The timezone of the times displayed on the transactions list page is not clear

[shendy-a8c]

Describe the bug

The times displayed on the transactions list page under the Date / Time column is in store's timezone (see this line). This is not clearly stated.

A possible solution is to add the timezone in the column header, eg Date / Time (UTC+3), either by:

• Passing wp_timezone_string() from PHP via wcpaySettings and render it, or
• Just in Javascript, call dateI18n():

dateI18n('TP') // Will display UTC+01:00

To Reproduce

1. Set blog timezone to be different from browser's timezone. wp-admin > Settings > General > Timezone.
2. Buy something to create a transaction.
3. See the time of transaction is displayed in store's timezone.

Actual behavior

It's not clear which timezone the transaction time is displayed in. Intuitively, user might think it's in their local / browser's timezone but actually it is not.

Expected behavior

It's clear to user which timezone the transaction time is displayed in.

[haszari]

I think the root cause of this bug is that the transactions report is not in UTC, all others are. See https://github.com/Automattic/woocommerce-payments-server/issues/2847

• https://github.com/Automattic/woocommerce-payments-server/issues/2275
• Format date filters for transactions listing as per timezone #4711

In that issue and PR, the bug was that the time/date filtering was not consistent. The fix was to localise the times in the list view UI and the filters.

However, I think that introduced a different bug: transactions list view and CSV are now sometimes in localised timezone, when all other reports (and server-generated transactions CSV) are in UTC.

I think we should close this and fix the underlying bug:

• https://github.com/Automattic/woocommerce-payments-server/issues/2847

[haszari]

The times displayed on the transactions list page under the Date / Time column is in store's timezone (see this line). This is not clearly stated.

A possible solution is to add the timezone in the column header, eg Date / Time (UTC+3), either by:

I don't think we should add timezone labels. Long term, this would have 2 risks:

• Clutter the UI.
• Reduce trust in the UI – if we are labelling things individually, suggests we are inconsistent.

I think we need to review all UI with dates & times and decide what timezone(s) should be used where. This can guide decisions/designs, be documented clearly, and if there are edge cases we can use labels in those scenarios (e.g. if we show one specific date in UTC for some reason).

[haszari]

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

• Automattic/woocommerce-payments-server#6646