Plenty of automations run on a clock: a summary of yesterday's orders at 8am, a reminder to customers the evening before their booking, a stock update overnight.

Every automation tool decides what "8am" means using a time zone setting. If that setting isn't UK time, the automation still runs, perfectly on time, by somebody else's clock.

This guide is a check you can do yourself in about ten minutes. You don't change anything. You only look.

The signs

  • Your morning summary used to arrive at 8 and now arrives at 7 or 9, starting the week the clocks changed.
  • Reminders reach customers in the middle of the night.
  • Late-night orders appear in your spreadsheet with the day before's date.
  • An "end of day" report includes some of tomorrow's orders, or leaves out the last hour of today's.
  • Booking times in a calendar or a confirmation email are an hour out, or several hours out.

Why it happens

The UK isn't on the same time all year. The clocks go forward an hour at 1am on the last Sunday in March, and back an hour at 2am on the last Sunday in October.

Automation tools often start on a different time zone, and the setting is easy to miss:

  • Zapier uses UTC unless someone sets your account's time zone. UTC never changes for summer, so a Zapier schedule can be right all winter and an hour out all summer.
  • n8n, when a business runs it on its own server, starts on New York time unless whoever set it up changed it. That's five hours behind the UK.
  • Make runs scenarios by the time zone of your organization, which is chosen at sign-up and can be different from the time zone shown next to your own name.

The apps at each end have their own time zones too: your shop, your booking system, your spreadsheet. When two of them disagree, times and dates shift as they pass between them.

The 10-minute check

1. Compare when things should happen with when they arrive

Write down each automation that runs on a schedule, and when it's meant to run in UK time. Then look at when its result actually arrived, for example the time on the summary email in your inbox. Your inbox shows your own local time, so it's an honest witness.

If something arrives an hour out, or several hours out, note it down.

2. Look at the time zone in the automation tool

  • Zapier: open your profile settings (the My Profile page) and look at Timezone. Each Zap can also have its own time zone, shown in the Zap details panel when you open the Zap. Zaps that run on a schedule follow the account's time zone.
  • Make: open your Profile and the Time zone options tab. The organization's time zone decides when scenarios run. The one next to your own name only changes how times are shown to you.
  • n8n: on n8n Cloud, the owner can see it in the Admin Dashboard, under Manage. On your own server, ask whoever runs it. Each workflow can also have its own: open the workflow, then the menu with three dots, then Settings, then Timezone.

What you want to see is London, sometimes written as Europe/London. An option called only UTC, or GMT with no city, usually stays on winter time all year.

3. Look at the apps at each end

Check the time zone in your shop or booking system's settings, and in any spreadsheet the automation writes to. In Google Sheets, it's under File, then Settings. If one of them is set somewhere else, write that down too.

4. Look for anything scheduled between 1am and 2am

On the night the clocks go forward, that hour doesn't happen. On the night they go back, it happens twice. Tools handle this in different ways, so an automation set for 1:30am may run twice, or not at all, on those two nights.

If something important runs in that hour, note it. Moving it to 3am is a simple change for whoever looks after it.

Before anyone changes a time zone

A time zone setting usually covers many automations at once, so changing it moves all of them together. Ask whoever looks after them to make the change with your list from step 1 in hand, then compare the times again the next day.

In Zapier, a Zap that runs on a schedule also needs switching off and on again before it notices a new account time zone.

The habit that keeps the times right

Put two short reminders in your diary: the Monday after the last Sunday in March, and the Monday after the last Sunday in October. On each, glance at when your scheduled automations' results arrived that morning.

It takes two minutes, twice a year, and it's when time zone settings show themselves most clearly.

What to do with what you found

If everything arrived when it should and every setting says London, well done. Keep the two diary reminders anyway.

If you found a time zone set somewhere else, you now know exactly what to ask about. Take your notes to whoever looks after your automations.

And if there's nobody to ask, I can look at it for you, read-only. Here's an example of the findings note you'd get.