we do not deliver here" region.
  • Default Region: catches every address that no other region matches. Handy as a "sorry, too far" region with deliveries off.
  • Region Code and Description: the name you pick it by elsewhere, such as on a fee.
  • Precedence (low to high): which region wins when an address fits more than one. See below.

Precedence: which region wins

Regions often overlap. A customer in zip 12345 may also be inside your 15-mile circle, and every address fits the Default Region. The site needs one answer, so it uses precedence: a priority number on each region.

  • The site finds every active region the address fits.
  • It picks the one with the lowest precedence number. Think of it as "first in line": 10 goes before 20, and 20 goes before 100.
  • If two distance regions share the same number, the smaller circle or shorter drive wins.

The winning region decides two things: whether you deliver to that address, and which region's delivery fee applies.

A simple way to set it: give your most specific regions the lowest numbers, and your broad ones the highest. For example, a zip code list at 10, a 15-mile circle at 20, and the Default Region at 100. Then a customer in one of your core zip codes gets the core fee, even though they are also inside the circle. Leave gaps between the numbers (10, 20, 30) so you can slot a new region in later without renumbering.

What the customer sees

When a customer adds an address, the site finds its region. If deliveries are allowed there, home delivery is open to them. If not, they can still pick a pickup location. Staff see the result in the Deliverable column on the Customers dashboard. See Customer addresses: primary, delivery and billing.

Pricing delivery by region

Each region page shows its Linked Fee, or a Manage Fees link when there is none. Create a delivery fee on Orders & Payments > Fees and pick the region code on it. A customer whose address is in that region pays that fee. When more than one delivery fee fits, the customer pays the lowest one. See Fees: delivery fees and order fees.

You can also link a region to one or more Delivery/Pickup Locations. Orders at those locations then pick up the region's fees too.

A starter setup

  1. A region with your core zip codes, deliveries allowed, precedence 10, linked to a small delivery fee.
  2. A second ring of zip codes or a 15-mile radius, deliveries allowed, precedence 20, with a higher fee.
  3. A Default Region with deliveries off, precedence 100, for everyone else.

Who can change them

Owner and Manager create and edit regions. To remove a region, untick Active and click Update.

Keywords: delivery area, service area

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