Time Zones can be quite confusing, especially if your business, staff, and customers are all located in different countries!


Don't panic, 10to8 has designed a few easy-to-use features to help you sort this out.


SECTIONS


How can I set up or edit my business time zone?

In 'Set Up' > 'Business Details', you will set up a time zone at the bottom of the page. The drop-down list will show you all the time zones according to your business locale. 



Please note, we will use this business time zone as a default for the entire staff unless you customize their time zones as per the section below. Likewise, this time zone will apply to all your services taking place at the location At business premises. 


How can I customize my staff time zones?

While time zones won't really affect services offered at your business premises, they can be a factor for 'Online/Phone' services. 


The ability to customize your staff's time zones could help you, for example, to set up a fully remote team taking appointments over the phone or via Zoom. 

Here's below an example of how you can achieve that. 


To get started, you will need to add your staff in 'Set Up' > 'Staff' - find out more here. ADD LINK 

Once created the staff profile, you can set up their own time zone using the drop-down menu provided. 




As you can see, the staff Marcel is now set to be based in America/New_York(UTC-5), while the business default time zone is set to Europe/London. 


These two time zones will now reflect on the Availability and Calendar pages. 


You can now set up Marcel's working hours under 'Set Up' > 'Availability' and select in which time zone you want to do that. Just click on Options at the top of the page to see the timezone selection:




Now that Marcel's working hours are set up, let's have a look at his calendar to see how the time zones will reflect on it. 


A ruler will appear on the left-hand side showing you the times in both the business and the staff-specific timezone.





The time zone selection will appear as an option also when making a booking in the staff diary:


How to work with customers in different Time Zones 

For 'Online/Phone' appointments, 10to8 will automatically sort out the time zone for both you and your customer!


Saving and editing customers' time zones

First, let's see how 10to8 will determine your customer's time zone.


Whenever a customer books an 'Online/Phone' service on your booking page, we save the time zone they choose into their customer record. The time zone will be pre-filled based on the one they have set as default on their device's browser. But they can still change it if they need to:



When you create a customer record from your side, by default it takes the business' timezone. It is still possible to amend the time zone specific to each customer after a record has been created. 


To make this change, go to 'Customers', open the specific customer record, and click on the drop-down menu to select the correct time zone.  



NOTE: When a customer makes a booking, we will also use the customer's browser's settings to determine their time zone. 


It is important that they make sure their browse's locale is set up correctly and that it does match with the time zone they want to make the appointment at.


Troubleshooting Time Zone issues in your customer's communications


"Why my customer is seeing the wrong time zone in their booking notifications?"


If your customer is seeing the wrong time zone in their booking confirmation or reminders, please check the following:


  • Check the time zone on the customer's record. If it is incorrect, you can set it up to the time zone they expect.
  • Ask the customer to check the time zone of their email and calendar. The email and calendar software will often convert the time zone of the calendar or notifications to what it believes is the user's time zone. 
  • Ask the customer to check the locale and time zone of the device they have used to make online bookings. When a customer makes an appointment online for a service at the Online/Phone location, 10to8 takes the time zone from there.

        

Each time a customer makes an online booking, the time zone saved under the customer's record will be overridden if the customer's device and browser are in a different time zone.


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