Time Zones in Booking Automations for Businesses That Serve Several US States

A remote tutoring business in Denver sends reminders to students in California and New York. When a reminder is set for 9 a.m. Mountain time, half the families receive it at the wrong moment, and twice a year, during daylight saving changes, appointments shift by an hour. At NxFlowAI, an AI automation agency based in Mumbai, we follow these rules for building reminder automations for US small businesses.

First, we store appointments as instant UTC times plus the IANA zone name where they were booked. Next, we collect the customer's zone at booking, either from their address or by asking. Then, we schedule reminders relative to the customer's local time, never hard-coding offsets. We use the tz database to handle daylight saving changes, as some places like most of Arizona do not observe it.

To ensure accuracy, we write tests for bookings near daylight saving changes and for times that temporarily disappear or occur twice. Each message displays the time and zone abbreviation the customer recognizes, such as 3:30 p.m. Pacific. Lastly, we respect quiet hours in the customer's local time. Following these rules eliminates most complaints about reminders coming at odd times.