What is the difference in a database starting at 00:00, 01:00...... or 06:00? Can I change this at a later date?
Answer:
A day in farmerswife is 24 hours from the Day Starts At time. In most cases, our customers prefer the Day Start time to be 06:00, ending at 06:00 the next day.
The benefit of this is that a Booking can be scheduled to start at 23:00 and end at 01:00 in the morning of the next day, and still be considered as a single-day Booking, i.e. it will display only the initial date in the Project, later in the Invoice, and will only appear as one day in the Time Report window.
Choosing the Day Start time of 00:00, means that a single-day Booking from 23:00 to 01:00 will be considered as a multi-day Booking lasting two days, i.e. it will display both dates in the Project, later in the Invoice, and will appear as two days in the Time Report window.
Also consider that if the involved Object is charged in Day units, you will still be charging for one day in the first scenario, whereas in the second scenario you would be charging two days even though the Booking only lasts 2 hours.
When considering at what time the database day should start, consider when the majority of your Bookings occur and or when your shifts begin and end (if working with shifts).
When starting the server application for the first time and without any database, you can choose between "Demo Database" and "Empty Database" both of which have the day start at 06:00. This can be changed in the Server Setup > General tab > Day Starts At, where you can set the start of the day to 00:00, 01:00...up until 09:00. It is highly recommended that you decide on this setting at the very beginning of your Server and database set up.
But if you decide to change the Day Starts At time at a later stage, the following will occur:
(Changing Day Starts At time from 06:00 to 00:00 for example)
- All bookings that currently start at 06:00 will move to start at 00:00.
- Any bookings that are booked between 00:00–06:00 will shift to an earlier time to fit into the newly set Day timeframe. Example: a booking that was booked until 06:00 will now end at 00:00 on the same day and a booking that was booked until 05:00 will now end at 23:00 on the same day.
Therefore you may need to re-schedule many of your bookings.
PLEASE NOTE: All Hourline views will be modified. Each user will have to re-configure their Hourline settings to start and end according to their needs (in Toolbox > Settings > Hourline > Viewable Time Frame).
Example:
A booking that was booked until 06:00 will now end at 00:00 on the same day and a booking that was booked until 05:00 will now end at 23:00 on the same day. Therefore you may need to reschedule many of your bookings.
Also, consider that all Hourline views will be modified. Each user will have to re-configure their Hourline settings to start and end according to their needs (in toolbox > Settings > Hourline > Viewable Time Frame).
If the day Start time (i.e. the time that FW uses to determine the start of a new day) is set to 6 am for the Server, the Timezone offset will cause the Day Start time in New York to be 01:00/1 am (-5hrs) and in Paris, it will be 07:00/7 am.
Choosing the Day Start time of 00:00 means that a single-day Booking from 23:00 to 01:00 will be considered as a multi-day Booking lasting two days, i.e. it will display both dates in the Project, later in the Invoice, and will appear as two days in the Time Report window.
Also consider that if the involved Object is charged in Day units, you will still be charging for one day in the first scenario, whereas in the second scenario you would be charging two days even though the Booking only lasts 2 hours.
When considering at what time the database day should start, consider when the majority of your Bookings occur and/or when your shifts begin and end (if working with shifts).
It is highly recommended that you decide on this setting at the very beginning of your Server and database setup. If you decide to change the Day Starts At the time at a later stage, the following will occur:
Changing Day Starts At the time from 06:00 to 00:00 for example:
- All bookings that currently start at 06:00 will move to start at 00:00.
- Any bookings that are booked between 00:00 and 06:00 will shift to an earlier time to fit into the newly set Day timeframe.
Things to consider:
When deciding to use Timezone support always consider how the offset will impact the start time in the other time zones.
Example:
The company has offices in New York and LA.
If the Server is set to LA time and the day start time set to 8 am the timezone offset would cause the New York offices' start time to be 11 am. This would most likely be inconvenient, as the day's bookings in New York would generally need to start earlier than this.
The Timezone support works optimally when there are no more than 9 hours between the furthest west and the furthest east location. farmerswife cannot calculate the correct time if the time zone offset causes the day to start before midnight and in those instances, it will revert to the original Server Time for those time zone locations.
Example:
A company has offices in Spain and LA.
If the Server is set to Spanish time and the Day Start time is set to 6 am, the offset to the LA office (-9hrs) would cause the LA day to start before midnight (6 am-9hrs = 9 pm) and farmerswife would display the original Spanish time even for the office in the LA timezone.