Source Range set to entire sequence

Hi - I've been playing around with using AME on a 2nd machibe for redering, without much success. I was sending an existing project on my laptop to a watch folder on my PC, but all I was getting was a black, 1 second video. After messing around for a while, I realised that this wasn't necessarily the AME over network issue, but the specific project was defaulting to a source range of "Sequence In/Out". If I change this manually to "Entire sequence" then it works fine, but this defeats the point of sending it to a 2nd machine for rendering. I have seen other posts telling me I can set the "Work Area Bar" in the timeline, which sets the default range to "Work Area". This kind of works in this example as the full video seems to render OK.

When it is exporting as "Sequence In/Out", is it just rendering the gap between clips? I will usually always want to export/render the full timeline I've been working on as it is. Is there any drawback to just using the range "Work Area"?

Thanks!