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A person’s timezone comes from their schedule, not from the workspace. This is the single thing people get wrong about schedules. Read this page before you set up a team spread across countries.

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The rule

Every schedule carries its own Timezone field. When TimeTracker works out what someone is expected to work on a date, it reads their hours in that schedule’s timezone. The workspace timezone is a default and a display setting. It fills in the timezone box when you create a new schedule, and it decides which calendar day is “today”. It never overrides a schedule.
Changing the workspace timezone does not change anybody’s working hours. To move someone’s working day, change the timezone on the schedule they are assigned, or move them to a different schedule.

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Why it works this way

An agency with people in London, Lisbon and Toronto has three different working days. A single workspace timezone cannot describe all three. If the workspace owned the timezone, “09:00 to 17:00” would mean London hours for everyone. The Toronto designer would be shown as expected at work at 4am local time, and their timesheet would say they were short every single day. Putting the timezone on the schedule fixes that. Each schedule says 09:00 to 17:00 in the clock that is real for the people on it.

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When to use it

  • Anyone on your team works in a different country from the workspace default.
  • A group works a night shift that crosses midnight in their own timezone.
  • You hired a contractor abroad and their expected hours look wrong.

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How to set the timezone

1

Open Settings → Schedules

Select the schedule in the left rail.
2

Set the Timezone field

Choose the IANA zone, such as Europe/London, Europe/Lisbon or America/Toronto.
3

Save

Click Save. The change applies to everyone assigned to that schedule.
One schedule holds one timezone. To give two people the same hours in two different zones, you need two schedules. Duplicate the first one and change only the timezone on the copy.

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A distributed team, worked through

Northwind Studio is based in London and hires two people abroad.
1

Duplicate the standard week

Tom Whitfield opens Standard week, clicks Duplicate, and gets Standard week (copy).
2

Rename and re-zone it

He renames it Standard week – Lisbon and sets Timezone to Europe/Lisbon. The day rows are untouched – still Monday to Friday, 09:00 to 17:00.
3

Assign Ana to it

In Assignments he assigns Standard week – Lisbon to Ana Ferreira. Her person-level assignment beats the workspace default.
The result:
  • Sarah’s day is 09:00 to 17:00 London time.
  • Ana’s day is 09:00 to 17:00 Lisbon time – one hour earlier in London terms.
  • Both are expected to work 8 hours. Expected hours are the same number; the clock behind them is not.
If Northwind later hires in Toronto, Tom duplicates again and picks America/Toronto. Nothing about the workspace timezone changes.

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Timezones and daylight saving

Schedules resolve by calendar date, not by a fixed instant. A schedule that says 09:00 to 17:00 stays 09:00 to 17:00 on the day the clocks change, and the day still counts as 8 expected hours. This is what you want. Nobody owes an extra hour because their country moved its clocks.

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Where the timezone shows up

The Planner grid itself uses the workspace timezone, so one shared grid can overlay several people. The shading of days off still comes from each person’s own schedule.
See /concepts/dates-times-and-timezones for how TimeTracker handles dates and times everywhere else.

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Permissions

Changing a schedule’s timezone needs schedule.manage – Owner and Admin by default. Changing the workspace timezone needs workspace.updateSettings.

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Common questions

Because working hours live on the schedule. Change the timezone on the schedule the person is assigned to.
Not directly. Give them their own schedule with the right timezone and assign it to them. That is the personal timezone.
One schedule per combination of hours and timezone. Five people in Lisbon on the same hours share one schedule.
A period whose end is at or before its start runs into the next day and is marked Ends next day. It is read in the schedule’s timezone like every other period.
No. Time entries are recorded as real instants. The schedule timezone only decides what was expected.

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Troubleshooting

Create a schedule

Where the timezone field lives.

Assign a schedule

Give one person a schedule in their own zone.

Dates, times and timezones

How TimeTracker handles time everywhere else.

Working hours and days off

Per-day hours and overnight periods.

Workspace settings

Set the workspace timezone and week start.