Restrict Service Area based on Address

suellen
Shopify Partner
10 0 4

My client provides services (not products) and needs to do a few things:

 

1.  Show areas serviced based on street address ( postcode /zipcode is too broad)

2.  Allow customers to choose which date and time they would like their service to be provided but limit the day/time options based on customer's street address

3. Plan service route for drivers based on customer address

 

We've tried a lot of different apps but nothing seems to work at address level - the best is postcode but that doesn't help because the area of some postcodes is too large and some addresses within the postcode are not serviced.

Any ideas?  Apps, custom, APIs 

Replies 2 (2)

Jason
Shopify Expert
11190 225 2282

I would not expect that you'd find an existing off the shelf app to handle bookings or capacity planning at a street level. That will not be a common use case, and apps are generally built for common use cases.

The option is there for you to build a custom app to handle that custom business logic. Since you've seen the apps that work at the post code level that would give you confidence that it's certainly possible at a more granular level. For service business I've them have rules around min/max time on site, travel time buffers, lunch break factoring, public holidays, employee downtime, etc. Since a service has the commodity of time, that logic can get pretty wild. That too won't help you when it comes to finding many off the shelf solutions since those business can be quite unique.


I'd not be too quick to replace whatever they are using for route management. However if they are not using anything today there are services (and even existing Shopify apps) that can be used for this if you're not wanting to include that in the build. There can be benefits to baking this all into a large custom app project but the tco and budget could force your hand.

Before you go down the build path it would be worth making sure that the cases in those large postcode areas are common and not rare. If this is a really small problem it may not be worth the dev investment and better to just do some small automation (or manual process) to identify those for cancellation or follow up.

★ I jump on these forums in my free time to help and share some insights. Not looking to be hired, and not looking for work. http://freakdesign.com.au ★
suellen
Shopify Partner
10 0 4

Thanks @Jason - that's what I figured.  Totally agree that custom app is likely the only solution and also agree that it's not worth the time and cost to build that for a one-off case.