Every now and then a client will say something like: "Google Maps says I'm 25 miles away, but your booking page told me I'm outside your service area." The numbers don't actually disagree, they're just measured a little differently. Here's what's happening behind the scenes and what you can do about borderline addresses.
How distance is measured
When a client enters a venue address during online booking, Check Cherry asks the Google Maps Directions API for the driving distance from your travel zone's origin to the venue. This is the actual road route a car would take, not a straight line on a map.
The result comes back in meters, and Check Cherry converts it to whole miles or kilometers (whichever you've set on the zone) and rounds to the nearest unit. So a 24.6 mile route shows up as 25, and a 24.4 mile route shows up as 24.
Where the distance is measured from
Each travel zone has an origin, and that's the starting point for distance. You'll find it in the zone's settings as one of two options:
- Your business address: the address on your primary brand. This is the most common choice.
- Custom address: a separate address you set on the zone itself. Useful if you actually leave from a storage unit, a partner location, or a satellite office that's different from your business address.
If a client's estimate of the distance is based on a different starting point than your zone origin, the numbers won't match. Always check what address your zone is using as its origin.
Why the number sometimes feels off at the boundary
When an address sits right at the edge of a zone, small differences in how distance is measured can push it just outside. A few common reasons:
- Driving route vs. straight line: people eyeballing a map often think in point-to-point distance. The driving route follows real roads, so it's usually a little longer.
- Rounding: a 25.6 mi/km route rounds to 26, which falls outside a 25 mi/km zone even though it feels like 25.
- Different origin: if your zone origin isn't where the client thinks your business is, the distance from their perspective will be different.
- Different routing: Google may pick a different route at the time Check Cherry checks than the one a client sees on their phone later, especially if there are road updates or new construction.
What you can do about borderline addresses
If you're seeing a few clients-a-month getting bounced from addresses you'd be willing to serve, you have a few options. None of these are right or wrong, it's a question of how you want to handle the edges of your service area.
Add a small buffer to your zone
If a 25 mi/km zone is consistently rejecting addresses you would have taken, extend it to 26 or 27. A small buffer absorbs rounding and route differences without meaningfully changing your service area.
Add an outer zone with a travel fee
Instead of a hard cutoff, add a second zone past your free range with a travel fee attached. Borderline addresses still book themselves online, and you're compensated for the extra drive time. Most businesses set this up as a free range plus a per-mile or per-kilometer rate beyond it.
Allow bookings outside your travel zones
You can let clients outside your zones submit a request anyway, with a custom message explaining you'll review it and follow up. The request lands in your inbox as a lead instead of getting bounced. This is a good middle ground if you're willing to consider far-away bookings on a case by case basis but don't want to commit to them upfront.
On the Travel Zones page, look for the "Do you accept bookings outside of your travel zones?" setting. Set it to yes and write a short message that lets the client know what to expect next.
Verify the route in Google Maps
When a specific client says the math doesn't add up, run the route yourself. Open Google Maps, plug in your zone's origin address as the starting point and the venue as the destination, and check the driving distance. That's the same number Check Cherry is working with.
Setting up the actual fees
If you're still working out the rates and structure of your travel zones, the travel fees setup guide walks through how much most businesses charge, the difference between distance-based and flat rate fees, and how to build out the zones.