Dear Customer,
We have recently received several enquiries regarding the time‑zone settings used within Infor SunSystems. To clarify that both Infor SunSystems Cloud and on‑Premise deployments operate using UTC (Coordinated Universal Time) as the system time standard.
What is UTC - Universal Time Coordinated?
UTC is the time standard that is used in global Systems around the world, including those supporting weather prediction, navigation, and financial enterprise software such as Infor SunSystems. It follows a 24-hour clock format identical to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). However, GMT is a time zone, whereas UTC functions as a commonly used international time standard.
Why is UTC used in SunSystems?
UTC is widely used in enterprise systems like Infor SunSystems because it offers a single, consistent, and unambiguous time standard for global applications. It avoids issues caused by local time zones and Daylight-Saving Time. Based on International Atomic Time with occasional leap seconds to stay aligned with solar time, UTC itself never changes with DST.
What does this mean for Infor SunSystems Users?
Infor SunSystems Cloud is not fully locale‑aware, which means it cannot automatically interpret or display dates/times according to an end user’s local time zone. Datetime values are stored as UTC in Infor SunSystems Cloud, to ensure consistency across global usage and multiple datacentres. This does mean that entry and exit points for data may need to be adjusted for this, for example, by formatting reports to represent time in the appropriate local time zone.
How is this reflected in SunSystems?
While Infor OS provides some capability to adjust displayed time to a user’s local time zone, this is not the case for Infor SunSystems. As a result, when Infor OS is configured to local time, differences between the two may cause confusion. Infor SunSystems users may notice dates and times that do not align with their local working day, particularly around UTC midnight.
We want to highlight this behaviour so that you can avoid misunderstandings when reviewing activity, closing periods, reconciling transactions, or generating reports through Q&A or directly in Infor SunSystems.
Making changes in your report to see the correct time zone
At present, all reports and functions display dates and times in UTC (+0). This means that, depending on your location, your reports and functions may not reflect your local time zone. This is particularly noticeable when functions scheduled for 9:00 AM AEST appear as occurring on the previous day.
To help mitigate this issue, we have provided a workaround below, which involves manually adjusting time fields in each report using the following expression
=DateAdd("h", 10, Fields!JournalPostingAudit_dateCreated.Value).
*10 signifies the hour adjustment and should be tailored for your time zone.
If you have multiple time zones, you will then have to create copies of the report based on specific regions.
If you are using Infor SunSystems Cloud and would like to apply the change described above, you will need to obtain a copy of Infor SunSystems Designer Edition to access the Report Designer tool. Alternatively, you can reach out to your account manager, who can coordinate with Infor or your Partner’s Consulting Services to have the reports amended on a chargeable basis.
What happens next?
We recognise that the current handling of time zones can be frustrating for some customers, and that discrepancies between Infor OS time and Infor SunSystems time can lead to confusion. To address this, we have initiated a project to review time zone presentation within Infor SunSystems. Essentially, Infor SunSystems will continue to rely on UTC to maintain stability and ensure accurate auditing for our customers globally.
Also available on Infor Service now - KB3665537
