Scheduling across time zones goes wrong in two ways: someone does the conversion in their head and gets it wrong, or the meeting lands at 7 AM for one person every single week. A short method and an honest look at the overlap fixes both.
A four-step method
- Write down everyone's hours in their own zone. Use real hours, not assumptions. Some people start at 7:30, some can't take calls after 4 because of school pickup.
- Decide what "acceptable" means. Agree on an extended range people will tolerate occasionally, such as 8 AM to 8 PM. This is your fallback when the 9-to-5 overlap is empty.
- Convert everything to one clock and find the overlap. Lay the hours out side by side for the actual date of the meeting, not today, because daylight saving may change the gap in between.
- Pick the slot and send the invite in a time zone. A calendar event tied to a zone converts automatically for each attendee. Avoid writing "3 PM EST" in the body text, since EST is wrong for half the year (summer is EDT).
The Time Zone Meeting Planner does steps 3 and 4 for you: add cities, set working and acceptable hours for each, and it ranks the windows where everyone is available, then exports a calendar (.ics) file or a share link.
Overlap tables for common city pairs
These tables assume 9 AM–5 PM working hours and 8 AM–8 PM acceptable hours in every city. The first is a typical northern-hemisphere winter date; the second a summer date.
November (northern winter)
| Cities | Gap | Shared 9–5 hours | Shared 8 AM–8 PM hours |
|---|---|---|---|
| New York – London | +5 h | 9:00 AM–12:00 PM / 2:00 PM–5:00 PM (3 h) | 8:00 AM–3:00 PM / 1:00 PM–8:00 PM (7 h) |
| New York – Berlin | +6 h | 9:00 AM–11:00 AM / 3:00 PM–5:00 PM (2 h) | 8:00 AM–2:00 PM / 2:00 PM–8:00 PM (6 h) |
| San Francisco – London | +8 h | None | 8:00 AM–12:00 PM / 4:00 PM–8:00 PM (4 h) |
| New York – Bengaluru | +10.5 h | None | 8:00 AM–9:30 AM / 6:30 PM–8:00 PM (1.5 h) |
| London – Singapore | +8 h | None | 8:00 AM–12:00 PM / 4:00 PM–8:00 PM (4 h) |
| San Francisco – Sydney | +19 h | 2:00 PM–5:00 PM / 9:00 AM–12:00 PM (3 h) | 1:00 PM–8:00 PM / 8:00 AM–3:00 PM (7 h) |
| London – Sydney | +11 h | None | 8:00 AM–9:00 AM / 7:00 PM–8:00 PM (1 h) |
Computed for Wednesday, November 4, 2026. Times are local to the first city, then the second. Gap is how far the second city is ahead.
July (northern summer)
| Cities | Gap | Shared 9–5 hours | Shared 8 AM–8 PM hours |
|---|---|---|---|
| New York – London | +5 h | 9:00 AM–12:00 PM / 2:00 PM–5:00 PM (3 h) | 8:00 AM–3:00 PM / 1:00 PM–8:00 PM (7 h) |
| New York – Berlin | +6 h | 9:00 AM–11:00 AM / 3:00 PM–5:00 PM (2 h) | 8:00 AM–2:00 PM / 2:00 PM–8:00 PM (6 h) |
| San Francisco – London | +8 h | None | 8:00 AM–12:00 PM / 4:00 PM–8:00 PM (4 h) |
| New York – Bengaluru | +9.5 h | None | 8:00 AM–10:30 AM / 5:30 PM–8:00 PM (2.5 h) |
| London – Singapore | +7 h | 9:00 AM–10:00 AM / 4:00 PM–5:00 PM (1 h) | 8:00 AM–1:00 PM / 3:00 PM–8:00 PM (5 h) |
| San Francisco – Sydney | +17 h | 4:00 PM–5:00 PM / 9:00 AM–10:00 AM (1 h) | 3:00 PM–8:00 PM / 8:00 AM–1:00 PM (5 h) |
| London – Sydney | +9 h | None | 8:00 AM–11:00 AM / 5:00 PM–8:00 PM (3 h) |
Computed for Wednesday, July 14, 2027. Times are local to the first city, then the second. Gap is how far the second city is ahead.
A few patterns stand out:
- US East Coast and Western Europe are the easy case: a few hours of overlap in the New York morning, all year.
- US West Coast and Europe overlap only at the very edges of the day. Expect 8 AM calls in California and late-afternoon ones in London.
- US and India share no 9-to-5 hours at all. The usable slots are the New York early morning, which is Bengaluru's evening.
- Australia and Europe are the hardest pair; the extended overlap is an hour or two at best.
Watch the daylight saving mismatch weeks
The US and Europe change their clocks on different dates. In 2026, Europe returned to standard time on October 25 and the US on November 1. For that one week the gap between New York and London is 4 h instead of 5 h, so a recurring 11 AM New York call shows up an hour earlier in London than usual.
| Date | New York | London | Shared 9–5 hours |
|---|---|---|---|
| October 28, 2026 | UTC−4 | UTC+0 | 9:00 AM–1:00 PM New York / 1:00 PM–5:00 PM London |
| November 4, 2026 | UTC−5 | UTC+0 | 9:00 AM–12:00 PM New York / 2:00 PM–5:00 PM London |
The same thing happens in spring (in 2027 the US moves its clocks on March 14, Europe on March 28). The southern hemisphere runs the opposite way: Sydney is on daylight time from early October to early April, which is why the London–Sydney gap swings between 9 and 11 hours across the year. To check a single date and time, use the time zone converter; it also flags times that don't exist or happen twice on the change-over day.
Worked example: three cities
Say a team has people in New York, London and Bengaluru, all on 9-to-5. On November 4, 2026 there is no slot inside everyone's working hours. Allowing 8 AM–8 PM, the best window is:
8:00 AM–9:30 AM New York / 1:00 PM–2:30 PM London / 6:30 PM–8:00 PM Bengaluru
That is 1.5 h where nobody is outside the acceptable range, and it puts New York at the very start of the day and Bengaluru at the very end of theirs. Move the New York person to San Francisco and the picture gets worse: there is no slot inside 8 AM–8 PM for all three. Two practical ways to handle a split like this:
- Rotate. Alternate between a slot that's early for the US and one that's late for India, so the cost is shared.
- Split the meeting. Hold two shorter sessions, each covering two of the three regions, and share notes between them.
Tips that save a round of emails
- Propose two or three specific slots in each person's local time rather than asking "when works for you?"
- Check the date, not just the time. A 6 PM call in New York is already tomorrow in Sydney, Singapore and Bengaluru.
- For deadlines, say whose midnight you mean, or use a date counter like the date calculator to state business days explicitly.
- Recurring meetings drift twice a year. Re-check them in March, April, October and November.
If your team runs scheduled jobs as well as meetings, the same daylight saving traps apply to servers; see cron expression examples for how time zones affect cron.