Time zones and when a day closes
Every report on AffiliateOS counts days in UTC, from midnight to midnight. The date picker names days by your computer’s calendar, but the numbers for a day are always that date’s UTC day. Today’s numbers fill in as the day goes; a reversal that arrives later moves an earlier day at our next rebuild, a few hours later.
See also: Reporting
On this page
Example: Pebble Rewards in Texas. On 29 October, Texas is five hours behind UTC.
| In Texas | In UTC | Counts on |
|---|---|---|
29 October, 2:06 PM: player u_48213 taps Harbor Blocks | 29 October, 7:06 PM | 29 October |
| 29 October, 7:30 PM: the install comes in | 30 October, 12:30 AM | 30 October |
The click counts on the day of the tap, and the conversion on the day we received it. Here they land on different days, so 29 October shows a click with no conversion and 30 October a conversion with no click. Over a week it mostly evens out; over one evening it doesn’t.
| Where | Days and times |
|---|---|
| Dashboard and Offer Performance, publishers and networks | UTC days. Weeks start on Monday, UTC. |
| Advertiser Overview | UTC days |
| Conversions | From and To are UTC dates. Each row’s time shows in your browser’s time zone. |
| Flight Recorder | Each row’s time shows in your browser’s time zone |
| The Reporting API | UTC. performance/daily days and dashboard-report buckets are UTC days. |
| Offer caps | The offer’s own clock: Capped for today shows when it reopens, and capResetsAt gives that time in UTC |
A UTC day is over at midnight UTC, but its numbers can still change:
- Through the day, today’s numbers fill in as clicks and conversions arrive.
- When a reversal arrives, it is dated on its conversion’s day, not the day it arrived. It lowers the period the conversion was earned in, so last week can drop after you’ve closed it.
- Reversals of an earlier day show in the daily totals at our next rebuild, a few hours later (we rebuild those days four times a day). On the Conversions screen they show at once, with the date they came in.
If you close your books on a day, export it after 03:00 UTC the next day, and match reversals that come in later on action_id. Why our numbers and yours differ covers the rest.
Your Overview days are UTC days too. Separately, each event’s timestamp is checked against the time we receive it: an event more than 48 hours either side is logged as outside_window and not charged. Send events as they happen, with the time they happened.