How do I configure so my store can only sell to certain US States?

Since I wasn't sure how to phrase the search phrase (and I tried a couple of different ways first anyhow), I decided to post this here.

I have a client who will be selling products wholesale to practitioners. They only states they sell to right now are: NC, SC, and GA.

How do I configure things so only customers in those 3 states are able to make purchases?

Also meant to say that the client will not be using live shopping rates, but will have a shipping cost matrix in place.

I think my answer lies in building a zone definition.

Do I take an existing zone and edit it?
Or do I make one from scratch - and if so, how?
I don't see any "add new" type command.

If you're not going to use any addresses outside those 3 states for ANY reason, delete all the other states from your store. Same with countries. Then nobody can ever register with any address outside those areas, and thus can never ask to ship outside those areas.

Then create zone definnitions to handle your taxes etc within those states.

Thanks, Dr. Bye, for your help. Sorry for the delay in responding.

Since he's selling to practitioners, it's like wholesale - so no taxes are involved.

If I delete all the other states, how hard it is to add one or two back in? I think he alluded to the fact that they may be adding more states down the road.

You'd need to manually add them back in by running SQL statements copied from the original install scripts in the /zc_install/sql/ folder.
If you don't do it that way then you'll end up with states having the wrong zone_id value, and might not sync properly with addon systems.

well, I'm deleting the countries to start with .. and I see an "add country" button, so I'll assume there is one for states too.

Perhaps in future versions of ZC, instead of just "add" and "delete" if there could be a "deactivate/activate" button ... so people can turn off countries/states without having to delete and add.

There are many things planned for future versions.

In the meantime, it's recommended to NOT use the "add country" button or any equivalent for "add state". Use the SQL Insert approach I mentioned earlier.

Thank you so very much!

I understand the instructions for adding them back in if we need to in the future. I'll bookmark this thread for reference.

Much appreciated!