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How busybusy Handles Time Zones
Ashley Tello avatar
Written by Ashley Tello
Updated over a week ago

Understanding time zones can be tricky, but we’ve got ya covered!

My employee started in one time zone but clocked out in another, how will this affect his time card? I am showing a different display on my report due to a time zone change, what is that? These questions and more will be answered below.

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busybusy records start and end times for each time entry. In addition, we record the time zones that each start and end time occurred in by allowing the device to self report what time zone the clock in or clock out occurred in. Time zone changes don’t affect time card totals.

Q: What happens when someone changes time zones during their shift?

A: The start and end time zones will differ from each other, but the time will still be calculated correctly. Also, the view from an employee may differ from that of an Admin who is looking at the time entry in a different time zone than the entry occurred.

Q: Can my employee switch time zones to gain time?

A. No. We don’t use self reported time zones to calculate any totals. Employees can’t change time zones to affect their total number of hours. For example: say an employee clocks in with their phone saying one time zone, switches their time zone to be 2 hours later, and then clocks out 5 minutes later. The time entry will display a start time of 9:00am and a clock out of 11:05am, but a total time of 5 minutes.

Q: Why aren’t time zones shown on each entry?

A: If you see a time zone it means that there is something unique about it that you might want to know. But for most people, in most cases they won’t have to see time zones associated with every start or end time of their employees. The reason we do this is so that there isn’t a lot of time zone noise. For any company that is working locally with employees not traveling and not changing the time zones on their devices, they can just never think about time zones.

Q: Why do I have a + and number next to my employee’s time entry?

A: This shouldn’t be common, but can result when a device reports their time zone as something that doesn’t have a known name from the lookup libraries we use. Sometimes our UI will display something like “+08:00” instead of “MST”. +06:00 (as an example). The "+/- ##:##" is the number of hours/minutes ahead or behind GMT.

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If you have additional questions about time zones affecting your employees’ time cards, we’re here to help!

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