How to schedule across time zones
A practical guide to shared working hours, respectful scheduling, and meetings that survive clock changes.
Start with people, then their clocks
Add the city where each person will actually be on the meeting date. A colleague who usually works in London may be in Singapore next week. Choose that week’s date before comparing hours.
Working hours are a starting point, not a promise of availability. Our planner lets you choose a shared working-hours preset and can exclude local weekends. Individual calendars, lunch breaks, and public holidays still need to be checked.
Find the full meeting window
A good start time is not enough if the meeting ends after someone finishes work. Select the meeting duration, then use “Find a good time.” The planner checks that the whole meeting fits within the selected working hours in every city.
Suggestions are spaced at useful intervals. Each suggestion is shown in your first city’s time zone. Select one to see the same instant across the other locations.
When there is no overlap
A team spread across the Americas, Europe, and Asia may have no shared daytime window. A shorter meeting or wider availability can help, but sometimes the honest answer is that there is no comfortable slot.
Use an asynchronous update when you can. If a live call is necessary, rotate the early or late slot instead of putting the burden on the same people every week. Record the call when participants agree to it.
Share an instant, not just a clock reading
A message saying “Let’s meet at 9” leaves everyone guessing. Share the converter link to preserve the selected cities, exact instant, duration, and working-hours settings.
Download an .ics event or open Google Calendar to add the meeting. The event uses an absolute instant, so calendar apps display the corresponding local time. Adding it does not automatically invite the other participants.
Review meetings around clock changes
A weekly meeting that stays at 9 am in the organizer’s city can shift for teammates whose clocks change on a different date, or do not change at all.
Check the weeks around daylight saving transitions and tell the team if a local start time will move. For recurring calendar events, preserve the organizer’s city time zone and review the recurrence settings in your calendar.
Put it into practice.
Compare your cities, choose a date, and find a moment that works.
Open the meeting planner →Sources & further reading
Time zone rules and identifiers: IANA Time Zone Database. Time standards and clock terminology: NIST Time of Day FAQs. See how our converter calculates time for implementation details and limitations.