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Notes on Dates & TimeZones with NetSuite’s SuiteTalk API

Tags: netsuite, suitetalk • Categories: Software

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Setting date and datetime fields in NetSuite using the SuiteTalk API is tricky business. Here’s some notes on how to ensure that the date you push over to NetSuite persists the way you’d expect regardless of the server, local server, user, and company timezone.

  • The API is sensitive to the timezone of the current user. If you push the same datetime value to the XML via SuiteTalk, and change the timezone settings on the user preferences page, the resulting date set on the record will most likely change.
  • The timezone is not available on the employee record. Also, the timezone is not available on the company/subsidiary record. It is impossible to determine the timezone set on the user or the company from the SuiteTalk API.
  • The get_server_time method does not return the time in the current user’s timezone preference.
  • There is no SuiteScript-specific method to getting a timezone. Although it looks like you can infer it from the stdlib JS responses. It could be possible to create a RESTlet bundle that could retrieve the timezone of the current user as a JSON response.
  • If the timezone of the user (employee) differs from the timezone of the request NetSuite will convert the datetime in the request to the timezone of the current user. If you push a date of 2017-04-17T00:00:00-07:00 and the user’s timezone is GMT -04:00 the resulting date field in NetSuite returns 2017-04-16T21:00:00-07:00. This appears properly as 04/17 in the GUI for the current user as well as for other users with different timezone configurations.
  • If you push a date in the timezone of the NetSuite servers (PDT) NetSuite seems to ignore the timezone of the user used to make the request. Note that accounting for DST offset and zeroing out the hours, minutes, seconds is essential to making this work. Here’s an example of what your date should look like 2017-04-17T00:00:00-07:00. If you push a date one second after midnight NetSuite will take into account the user’s timezone.
  • Best practice: convert your date to UTC0 and use NetSuite::Utilities.normalize_time_to_netsuite_date(time_stamp). This utility will handle DST, zeroing out hr/minute/seconds, and convert the datetime to the right format for SuiteTalk.
  • The date returned by the API is adjusted based on the user’s timezone. For instance, if you push 2017-04-17T00:00:00-07:00 to NetSuite with a user whose timezone is set to EST the date returned by the API will be 2017-04-16T17:00:00-07:00 although it will properly display as 2017-04-17 in the GUI.

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