Date and Time Formats

Date and time formats

FreeITSM lets you choose how dates and times are written — 25/08/2026, 25.08.2026, 25 Aug 2026 and six other arrangements, with either a 24-hour or a 12-hour clock.

There are two places to set it, and they answer slightly different questions.

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For everyone: System → Date and time formats

Go to System, then the Date and time formats card.

You will see nine ways of writing a date and two ways of writing a time, each shown as a real example rather than a name:

25 Aug 2026	25/08/2026	2026-08-25
25 August 2026	25.08.2026	25/08/26
Aug 25, 2026	25-08-2026	08/25/2026

and 14:30 or 2:30 PM.

Pick one of each, check the preview underneath, and press Save. That becomes the default for everybody, and it is also what people see on the self-service portal.

You need to be an administrator to change this.

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For yourself: Preferences

Not everyone in an office agrees about this, which is rather the point. Go to System → Preferences, and on the General tab you will find three settings that sit together:

Setting	What it decides
Interface language	What words FreeITSM uses
Timezone	Which time you see — whether a ticket arrived at 14:30 or 15:30
Date format and Time format	How that time is written — 14:30 or 2:30 PM

Both format dropdowns start on Use the system default, and the option tells you what that currently is — so you can see what you would be changing before you change it. Pick anything else and it applies to you alone. Nobody else is affected, and your choice follows you to any browser you sign in from.

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Timezone and format are different things

Worth separating, because they are easy to run together:

• Timezone changes the time itself. An analyst in Sydney and one in London looking at the same ticket see different clock times, correctly.
• Format changes only how it is written down. 14:30 and 2:30 PM are the same moment.

Changing your format never moves a time, and changing your timezone never changes the arrangement.

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The format is deliberately not tied to your language

Choosing German does not force German date conventions, and that is on purpose:

• A German speaker working at a British company may well want German wording and British dates.
• Even within one country people disagree — plenty of British users prefer 25.08.2026 or 2026-08-25.
• 25 Aug 2026 does not belong to any language at all. It is simply a preference.

What does follow your language is the words. Choose 25 Aug 2026 with German selected and you will see 25 Mär 2026 in March.

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What this does not change

• Not the times themselves, in any respect.
• Not your service level targets. SLA timings are calculated from the stored values and never look at how a date is displayed.
• Not reports or exports.
• Not sorting. A list ordered by date stays in the same order whatever you pick.

Dates are stored the same way regardless of what you choose here. The setting affects presentation only.

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Upgrading

If you have used FreeITSM before, the setting starts on exactly what it showed you previously — 25 Aug 2026 and 14:30. Nothing moves until you choose something.

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Related pages

• Timezones and Time Handling — which instant a time refers to
• Internationalisation — the 24 languages
• Date and Time Formats — developer guide — for anyone writing code that renders a date