Transaction detail screen shows transaction time inconsistently – UTC in header, localised/merchant timezone in timeline

[haszari]

Describe the bug

The transaction detail screen shows transaction summary and a timeline of various events.

• The summary shows DATE in UTC.
• The timeline shows events in local timezone (not sure if it's browser or woo-store setting).

To Reproduce

1. Be a shopper or merchant in a non-UTC timezone.
2. Make a purchase.
3. View the transaction details for the relevant charge.
4. See different times on same page.

Screenshots

Note I am in NZT, UTC+12.

Expected behavior

Ideally, all times in merchant dashboard should use either merchant/store timezone, or user (browser) current timezone.

Note that this is likely inconsistent in a few places in UI, so this might be a symptom of a larger problem. Many screens use UTC (in particular, list views – transactions, disputes etc).

Additional context

Discovered when testing / working on Payment overview > Payment activity card project, see related issue:

• Indicate in UI that payment activity card dates/times are in UTC #9133
• https://github.com/Automattic/woocommerce-payments-server/issues/5858

[souravdebnath1986]

Thanks for catching this!

all times in merchant dashboard should use either merchant/store timezone, or user (browser) current timezone

All times should be in the merchant/store timezone. This makes analytics simpler as there could be a desire to analyse a specific period's activity of the merchant store by merchant users who might not be in the same location as the store.

Are their other inconsistencies within our Payments UX in wcadmin that we know of ? For example, is the total balance and available balance shown in the Payments Overview grouped in UTC or merchant/store or browser timezone (my guess is merchant/store if this value is directly read from Stripe) ?

[haszari]

Are their other inconsistencies within our Payments UX in wcadmin that we know of ?

I don't know the full picture, IMO we need to do at least a high-level audit, I suspect there are more places affected than this.

There's another issue open for UTC/timezone inconsistencies with CSV exports:

• CSV exports have date/time in UTC, not clear to merchant (vs. localised timezone) (all – e.g. Transactions, Disputes, Deposits) #8522

That's all I could find logged, might be more if we test / review systematically.

[haszari]

IMO we need to do at least a high-level audit, I suspect there are more places affected than this.

I did some more research while reviewing #9461 and found a bunch of similar issues (see below). I think we need to audit all dates/times and confirm / refine design so we can fix all and ensure things are consistent.

I don't know if it's safe to try to fix each instance in isolation (at least I don't want to assume that's safe!).

open issues

• CSV exports have date/time in UTC, not clear to merchant (vs. localised timezone) (all – e.g. Transactions, Disputes, Deposits) #8522
• https://github.com/Automattic/woocommerce-payments-server/issues/2847
• https://github.com/Automattic/woocommerce-payments-server/issues/4845
• The timezone of the times displayed on the transactions list page is not clear #9472
• Transaction detail screen shows transaction time inconsistently – UTC in header, localised/merchant timezone in timeline #9135 - timeline view, focus: payments acceptance & processing - not reporting

merged PRs / closed issues

• Reporting - Match Payment widget numbers to the totals seen in reports #9162
• Format date filters for transactions listing as per timezone #4711
• https://github.com/Automattic/woocommerce-payments-server/issues/2275

FYI @deepakpathania if we make progress on the above issues, we might pick up this one as well so we can tidy it up in one go.

[haszari]

Marking as blocked until we have audited and aligned on a path forward:

• Automattic/woocommerce-payments-server#6646

[haszari]

Re-labelling this as reporting, since it's reporting related for Helix and best counted as part of "reporting" bucket.