Restricting Sales to USA

My apologies if this is asked and answered, but I can't find it.

We want to restrict our sales to the US. Is there a way? I looked in the tax zones (we have no sales tax in Oregon), but that doesn't seem to be the place.

We state clearly that we do not ship outside the US, but have still had people order from outside the states. I need to be able to turn off that ability.

Thanks for help.

• Sue

You can delete all of the countries except the US via the Admin> Locations/Taxes> Countries

Thanks!

Now, is there a way to delete multiple countries without going one-by-one through the lists on all 12 pages of countries? I wish there were a way to select just one (or a group, like EU countries) when you set up the original installation. Or did I just miss that because I didn't know any better when I installed Zen Cart the first time?

Anyway, thanks so much for the quick answer.

• Sue

First determin what you think the US is ...

50 states plus DC plus all territories and islands and all Armed forces

50 states plus DC

48 states plus DC

Ohhhh! I see where this is going. Now I will need to go into "Zones" and eliminate all the places we will not ship to.

If I had, in the beginning, determined that we would ship to all 50 states and DC (I'll worry about APO/FPO military addresses later), did I miss something in the initial set up that would have let me pick only the US? Or is the elimination procedure I'm now following the only way to narrow the field?

Thanks for helping with this. I'll know better for the next store I set up (a quilting shop with all the yard goods and doo-dads to go with).

You "guys" are awesome!

• Sue

If the US zone is not ALL of the US ... then you must specifically indicate every single place that is YOUR idea of the US ... 48 plus 1 or 50 plus 1 or what have you ... define your ideal US and where you plan to ship ... :smile:

If the US zone IS ALL of the US ... then you mearly say in the definition:
Country: United Sates
Zone: All Zones

Ajeh:

If the US zone is not ALL of the US ... then you must specifically indicate every single place that is YOUR idea of the US ... 48 plus 1 or 50 plus 1 or what have you ... define your ideal US and where you plan to ship ... :smile:

If the US zone IS ALL of the US ... then you mearly say in the definition:
Country: United Sates
Zone: All Zones

I think I am understanding this correctly but want to check in before I do something extremely time consuming. If I want to ship only to the US, then I have to go into the Locations/Taxes/Countries and delete all the countries, one by one, leaving only the US. Then I have to go into Locations/Taxes/Zones and delete all the entries other than the US zones I intend to ship to or delete all entries and insert a zone as described above for All Zones in the US. If I want to collect sales tax on only one state or area, then I will have to go in and define the country (US) and State (ALabama) for a tax zone but not as a seperate shipping zone?

I went through the motions last year. Here is a copy.

Make these changes in a trial non-production store. And always backup your database before making changes.

Note: depending on what you are using for shipping and payments you can build zones from the full countries listing without wiping things out ...

These zones then act like filters ... and if you are not in the zones then you are blocked or stopped from continueing ...

These Zones are then be applied to the shipping and payment methods ...

Later, as you want to include additional zones you can ...

I must admit sometimes I use brute force instead of intelligence. Oh well.

stagebrace:

I must admit sometimes I use brute force instead of intelligence. Oh well.

Just so I am sure that I understand this correctly. I'm new at this, sorry.

I should go to my ISP control panel and backup my entire site. Once I have done that I can implement the changes with the text file you sent over. However, I am not sure how to use it. Could you explain how it works and where to go to install it? I managed to install the patches to make paypal work, so I think I can handle this.

Thanks

This was a helpful thread. I am setting up a cart for a winery which not only restricts shipping to the U.S. but ALSO to select U.S. states.

I am familiar with phpMyAdmin so, I copied the sql text file that the previous poster supplied. Ordinarily that might work. It did not for me because, my zen database tables have a prefix 'zen_' on every table (e.g. zen_countries). This may be from using cPanel's Fantastico to install ZenCart.

All you need to do is copy/paste the same sql into phpMyAdmin and modify references to the tables like this: "zen_tablename".

mgm_03:

All you need to do is copy/paste the same sql into phpMyAdmin and modify references to the tables like this: "zen_tablename".

Insert it via admin > tools > install sql patches and the prefix is taken care of.

Ajeh:

Note: depending on what you are using for shipping and payments you can build zones from the full countries listing without wiping things out ...

These zones then act like filters ... and if you are not in the zones then you are blocked or stopped from continueing ...

These Zones are then be applied to the shipping and payment methods ...

Later, as you want to include additional zones you can ...

Please bear with me, I'm so new at this and there is so much to learn...

Based on this, do you mean I can go into Admin>Locations/Taxes>Zone Definitions, insert a new Zone named 'United States', set the details of the Zone to 'All of the United States' and then under the UPS Shipping Mod, select my newly made 'United States' zone and it will restrict shipping to any other location?

It can't be that simple...but please confirm if I'm right. I'm not sure if I can take any more all-nighters. :laugh:

Thanks for all the help, these boards are invaluable!

I create them like:
US Shipping

Then Add United States and All Zones ...

However ... be aware that All Zones for the US are 50 States, DC, All Territories and Islands and Armed forces ...

So you may want to be sure to configure this as what you consider the US ...

NOTE: UPS does NOT consider Guam, Virgin Islands etc. the US ... they are countries of their own, according to UPS so these are also listed ...

USPS considers Guam and Virgin Island as US States, so you want to use those ...

To effectively make sure customers pick the right one, you should consider if using UPS to remove the United States Guam and if using USPS removing the Country Guam so that the shipping works right ...

Got all that? :blink:

Yup - You have to set the definitions for the carrier. But will this really keep International people from being able to make a purchase? The client wants Int'l orders to be called in, so I'm trying to find a way to restrict Int'l purchases without having to re-write code (since I don't really know how, ha!)

The customer isn't using the USPS, just UPS, FedEx and DHL (which there isn't a solid mod for).

When I apply the restriction to UPS, I get a yellow indicator, but I'm not sure what it means. Any ideas? It seemed pretty straightforward, so I'm not sure what I missed.

In your opinion, what is the best way to handle the shipping providers? Should the client just receive the order info and let them decide what provider to use? They are offering free shipping, so the user won't get to pick a carrier.

Thanks for the help!

If your Zone won't allow a country, then you cannot ship there ...

If you cannot ship there, then you cannot checkout ...

If you cannot checkout, then you cannot complete an order ... :smile:

assuming that no messages below this one point out a flaw in my typing or other mistake, you can cut down the list very quickly by doing the following in mysql:

select * from countries where countries_iso_code_2 = 'US';

that will give you the countries_id value for the US

then - lets say in your database it is 223

delete from countries where countries_id<>223;
delete from zones where zone_country_id<>223;

You are then left with nothing but zones in the US, which you can pick through.

as always, Database Backups Are A Good Thing. And careful typing is too.

I tried this creating a zone and defining it with 50+1 US destinations. I am using table rates and my shipping module "green light" would always turn orange/yellow and the pull down menu would change but only to ALL us destinations. I created the zones 2 different times two different ways and got the same results.

1. Under Zones Definitions I created a US shipping zone. Under tax classes I created a shipping tax class then I set the tax rate to 0 I then set my payment and shipping options to these new zone/tax setting.

I tried essentially the same thing but created a new US shipping zone under the "Zones"

Not sure what I'm doing wrong but I would like to set this up without deleting the majority of the database if possible.

Jason

Edit:
Um, oddly enough there's an explanation of how to set up zones in the tutorials section Imagine that. I guess I should have looked a little better.

Is there a way to restrict sales to certain countries? IE Sell to just US, Canada, Mexico, and Australia. Would I just delete all countries I would prefer not to sell to out of the 'Locations / Taxes' - 'Countries'? Thanks