How do I find a meeting time that works across several time zones?

Enter a candidate time in your own zone, tick every attendee zone, and read the business-hours flags. If any attendee is outside 09:00-17:00, check the ranked overlapping start times at the bottom of the results, which sort candidate hours by how many attendees fall inside their working day.

Does this planner handle daylight saving time?

Yes. Each zone's offset is resolved for the exact date you enter using the IANA time zone database, so a slot checked for a date after a clock change reflects the offset that will actually apply then, not today's.

What is a reasonable overlap window for a global team?

Teams spread across the Americas, Europe and Asia-Pacific typically have two to four hours of genuine overlap, and often none at all across the full span. Where overlap is zero, treat synchronous meetings as expensive: hold one rotating call a week for decisions and run everything else asynchronously in writing.

Why do the times shift by 30 minutes for some zones?

Not every zone is a whole number of hours from UTC. India is UTC+5:30, parts of Australia are UTC+9:30, and Nepal is UTC+5:45. This is why arithmetic done by hand goes wrong, and why the planner formats each zone directly rather than adding whole hours.

Is my meeting information sent anywhere?

No. The conversion happens entirely in your browser using the time zone data already built into it. Nothing you enter — dates, times or attendee zones — is uploaded or stored.

Should I schedule by 24-hour clock or am/pm?

Use the 24-hour clock in written invitations to distributed teams. It removes the single most common scheduling error, where an 8:00 intended as evening is read as morning, and it is the default format across most of Europe, Asia and Latin America anyway.

Free Time Zone Meeting Planner for Distributed Teams

About the Time Zone Meeting Planner

Daylight saving is the reason recurring meetings drift

The northern and southern hemispheres change clocks at different times of year, and some zones never change at all, so a standing call locked to 15:00 London can shift by an hour relative to New York for two weeks in March and again in October, and by two hours relative to Sydney. This planner resolves each zone's offset for the specific date you enter rather than applying a fixed difference, so check any recurring slot again either side of a clock change.

The date rolls over more often than people expect

Anything scheduled after mid-afternoon European time lands on the following calendar day in Australia and New Zealand, and anything before mid-morning lands on the previous day on the US west coast. The weekday shown next to each local time is there to catch exactly this, since the most costly scheduling mistakes are the ones where everyone agrees on the hour and disagrees on the day.

How to share the load fairly on a distributed team

When no slot fits everyone, rotate rather than default. Alternating between a slot that favours the western zones and one that favours the eastern zones spreads the cost, and recording the session with written notes means the person who takes the unsociable slot can skip it occasionally without falling behind. Reserve the genuinely synchronous meetings for decisions, and move status reporting into writing.

Always confirm in the invitee's own time

Write the time in every relevant zone in the invitation body, not just your own, and let the calendar tool attach the zone-aware event so each attendee's client converts it. Naming an abbreviation like CST is ambiguous — it maps to more than one offset worldwide — so use city names or the IANA zone identifiers this planner lists.

Time Zone Meeting Planner

Local times

Best overlapping start times

What the Time Zone Meeting Planner does

Methodology and formula

Worked example

When to use this tool