My team has reached out to your customer support but has not received an answer.
My entire pet grooming business is being affected right now because something is wrong with Amelia. The front end time seems to be set to UTC time whereas the "back-end" Wordpress CMS correctly shows the service hours of my business.
This has been causing me a lot of stress and anxiety as clients are unable to book services and I am losing business.
I would really appreciate if someone can support me on this matter ASAP. I am happy to jump on a call, share my screen as well. My staff has already shared evidence and proof of mismatched timings on front-end and back-end. Customers end up receiving email confirmations of times they have not booked. Please help!
We have checked in the system and we didn't get any other ticket from you in the past 10 moths.
As for time and time zone issues.
Amelia doesn't have any time zone settings, and it relies on WordPress' General settings. Here's how it works:
All times in the back-end of Amelia will be shown exactly how you save them, so (for example) if your employee works from 09:00 - 17:00, or if there's an appointment from 09:00 - 10:00, that's how you will see them in the back-end.
If you enable "Show booking slots in client time zone" in Amelia's General settings, though, that may not be what your customers see, depending on where they're located, and to what your WordPress site has been configured.
If this option in Amelia's General settings is disabled, all times on the front-end will be the same as times in the back-end. So, if your employee's work hours are from 09:00 - 17:00 in UTC+1, with this option disabled, regardless if your customer is in UTC+1, or in UTC+10 - they will still see times from 09:00 - 17:00, so if you have customers in multiple time zones, it's advisable to enable this option in Amelia's General Settings.
Important: In order for Amelia to store correct appointment times in the database (which is almost always in UTC time zone), you need to edit the WordPress' time zone to show the city you're in (or the city in your time zone), like this:
This way, when Daylight Savings Time starts (or ends), the times will be adjusted accordingly and you won't have to worry about them anymore.
If you save your Time Zone in UTC+/- format, you may experience issues with the Daylight Savings Time:
Explanation: When you configure the time zone to be "UTC+1" it will always be UTC+1. So, if we take Belgrade, Serbia as an example - without Daylight Savings Time, it is in UTC+1 time zone, but when Daylight Savings Time starts, Belgrade is in UTC+2. If you leave the time zone to be hard-coded to UTC+1, the times that your customers book on the front-end will not be properly adjusted to what you see in the back-end.
Example with UTC+1 configured: It is mid-summer, and Belgrade is in UTC+2. "Show booking slots in client time zone" is enabled, and a customer from Belgrade opens your website to book an appointment. The working hours of your employee are set from 09:00 - 17:00 (in UTC+1), but the customer sees them as 10:00 - 18:00. This is because the time zone is hard-coded in the back-end, while on the front-end it shows the time in UTC+2. So, a customer books an appointment for 10:00, and shows up at 10:00, while you expect to see them at 09:00.
Please note: If you hard-coded the time zone, and you have booked appointments, once you switch the time zone in WordPress to your city, it will adjust the times in Amelia's appointments to fit the time zone your city is currently in. This happens because (as mentioned above) the times are saved in UTC in the database, and it's adjusted in the plugin programmatically. So, if you have a hard-coded time zone set to UTC+1, and someone booked an appointment for 09:00, that time is saved as 08:00 in the database. When you change the time zone to your city (which is now in UTC+2), the appointment time will be adjusted to the time saved in the database 08:00 + 2:00, so the appointment time will switch to 10:00. The only solution, in this case, is to manually modify the appointment times, but it's the only way to make sure your time zone is properly configured, and that the future appointments will be saved and displayed correctly both for you and your customers on the front-end.
Summary: When you select the city you're in, in WordPress' General Settings, the system automatically calculates the Daylight Savings Time, and shifts the clock accordingly, so if you have any issues with what you see on the front-end vs what you see in the back-end, always check the Time Zone in WordPress.
Thank you for the prompt response. I can confirm that you were right about the website settings and everything is back to normal again. I'm not sure how the time zone changed in the first place. However, what's important is that this is resolved now.
I am happy to share the screenshots privately via email of the team reaching out to customer support, but perhaps they were going through the general channels and not the account specific channel, which should have been the first option. In the end, I decided to jump in myself.
Thanks Marko for the very detailed and thorough answer.
My team has reached out to your customer support but has not received an answer.
My entire pet grooming business is being affected right now because something is wrong with Amelia. The front end time seems to be set to UTC time whereas the "back-end" Wordpress CMS correctly shows the service hours of my business.
This has been causing me a lot of stress and anxiety as clients are unable to book services and I am losing business.
I would really appreciate if someone can support me on this matter ASAP. I am happy to jump on a call, share my screen as well. My staff has already shared evidence and proof of mismatched timings on front-end and back-end. Customers end up receiving email confirmations of times they have not booked. Please help!
Hello Hassan,
Thank you for reaching out to us.
We have checked in the system and we didn't get any other ticket from you in the past 10 moths.
As for time and time zone issues.
Amelia doesn't have any time zone settings, and it relies on WordPress' General settings. Here's how it works:
All times in the back-end of Amelia will be shown exactly how you save them, so (for example) if your employee works from 09:00 - 17:00, or if there's an appointment from 09:00 - 10:00, that's how you will see them in the back-end.
If you enable "Show booking slots in client time zone" in Amelia's General settings, though, that may not be what your customers see, depending on where they're located, and to what your WordPress site has been configured.
If this option in Amelia's General settings is disabled, all times on the front-end will be the same as times in the back-end. So, if your employee's work hours are from 09:00 - 17:00 in UTC+1, with this option disabled, regardless if your customer is in UTC+1, or in UTC+10 - they will still see times from 09:00 - 17:00, so if you have customers in multiple time zones, it's advisable to enable this option in Amelia's General Settings.
Important: In order for Amelia to store correct appointment times in the database (which is almost always in UTC time zone), you need to edit the WordPress' time zone to show the city you're in (or the city in your time zone), like this:
This way, when Daylight Savings Time starts (or ends), the times will be adjusted accordingly and you won't have to worry about them anymore.
If you save your Time Zone in UTC+/- format, you may experience issues with the Daylight Savings Time:
Explanation: When you configure the time zone to be "UTC+1" it will always be UTC+1. So, if we take Belgrade, Serbia as an example - without Daylight Savings Time, it is in UTC+1 time zone, but when Daylight Savings Time starts, Belgrade is in UTC+2. If you leave the time zone to be hard-coded to UTC+1, the times that your customers book on the front-end will not be properly adjusted to what you see in the back-end.
Example with UTC+1 configured: It is mid-summer, and Belgrade is in UTC+2. "Show booking slots in client time zone" is enabled, and a customer from Belgrade opens your website to book an appointment. The working hours of your employee are set from 09:00 - 17:00 (in UTC+1), but the customer sees them as 10:00 - 18:00. This is because the time zone is hard-coded in the back-end, while on the front-end it shows the time in UTC+2. So, a customer books an appointment for 10:00, and shows up at 10:00, while you expect to see them at 09:00.
Please note: If you hard-coded the time zone, and you have booked appointments, once you switch the time zone in WordPress to your city, it will adjust the times in Amelia's appointments to fit the time zone your city is currently in. This happens because (as mentioned above) the times are saved in UTC in the database, and it's adjusted in the plugin programmatically. So, if you have a hard-coded time zone set to UTC+1, and someone booked an appointment for 09:00, that time is saved as 08:00 in the database. When you change the time zone to your city (which is now in UTC+2), the appointment time will be adjusted to the time saved in the database 08:00 + 2:00, so the appointment time will switch to 10:00. The only solution, in this case, is to manually modify the appointment times, but it's the only way to make sure your time zone is properly configured, and that the future appointments will be saved and displayed correctly both for you and your customers on the front-end.
Summary: When you select the city you're in, in WordPress' General Settings, the system automatically calculates the Daylight Savings Time, and shifts the clock accordingly, so if you have any issues with what you see on the front-end vs what you see in the back-end, always check the Time Zone in WordPress.
Hope this helps.
Kind Regards,
Marko Davidovic
[email protected]
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HI Marko,
Thank you for the prompt response. I can confirm that you were right about the website settings and everything is back to normal again. I'm not sure how the time zone changed in the first place. However, what's important is that this is resolved now.
I am happy to share the screenshots privately via email of the team reaching out to customer support, but perhaps they were going through the general channels and not the account specific channel, which should have been the first option. In the end, I decided to jump in myself.
Thanks Marko for the very detailed and thorough answer.