thread Re: Restricting Sales by Postcodes in Payments Troubleshooting

Restricting Sales by Postcodes

Andy1981 — Sun, 21 Sep 2025 11:45:06 GMT

Hi,

I am setting up a small soaping business at the moment, but with the way cosmetic regulation rules work, I am only able to sell these products in the mainland UK, Northern Ireland and the Hebrides etc.

Is there a way to configure the sales platform so that sales will not go through if they come from postcodes outside of the UK? Also, what is the quickest way to set up all UK postcodes? Can these be uploaded from a list?

Many thanks,

Andy

Re: Restricting Sales by Postcodes

tonydow — Fri, 16 Jul 2021 09:03:54 GMT

If you are using Shipping for fulfilment and set up your shipping rates to only include the areas you want to ship to, I believe anyone ordering from other areas will be advised that you don’t ship there. Perhaps @tranguyen can confirm this is correct. As people would only find this out once they were in the ordering process, it might be an idea to have a pop up advising customers that you only ship to specific areas which they will see up front.

Re: Restricting Sales by Postcodes

tranguyen — Fri, 16 Jul 2021 11:08:15 GMT

That's correct @tonydow! If customer enter an address for an area you haven't set up shipping for, then they'll get an error message saying that the store does not ship to this location.

It'll definitely be a good idea to create a pop-up or banner @Andy1981 like Tony suggest so customers will know before going to checkout.

Re: Restricting Sales by Postcodes

Andy1981 — Sat, 17 Jul 2021 15:41:03 GMT

Thank you! There's actually going to be several notices on the site so it should be obvious, but as it's a legal requirement, I wanted to make sure.

Is there a quick and easy way to upload all UK postcodes by any chance?

Re: Restricting Sales by Postcodes

tonydow — Sat, 17 Jul 2021 16:30:57 GMT

I don’t believe there is any way of using postcodes for shipping, only geographical areas, but this should cover your requirements.

Re: Restricting Sales by Postcodes

Andy1981 — Sat, 17 Jul 2021 20:02:12 GMT

Sorry if I am being dense: Do you mean that you set shipping for 'UK' etc. and that will automatically cover all UK post codes? How does the system determine the area covered?

Re: Restricting Sales by Postcodes

tonydow — Sun, 18 Jul 2021 05:33:39 GMT

Yes, select United Kingdom for the area. Don’t know how it works but with that and your messages about where you ship to, you should be covered.

Re: Restricting Sales by Postcodes

Andy1981 — Sun, 18 Jul 2021 22:02:05 GMT

Oh, lord... that seems a bit frustrating as Northern Ireland is part of the UK for the purposes of postage, but for the purposes of the legislation, it's treated the same as the EU so I can't post there.

Do you happen to know if the crown dependencies are also counted as the 'UK'?

Re: Restricting Sales by Postcodes

tonydow — Mon, 19 Jul 2021 05:18:16 GMT

Sorry, I don’t. Someone from Square will hopefully advise on that, maybe @tranguyen

Re: Restricting Sales by Postcodes

tranguyen — Mon, 19 Jul 2021 10:17:00 GMT

Thanks for tagging me in @tonydow!

When you're setting up Shipping, the UK would be just England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. If you are not shipping to Northern Ireland, you can uncheck it.

If you're also shipping to other UK territories like Jersey, you'd need to add these in individually.

I hope this will help!

Re: Restricting Sales by Postcodes

Andy1981 — Mon, 19 Jul 2021 10:19:07 GMT

Ah! Thank you so much. 🙂

Re: Restricting Sales by Postcodes

Andy1981 — Mon, 19 Jul 2021 10:20:18 GMT

Thank you. 🙂

Re: Restricting Sales by Postcodes

Andy1981 — Mon, 19 Jul 2021 18:31:04 GMT

One last question, if I may: is there any way to have a pre-defined drop-down list of shipping locations in the address fields so that a buyer cannot select / type in anything that is not defined in the background in the first place?

Re: Restricting Sales by Postcodes

tranguyen — Tue, 20 Jul 2021 08:22:27 GMT

Unfortunately while you can restricted the shipping areas in the backend, there isn't a way to remove or edit countries from the customer-facing dropdown at the moment @Andy1981, but it's definitely a feature request I can share with our Product team!

Re: Restricting Sales by Postcodes

venus333 — Wed, 08 Jun 2022 17:56:22 GMT

Thankyou sooo much for that i am going to try that i have been trying to figure out a way to do this for a while !