Appointments are saved in my timezone, but notifications are sent 3 hours earlier

[Carolb167]

Hi all! I'm having a problem

where even though my app is set to EST and shows on my end the correct start time for appts, it sends notifications as PST, 3 hours earlier than the appt time. I've checked and changed the setting several times over and yet this issue persists. Anyone have any ideas on how to fix this? 

[#2]

Hey @Flowerstyles, thanks for your patience. 

If you or your clients are receiving appointment notifications in the wrong time zone, I would suggest going through the following steps from from your Appointments Dashboard (apologies if you have tried some of them already):

• Check the time zone for the affected client from their Customer Profile. 
• Check the time zone settings in the Locations tab of the Account & Settings menu.
• Check the time and date settings on your mobile device or computer from System Preferences.
• If you’re using the Appointments app, delete and reinstall it.

If you have not been enable to fix the issue after attempting these steps, please get in contact with our Support team directly so that we can investigate this further. 

[serafaery]

I am having a recurring problem similar to distraeb - most of the time everything works fine with appointments, but especially around the holidays, I have customers who are seeing me here in PST, booking for PST, but they are traveling while doing so, so may be in New York or Ohio when they book the appointment. If this happens, they are shown the appointments in east coast time. Even though the appointment is not happening there or in that time zone. So for example, a customer who comes to me in Oregon but booked while she was in New York thought she had a 9:30pm appointment, when it was actually for 6:30pm. This happened again yesterday, with someone coming from Ohio, she had been told by Square her appointment was for 6:30pm, but when she got here, she discovered it had been booked for 3:30pm in Portland. There should never be a way to book appointments with me in Portland with info in a different time zone, that makes no sense. The east coast time zone should never apply to my business and appointments, it should show the PST only. This is confusing for people who are traveling while booking.

[JustinC]

Hey @serafaery ! Did the troubleshooting steps mentioned in the Best answer of this thread help any? 

[serafaery]

Do you understand my problem at all, did you read my description before asking this of me? It only happens when a customer is physically in a different time zone when booking an appointment with me. The problem is automatically solved when the customer returns to my time zone, without changing any settings. I can't anticipate if a customer is out of my time zone when they book an appointment and change their individual settings to fix it. I have no way of knowing what time zone they are physically in when they book with me. The solution would not be to manually change every customer's time zone settings (I have hundreds) - Square would still create the problem as soon as they leave my time zone. The solution would be for Square not to default to the time zone the customer is physically in when booking an appointment at my location, which will always be in PST regardless of the physical location of the customer at the time of booking. Does that make the issue any more clear?

[distraeb]

Agreed!

 Square, this should not be a difficult fix. No code needed, just remove functions that display the alternative time zone selection pop-up window when someone books from another time zone.   There is no reason any customer should be offered an opportunity to book an appointment at my business based on any other time zone then the one in which my business is located.

[nika]

@serafaery @distraeb Really sorry for the frustration. I just touched base with an Appointments specialist. There's a setting where you can lock your booking site to your business time zone. This will prevent customers from being able to book appointments in a different time zone online. You can find that setting here in your Dashboard.

This should help resolve the issue you're running into. If you're still having trouble or need some clarification, you can always give our Appointments team a call.

[distraeb]

Thank you, I have updated this new setting.  Very much appreciate the fix!  

[serafaery]

Yaaaaay problem finally solved!  Thanks for hanging in there with me!

[nika]

@distraeb @serafaery SO HAPPY TO HEAR THIS NEWS! 🎉

[Reyna2]

I have recentlyrics moved from Idaho to Arizona.I followed the instructions on how to change the time zone to mountain Arizona time and yet it is still sending text messages telling the customer that their appointment is one hour earlier then the actual appointment time. This is causing much confusion. I for example Will enter then for 4pm and they will get a message saying their appointment is at 3pm. Please help!

[ashc]

Hey @Reyna2! Welcome to the Community.

I merged your post with an existing post for this issue.

I would recommend checking out @emmanuel's answer above just to double check that all steps were taken and to also follow his instructions on reaching out to the Appointments folks directly if this issue is persisting.

They'd be able to help you further or file a ticket if need be!

[Cali_Slopes]

The mixup is due to clients phone number area codes. If they input their physical address the city state and zip alone should fix the issue. Annoying but that’s the best solution I found. I called square and they said they did a mass fix for me but they didn’t. 

[SINIGURRRR]

So, my clients schedule apps and get wrong times. Instead of 1030 am it shows 130pm ??? Or I booked one for 3 pm and it shows 6 pm. 

[nika]

Hi @SINIGURRRR. Sounds like a timezone issue, potentially. Would you mind giving these troubleshooting steps a try? If they don't do the trick, go ahead and reach out to our Appointments team.