How do I set the correct timezone for my AI SDR?
Set your booking timezone under Settings → Availability, and see how it relates to your connected calendars.
The timezone that governs AI SDR bookings is the Timezone dropdown on the Availability page. That setting decides how your available hours are interpreted.
When the AI SDR suggests times on its own, it prefers weekdays between 8 AM and 6 PM in the prospect's timezone. If the prospect asks for a specific time outside that window, or only weekend slots are available, those times can still be offered.
Set your booking timezone
- In the left sidebar, click Settings → Availability
- Find the Timezone dropdown at the top of the page and select your business location's timezone
- Set your available hours (for example, Monday–Friday, 9 AM–5 PM) in that timezone
- Click Save at the bottom of the card
The Availability page is personal
The AI SDR uses the availability of whoever it books calls for. It first uses the campaign's Assigned salesperson (set on the campaign's Options tab) if that person has a connected calendar. If not, it uses the workspace's Assigned Call Handler under Settings → AI SDR Agent. Failing that, it picks a team member with a connected calendar automatically. Whoever that is sets the timezone on their own Availability page.
The AI SDR will:
- Only offer time slots during your available hours, in this timezone
- Propose times in the prospect's local timezone when it can determine it (from their location or their reply), always labeled with a timezone
- Create calendar events at the correct absolute time, so they land in the right slot no matter what timezone your calendar displays
How the AI SDR determines the prospect's timezone
When a prospect replies and a conversation starts, the AI SDR works out the prospect's timezone from the information it has, in this order:
- The lead's location data. State or country fields on the lead, a free-text location field (for example "Austin, Texas, United States"), or city/state/country fields imported with your lead list.
- The campaign's target location. If the campaign was built around a location (for example through AI Lead Search), that location is used when the lead itself has none.
- The timezone of whoever the call is booked for. If neither of those yields a location, the AI SDR falls back to that person's Availability page timezone, which is US Eastern until someone changes it.
If the prospect mentions a timezone in their reply (for example EST or Pacific), the AI SDR updates the conversation to that timezone from then on.
Leads without location data use your timezone
If neither your lead list nor the campaign provides location information, every prospect is treated as being in the timezone of whoever the call is booked for. A host in Australia emailing US prospects offers times labeled AEST or AEDT, at hours that can land in the middle of the prospect's night.
To avoid this, map a State/Province column when you import leads, and a Country column as well. State is read first, and it's the only one that separates prospects inside a country that spans several timezones.
A City column helps for well-known cities but isn't enough on its own.
What about the Email & Calendar page?
Settings → Email & Calendar is where you connect your Google or Outlook account, choose which calendar new meetings are created on (Create events on), and pick which calendars are checked for busy times (Check for conflicts). It does not have a timezone setting of its own, so there is nothing to set there for timezones.
If you've seen timezone names that look different from the ones in Acquisity, they come from your calendar provider itself. Google and Microsoft label timezones their own way (for example, Outlook shows "(UTC-05:00) Eastern Time (US & Canada)"), while the Availability page uses region/city names (for example, "America/New_York"). These are two names for the same timezone. They don't need to match word-for-word, they just need to refer to the same place.
Keeping Acquisity and your Outlook or Google calendar in sync
Busy times from your connected calendars are read as exact points in time, so a differently-worded timezone label in Outlook or Google Calendar won't shift your bookings. To avoid confusion when reading your calendar:
- On Settings → Availability, pick the timezone where the person taking calls actually works. If that's a campaign's Assigned salesperson or your Assigned Call Handler, they set this on their own Availability page.
- In your Outlook/Microsoft 365 or Google Calendar settings, make sure the calendar's display timezone refers to the same place, even if the label is worded differently
If the booking notification email shows a different time than your calendar does, that usually means your calendar's display timezone is set to a different place than your Availability timezone. Update one of them so they refer to the same location.
The AI SDR's replies to the prospect quote times in the prospect's timezone, labeled with a timezone abbreviation. Those can look different from your calendar without anything being wrong.
What if a prospect says the offered times don't work for their timezone?
If a prospect replies that the proposed times are in the wrong timezone, the AI SDR switches the conversation to the timezone they name and quotes any new times in it. If a meeting was already booked at a time that doesn't work, the prospect can reply with a better time and the AI SDR handles the reschedule.
One case the AI SDR doesn't handle yet
If the prospect accepts a time that was already offered and names their own timezone in the same reply (for example "1:30 PM ET works"), the booking keeps the moment that slot was originally offered at, not 1:30 PM in their timezone. The confirmation is still labeled in their timezone, so it can read correctly while pointing at the wrong hour.
To correct a single conversation, open the thread in the AI SDR Inbox, click Contact details, then click Edit timezone next to Current time. Pick the prospect's timezone and the AI SDR uses it for every time it quotes in that thread from then on.
To take the conversation over instead, click Disable AI SDR in the thread header and use Reply to sort out the time directly. On a thread the AI SDR has escalated to you, that button reads Resume AI SDR, because the AI SDR is already paused.
Double-check any booking confirmation that quotes an unusual hour (for example a late-night time). That usually means the prospect's timezone couldn't be determined from their lead data, so adding location data to your lead lists is the most reliable fix.