Chip eServices Blog

As a result of some feedback from customers regarding confusion about dates and times we decided to clarify our policy regarding date and time input, storage, and display. I have to thank Przemek and Darren for explaining to me that this topic is a bit more complex that I previously thought.

 All dates and times are stored in our central servers in what is called Universal Time or Greenwich Mean Time (GMT).

Each User can set an offset in multiples of 30 minutes from GMT. Currently the Chip eServices Suite does not support daylight saving time. Each user must adjust their local time to ensure accurate recording of dates and times. Confusion and problems arise when a transaction is created in one time zone and read in another time zone.

Some data fields in records are stored in the Chip eServices Suite as ‘date only’ while other are stored as ‘date and time’. These records are handled differently in the software.

Date Only Fields

Examples of such fields are ‘Date of Manufacture’ and ‘Invoice Date’

 These fields are entered and stored as the date entered by the user and are not adjusted based on the the time zone of the user. For example if a User creates an Invoice in Pacific Time in the USA (GMT -8 hours) at 17:00 with a local date of 10 April 2008 that Invoice is created and displayed always with a date of 10 April 2008 despite the fact the the invoice was created on 11 April 2008 in GMT. This is important for consistancy in financial and/or contractual interpretation of data. For example there should be no confusion as to the date of a financial transaction as a result of the geographic location of the User reading that data. In this way a financial transaction will always belong to the same accounting period.

Date and Time Fields

Examples of such fields are ‘History Event Date’ and ‘Delivery Date’

These fields are entered and displayed with an offset based on the time zone of the User entering or reading the value. For example, consider a User in the USA at GMT - 8 recording a telephone conversation with a customer at 17:00 on a local date of 17:00 and a local date of 10 April 2008. If a User in Singapore, at GMT + 8, reads this record they will see a date and time of 11 April 2008 9:00  as the time and date of that entry. This is important so that customer service escalation processes correctly interpret time intervals in the context of their local time zone.

Each table in the database of the Chip eServices Suite has two date time fields called ‘Created’ and ‘Updated’. These fields are entered automatically by the system and are used for auditing and data sychronisation. Using the reporting menu item in any of the applications in the Chip eServices Suite it is possible to search for records based on a time and date range. It is necessary to be careful when selecting a date range to be sure of selecting all required transactions and not selecting unwanted transactions.