How to schedule a meeting across time zones (step by step)
Scheduling a call between Miami, Bogotá and Madrid looks simple until someone shows up an hour early. Most mistakes come from three sources: guessing the time difference, forgetting daylight saving time, and sending an invite that only shows one city's time. This guide walks through a method that avoids all three.
Step 1: List every participant's city, not their country
Countries such as the United States, Mexico, Brazil, Canada and Australia have several time zones. "A colleague in the US" can be anywhere from 5 to 10 hours behind London. Write down the actual city for each person: New York, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, Phoenix and Honolulu all behave differently, and Phoenix does not use daylight saving time at all.
Do the same for your own location. If you travel, plan from the city where you will be on the day of the meeting, not where you live.
Step 2: Fix the exact date before you compare times
The difference between two cities is not constant through the year. Miami and Madrid are normally 6 hours apart, but for about three weeks in March and one week between late October and early November they are only 5 hours apart, because the US and Europe change their clocks on different dates. Mexico City and Chicago have the same time in winter but are an hour apart in summer, since Mexico stopped using daylight saving time in 2022.
That is why World Meeting Sync always asks for the date first: the tool calculates every guest's time for that specific day using the official time zone database.
Step 3: Map each person's working day
For each city, mark three bands:
- Comfortable: roughly 9:00 to 17:00 local time.
- Acceptable with notice: 7:00 to 9:00 and 17:00 to 20:00.
- Avoid: anything before 7:00 or after 20:00, plus lunch hours in cultures where lunch is long and protected.
The best slot is where all the "comfortable" bands overlap. If there is no overlap, look for the slot where the fewest people fall into "acceptable" and nobody falls into "avoid". In the planner, these bands appear as colors next to each guest, so you can see the overlap at a glance.
Step 4: Consider the human factors
A time that is technically inside working hours is not always a good time. A few rules that save goodwill:
- Avoid Friday afternoon in Europe and Monday morning in Asia. For a US organizer these are easy slots to pick by accident.
- Check local holidays. Holy Week in Latin America and Spain, Golden Week in Japan or Ramadan working hours in the Gulf can empty a meeting.
- Remember the weekend shift. In the UAE the work week runs Monday to Friday since 2022, but in some Middle Eastern countries Friday is still a rest day.
- Ask the person who carries the inconvenience. If someone must join at 7:00, ask them first instead of assuming.
Step 5: Send an invite that shows everyone's time
The single most effective habit is to write every participant's local time in the invitation itself, not only in the calendar event. For example:
Miami 9:00 AM · Bogotá 9:00 AM · Madrid 3:00 PM
Calendar apps convert times automatically, but people read emails and chat messages on their phones before the calendar entry syncs. Listing the times removes any doubt. World Meeting Sync generates this text for you and adds buttons for Google Calendar and Outlook so each guest gets the event in their own time zone.
Common mistakes to avoid
Writing "EST" in summer
EST is Eastern Standard Time (UTC−5). From March to November the East Coast uses EDT (UTC−4). Writing "10 AM EST" in July is technically wrong and confuses people who convert carefully. Use the city name or "Eastern Time" instead.
Using a fixed offset for recurring meetings
A weekly meeting set at "15:00 UTC" will move by one hour for everyone who observes daylight saving time. Decide which city is the anchor and set the recurring event in that city's time zone.
Forgetting the date changes
An 8:00 PM call from Los Angeles is already the next morning in Tokyo or Sydney. Always state the date for each participant when the call crosses midnight.
Quick checklist
- Cities for every participant, including yourself.
- Exact date chosen before comparing times.
- Overlap of working hours identified.
- Holidays and weekends checked.
- Invite lists every local time, with calendar links.
Follow these five steps and international meetings stop being a guessing game. The planner on the home page does steps 2, 3 and 5 automatically; you only need to bring the cities and the judgment.