Setting up delivery areas
Delivery areas let you tell Breww where you deliver, which vehicles cover each area, and (via each area's delivery rules) on which days of the week you deliver there. Breww automatically assigns your customers to the right delivery area based on their delivery address, and uses this when scheduling deliveries and calculating the next delivery date for an order.
Creating a delivery area
To create a delivery area, head to Deliveries -> Settings & config -> Delivery areas -> Create new area. Give the area a name, choose its type (see below), and optionally restrict which vehicles can deliver to it.
You can disable a delivery area at any time using its status, if it's not currently in operation.
Note: Restricting an area to specific vehicles, or requiring vehicle attributes, needs Breww's Advanced Deliveries addon to take effect. Leave all vehicles deselected to allow any vehicle to deliver to the area.
Delivery area types
There are five ways to define a delivery area:
- UK postcodes - Enter postcode outcodes (the first half of a postcode, before the space), for example
BS1orEX16. - Australian postcodes - Enter 4-digit postcodes, for example
3000. Ranges are supported, for example3000-3010. - US ZIP codes - Enter 5-digit ZIP codes, for example
80210. Ranges are supported, for example80210-80239. Don't include ZIP+4 extensions when defining the area - Breww will still match customers whose addresses use ZIP+4 (for example80210-1234) to the right area automatically. - Canadian postal codes (FSAs) - Enter Forward Sortation Areas, which are the first 3 characters of a postal code, for example
M5V. Enter the FSA only rather than a full postal code - Breww will still match customers whose addresses hold a full postal code (for exampleM5V 2T6) to the right area automatically. - Area drawn on map - Draw the boundary of your area directly on a map instead of listing individual codes.
For the postcode, ZIP code and FSA types, you can add multiple entries separated by a comma, a space, or a new line. Ranges are available for Australian postcodes and US ZIP codes only, so use a dash only when entering one of those. If any of the entries can't be recognised, Breww will show an error listing exactly which ones need correcting.
Using the map
While creating or editing a postcode, ZIP code or FSA area, the map alongside the form shows a live preview of the boundaries of the codes you've entered, along with your other existing delivery areas, so you can see coverage and spot gaps or overlaps.
You can also click directly on the map to add the code for that point to your list - handy when you know where you deliver but don't know the postcodes, ZIP codes or FSAs by heart. This works for all four of the code-based types. If you click somewhere outside the country that the area type covers, Breww will tell you rather than adding a code.
After saving an area, Breww generates the merged map for it in the background. If you open the area straight away, you may briefly see a "Generating map…" message - just refresh shortly and the map will appear.
If an area covers a very large number of postcodes, ZIP codes or FSAs, Breww won't be able to draw it on the map, and you'll see a message explaining this instead. This is only a display limitation - customer matching and delivery scheduling for the area work exactly as normal.
Setting the days you deliver to an area
Once an area has been saved, you can add delivery rules to it to record which day(s) of the week you deliver there. Breww uses these when suggesting delivery dates and calculating a customer's next delivery date. To have Breww schedule deliveries automatically based on your areas and other conditions, see Delivery rules.
How customers are assigned to delivery areas
Breww automatically assigns each customer to a delivery area by matching their delivery address against your areas' postcodes, ZIP codes, FSAs, or map boundaries. When you change an area's codes or type, Breww recalculates the affected customers in the background - please allow a few minutes for this to complete.
Areas only cover their own country
A postcode, ZIP code or FSA area only matches customers whose delivery address is in the country that the type belongs to:
- UK postcodes - the United Kingdom, the Isle of Man, Jersey and Guernsey.
- Australian postcodes - Australia.
- US ZIP codes - the United States.
- Canadian postal codes (FSAs) - Canada.
This keeps codes that look alike from matching across borders. UK outcodes and Canadian FSAs share the same letter-digit-letter shape, and 5-digit US ZIP codes are indistinguishable from the postcodes used in several European countries.
It also means a customer whose delivery address has no country set won't be matched to a code-based area at all. If a customer isn't landing in the area you'd expect, it's worth checking that their delivery address has the correct country on it. Areas drawn on a map aren't affected by any of this, as they match on the customer's location rather than their postcode.