Manufacturers
Whoever sells your product is not the same list as whoever can fix it.
Point buyers at the merchant who sells your product and owners at the engineer approved to install and service it, without mixing the two lists.
Bring your location data
CSV import, Google Sheets sync or dashboard edits.
Shape the visitor journey
Search, filters, hours, directions and custom actions.
Match your site
85+ available settings, markers and provider map styles.
What your network looks like
Merchants and factors who stock the product, installers trained on it, warranty-approved service centres, and a smaller tier of engineers signed off on the heavy or commercial range, with sites appearing on two or three of those lists at once.
Why a generic map falls short
Manufacturers get asked two different questions through one search box: where do I buy this, and who is allowed to touch mine now that it has failed. Publishing every partner as an identical pin answers neither, and the wrong answer to the second one turns into a warranty claim against a job an unapproved installer did.
What visitors need to do
- Split buy, install and warranty service so a visitor with a broken unit is not sent to a counter that only sells boxes
- Show the accreditation tier, because a partner trained on the domestic range is not signed off on the commercial one
- Show which model ranges, outputs or capacities a centre is approved for
- Keep the list honest as annual accreditations lapse and get renewed
How Handled covers it
- Filterable tags per partner for sells, installs, services under warranty and the ranges they are approved for, so one list serves both questions
- A service radius per mobile engineer or service centre drawn on the map as reach, and separately, postcode territories where an appointment decides who owns an address rather than who can drive to it. The radius shows travel, the territory decides the result, and where the enquiry form is on, the territory owner is who the enquiry is sent to
- Custom fields for accreditation level, certificate expiry and engineer count, shown on the card or kept internal
- CSV import and Google Sheets sync with change review, so the annual re-accreditation pass is a reviewed diff rather than a rebuild
Not every manufacturers business is the same
Heating, plumbing and building products
Boilers, heat pumps, windows and doors sell through merchant branches and get fitted by installers whose accreditation is annual and tiered. The homeowner searching has a failed unit and needs someone allowed to touch it, while the specifier searching wants a branch holding stock. Same map, two questions, and getting the second one wrong turns into a declined warranty claim on somebody's kitchen floor.
Machinery and capital equipment
A few hundred units in the field, each worth more than the locator, and the relationship is the service contract rather than the sale. Field engineers cover a region from home rather than a depot, parts distributors hold consumables, and the buyer is usually asking who can get to my machine this week rather than who is closest to my office.
Appliances, power tools and consumer durables
Sold through retail and repaired through a separate network of authorised agents, most of whom the customer has never heard of. The searches split cleanly: where do I buy one, and who is allowed to repair mine under warranty. Publishing both networks as identical pins sends people with broken products to shop counters that cannot help them.
Components sold through factors and fitting centres
Automotive and industrial parts reach the end user through factors, then through garages and fitting centres approved to install them. What matters to the searcher is not distance but whether that centre handles their application at all, so the useful map is filtered by range and fitment before it is sorted by miles.
Setting it up
1. Decide which question each partner answers
Go through the partner list and mark each one as sells, installs, services under warranty, or some combination. That single pass is what turns one map into an answer for both audiences, and it is easier to do once from the training and stocking records than to unpick later from a list of pins that all look the same.
2. Take accreditation from training records
The sales ledger tells you who buys from you, not who is approved to work on the product. Pull the tier, the ranges covered and the certificate expiry from wherever training and sign-off are recorded, and hold them as custom fields so the card can show the tier and your team can see the expiry.
3. Set engineer radii from where they actually travel
A mobile engineer's radius is not their office postcode with a round number on it. Ask what they will realistically drive to and set that, then check the map for gaps where two engineers overlap heavily and a third area has nobody. The radius is coverage shown to a visitor. Where an appointment has to decide the result rather than describe it, that is a postcode territory instead, set separately from the radius.
4. Run re-accreditation as a reviewed diff
Keep the partner list in a Google Sheet and let the sync propose the changes each cycle: new approvals in, lapsed ones out, tiers moved. Every create, update and conflict is previewed before it applies, so an annual re-accreditation pass takes an afternoon of review rather than a rebuild.
5. Use unmet demand to find the coverage holes
The analytics page reports the rate of searches that returned nothing. For a manufacturer that reads as a recruitment list: the regions where owners are looking for an approved installer and there is none, and the ranges people search for that no partner is tagged with.
What to prepare before you publish
You do not need a perfect data system to start. A clean first list is enough to test the visitor journey, then you can keep it current from the workflow that suits your team.
- Location name and address
- Phone, website or booking link
- Categories, products or services
- Opening hours and special hours
- A map provider key
- The page where the locator will be embedded
Questions we get asked
Can approved installers be given exclusive postcode areas rather than a radius?
Yes, by postcode. Paste the postcodes an installer was appointed to, exclude anything carved out of them, publish, and an address inside that list resolves to that installer: in Exclusive mode they are the only partner shown for it, in Preferred they are pinned above the rest of the network. Where the enquiry form is switched on, that installer is also who the enquiry is sent to, with the reason stated in the email. Two qualifications. It applies to a typed address search, because a browser location or an autocomplete row carries no postcode and falls back to distance. And a county or a drawn shape cannot be authored in the dashboard, so an appointed area has to be written as postcodes today, using an asterisk where the agreement grants a whole district.
Can one map answer both where to buy and who is approved to repair it?
Yes, and that is the reason to tag rather than publish two lists. Every partner is marked sells, installs or services under warranty, in any combination, and the visitor picks the question they arrived with. An owner with a failed unit filters to warranty service and never sees the trade counter that only sells boxes.
How do we keep partners whose accreditation has lapsed off the approved list?
Hold the tier and the certificate expiry as custom fields, keep the partner list in a Google Sheet, and let the sync propose each cycle's changes. Every create, update and conflict is previewed before it applies, and a missing row never silently deletes a partner, so re-accreditation becomes an afternoon of review rather than a rebuild.
Can a field engineer who works from home be listed without publishing a home address?
Yes. Place the entry on the town or district they work from rather than the doorstep, leave the street address out of the published fields, and let the service radius carry the meaning: this is who reaches you, not this is where to knock. The card then holds the phone number, the ranges covered and the accreditation tier.
Can we show which model ranges or outputs a service centre is signed off on?
Yes. Ranges, outputs and capacities go in as tags alongside the accreditation tier, so a visitor filters to the partners approved for the commercial line rather than assuming everyone trained on the domestic range may touch it. Anything you would rather not publish, such as engineer counts, sits in a custom field kept internal.
What does an approved installer locator cost for a manufacturer with a few hundred partners?
The $19 a month plan holds 200 partners, $39 holds 2,000 and $79 holds 10,000, billed monthly or annually at ten months' money for twelve. The 7 day trial takes no card and there is no free plan after it. Map usage is billed by Mapbox or Google against your own key at their rates, so it is not resold to you with a margin on top.
If you need something that is not here
Handled is small enough to build to order. If your trade needs a field, a filter or a behaviour the locator does not have yet, say so and we will tell you honestly whether it is a week away or not something we will do.