If your patient or client received an appointment confirmation email with a time that doesn't match the appointment, the most likely culprit is either:

Below, we'll walk you through how to check this!

The "time zone" placeholders in the appointment confirmation email will reference the time zone that's set up in the patient's details page—for example, if the patient's time zone is set to AEST, the "time zone" placeholder will send appointment details in AEST.

This is fine if the patient lives in the AEST time zone, but not great if they're somewhere else! To check what time zone they currently have, head to the patient's file, and look under the Time zone field:

If it says "Use account time zone", but this patient lives somewhere that doesn't have your account's time zone, you'll want to change this. To do this, select the edit button, and scroll down a bit. Below the address field, you'll find an area called Time zone:

Use the drop-down menu to select the appropriate time zone. Save the settings, and your patient will now have the correct time zone:

Here's a quick video demonstration of how it works:

All set! 🙌 This now means that this patient should receive appointment reminders and confirmations in their time zone, as long as you have your templates set up with the "time zone" placeholders. Head over here to learn how to do that.

Another reason the confirmation email may show up incorrectly for the patient could be that the patient's own time zone settings (on their side) are incorrect. Generally, applications like Google Calendar or Apple Calendar update time zones automatically to sync with things like Daylight Savings or relocation (such as if someone is travelling), but sometimes, these apps can not get updated correctly.

If everything looks correct to you on the Cliniko side of things, then we suggest asking the patient to check the time zone settings of their calendar and email application, which is the application recieiving the appointment from Cliniko. Each application will have their own settings to check, but we've shared some guides for commonly-usedc calendar apps. These guides may be subject to change, as they've been created by the companies who own the app, but they may be a good starting point.

If you've checked the time zone settings of the patient and your account, but the confirmation emails (or reminders) are still stating an incorrect time, it may be that multiple time zone support is enabled on your account and somewhere—in between the patient, the location they've booked their appointment at, and your account settings—there's a mix-up. This guide on where time zones are used may be helpful!