Setting your service area

Settings → Service Area lets you limit your online estimator to homeowners within a set distance of your shop or yard — and choose what happens to the ones outside it.

Turning it on

Tick “Only quote homeowners within a set distance” and set two things: a centre point (your shop, yard, or wherever you measure travel from) and how many miles you’re willing to travel, up to 500. The address search box only fills in the latitude and longitude fields — those two numbers are what actually gets saved, and you can always type or paste them in directly if search doesn’t turn up your address. Google Maps’ own “copy coordinates” action puts both numbers on your clipboard at once, and pasting that into either field fills both.

Leaving it off

This is the default, and it means every homeowner who finds your estimator gets a price, regardless of distance. There’s no radius saved at all in this state — it isn’t a very large radius, it’s no radius.

A radius of zero

A distance of 0 miles is a different, deliberate setting: it refuses every homeowner. It’s how you pause quoting altogether — for the off-season, while you’re short-staffed, or any other reason you want the estimator to stop taking new requests without turning the whole thing off. The form warns you when you set this, but it still lets you save it.

Off and zero look similar but mean opposite things: off means everyone gets quoted, zero means no one does. Don’t confuse “I haven’t set a service area” with “I’ve set it to nothing.”

The three modes

Once a service area is on, you choose what happens to a homeowner outside your radius:

Turn them away. They’re told you don’t cover their area and get no price. You won’t see who they were or how far away they were.
Take the lead, show no price. They go through the whole flow as normal, but instead of a price they’re told you’ll be in touch. You still get the full lead — including the price your own settings would have shown them.
Quote them anyway, with a caveat. They see their price range same as anyone else, with an added note that they’re outside your usual area and there may be extra travel time or a wait.

It’s enforced on both sides

The distance check happens on the server, so it can’t be bypassed by editing anything in the browser. Homeowners also get a courtesy check right at the address step, before they’ve pinned a single tree — so if you’re in “turn them away” mode, they find out before investing any time in the flow, not after.

What to watch out for

Switching the checkbox off and saving clears your saved centre point and radius — you’ll need to re-enter both if you turn it back on later. If you’re pausing for a season rather than stopping for good, setting the radius to 0 instead keeps your centre point on file and is easier to undo.