Guides · Updated 2026-10-29

Why does my booking page show the wrong time zone?

How does a booking page know the invitee’s time zone?

It asks the invitee’s device. Calendly’s help center says it “detects your invitee’s time zone automatically” (Calendly), and a Calendly community moderator adds that zones are detected “by checking your device settings and synced calendars”, so a VPN or a wrong system clock can change what an invitee sees (Time Zone Troubleshooting Guide, 13,476 views and 23 replies).

Other tools work the same way:

• Microsoft Bookings: “Bookings automatically detects their local time zones and will show availability to them in their own time zones. For example, if an appointment is available at 1:00pm PST, someone in CST will see the available time displayed as 3:00pm CST” (Microsoft Learn).
• HubSpot Meetings: “Visitors can use the time zone dropdown menu on the booking page to view available times in a different time zone” (HubSpot).
• Calendly: an event type can be locked to one time zone. Calendly recommends this for in-person meetings: “For in-person events, we recommend locking the time zone to the event location” (Calendly).

Locking the zone suits an in-person appointment, where the invitee has to be in your city anyway. For video calls it makes invitees convert the time themselves, which is where mistakes start.

Whose time zone is the host’s availability in?

The zone set on the schedule or booking page, which isn’t always the zone of your computer or your account.

• Calendly: “Each schedule in Calendly is tied to a single time zone”, and new schedules use your account time zone by default (Calendly).
• Cal.com: each availability schedule has its own Timezone menu, “useful if you travel and want a schedule that follows another country’s time” (Cal.com).
• HubSpot Meetings: each scheduling page has a setting for “the time zone that your availability is based on” (HubSpot).
• Google Calendar appointment schedules: the host sets “the date, time, and time zone of your appointments” in the schedule’s general availability (Google).

If slots appear an hour or more away from the hours you set, check this setting first.

What happens when US and European clocks change on different dates?

For a few weeks a year, the gap between US and European time zones shrinks by one hour, and a booking page shows cross-border invitees different slots than usual.

In 2026 the two systems are out of step for three weeks in spring (8 to 29 March) and one week in autumn (25 October to 1 November). During those weeks New York is four hours behind London instead of five, and Chicago, Denver and Los Angeles are one hour closer to Europe than usual.

On a booking page, a London host with 9:00 to 17:00 availability normally shows a New York invitee 4:00 to 12:00. During the gap weeks the same page shows 5:00 to 13:00. Nothing is broken: the host’s hours stay at the same local clock time and the invitee’s device converts correctly. Problems start when a person adjusts by hand. In a Calendly community thread on confirmation emails, a moderator noted that Calendly adjusts for daylight saving automatically, so invitees shouldn’t shift times themselves (Calendly Community, 2,395 views).

Standing internal meetings set up in only one region’s calendar also move for the other region in these weeks, so a booking page can open a slot that clashes with a regular call. Check cross-border calendars before 8 March and 25 October.

Why does the confirmation email show a different time zone?

There are two kinds of confirmation, and they get their time zone from different places.

• Confirmation and reminder emails from the booking tool show the zone the invitee saw on the booking page. Calendly: “Email confirmations always show the correct time zone and aren’t affected by your invitee’s calendar app” (Calendly).
• Calendar invitations take the time zone of the calendar that receives them, according to a Calendly moderator (Calendly Community). When the receiving side can’t tell, the invitation falls back to UTC.

HubSpot documents the same cause from Google’s side. When HubSpot adds a booked meeting to a Google Calendar, Google sends the invitation, and “Google tries to identify the timezone of that prospect based on their email address, but can’t detect it”, so the invitation shows UTC (HubSpot). Both Calendly and HubSpot name Hotmail and Yahoo addresses as typical cases, and Calendly adds AOL.

If many invitees report UTC times, Calendly suggests switching the event type from calendar invitations to email confirmations (Calendly).

Does recurring availability shift after a daylight saving change?

Not for the host. Weekly hours are stored as local clock times in the schedule’s zone, and Calendly says it “handles daylight saving time changes for you” (Calendly). A 9:00 start stays a 9:00 start after the clocks change.

What changes is how those hours look from elsewhere. Invitees in a region that hasn’t changed yet, or doesn’t use daylight saving, see the slots move by one hour. If you serve clients in another region and want the same overlap all year, review your hours for the weeks in the table above.

How should a travelling host set availability?

Change the schedule’s time zone, not just your laptop’s.

• Cal.com: “Schedule timezone change” in the general settings sets a destination time zone for a date range, or with no end date, and availability follows it automatically. Cal.com says this is available on all plans, including free (Cal.com).
• Calendly: “If you’re traveling or working in different time zones, you can set date-specific hours” (Calendly). Because each schedule has one time zone, a separate schedule in the other zone is the cleaner option for a long trip.

How do Microsoft Bookings time zone settings work?

Microsoft Bookings has two separate time zone settings, and a mismatch between them is the usual cause of wrong slots (Microsoft Learn):

1. Booking calendar: uses the time zone of the signed-in user’s Outlook on the web settings (gear icon, search “time zone”).
2. Booking page: set under Booking page > Change language and time zone settings.

Microsoft’s FAQ adds three rules (Bookings FAQ):

• “All times are in the business time zone (your local time zone) by default”, including working hours.
• If Always show time slots in business time zone is unchecked, visitors see slots in their own time zone.
• “There’s no provision to set time zone for staff in Bookings.” Staff hours are in the business time zone, so a team spread across zones has to enter hours converted to that zone. By comparison, Acuity Scheduling’s pricing page lists “Set different time zones for each staff member or location” on its Premium plan (Acuity).

The most-voted Microsoft Q&A thread on this, Microsoft Bookings shows wrong time slots (90+ “same question” votes), was fixed by the booking page setting: “Changing the time zone of the booking page fixed the issue. It is interesting that it was set to UCT by default when I am physically in the UTC-7 time zone.” In a 2025 thread about bookings showing one hour late in Apple Calendar, a user reported the same fix after the page’s time zone “had jumped to a different timezone” (Microsoft Q&A).

What should you check before the next clock change?

1. The time zone on each schedule or booking page matches where you work.
2. In Microsoft Bookings, the booking page zone matches the Outlook zone of whoever manages the calendar.
3. Event types for video calls aren’t locked to your time zone.
4. Event types with many Hotmail, Yahoo or AOL invitees send email confirmations, not only calendar invitations.
5. Cross-border availability and standing meetings are reviewed for 8 to 29 March and 25 October to 1 November.

Check the dates for your own time zones

The time zone and daylight saving checker shows, for any two places, the exact weeks in the next year when the gap between them changes, and what your meeting time becomes on the other side.

Where to compare booking tools

The comparison table sets Calendly, Cal.com, Microsoft Bookings and other booking tools side by side on the same published rubric, free booking tools compares what each free plan includes, and the pricing page shows what each plan costs.

Questions