How to write a day sheet in local time

A day sheet is one page that lists a show day in time order: travel, pickups, hotel, venue, set and the people to call. Every time on it is the local time of the place where it happens, with the day it happens on. If a reader has to convert a time, the sheet is wrong.

What a day sheet is for

The advance sheet is the full record of a show, deal included. The day sheet is the part you need while moving: what happens next, where, at what time, and whom to call. For a trip of several days, the itinerary holds the whole journey, and each day gets its own sheet.

It goes to the artist and anyone travelling with them, and to the promoter and their day-of contact. Each driver gets their own part of the ground transport. Leave the money off. Nobody needs the fee to get to the venue on time, and day sheets get forwarded to drivers and hotel desks.

The fields

A day sheet that works has these parts, in this order:

• Header: artist, venue, city and date, and one line with the venue’s timezone: “Times are local to the venue: London, UTC+1.”
• Contacts: the promoter’s day-of contact, the contact on the artist side and every driver, with mobile numbers that work on messaging apps.
• Travel: each leg with carrier and number, departure and arrival with airport or station, booking reference and luggage allowance.
• Ground transport: each ride with pickup time and place, destination, driver, phone and vehicle.
• Hotel: name, address, check-in and check-out, confirmation number, late checkout if agreed.
• Venue: address, artist entrance, arrival time, who meets the artist.
• Schedule: doors, the full timetable with every set time, and the closing time or curfew.
• Notes: the guest list, hospitality, anything that differs from the riders.

Why every time is local

Flight tickets, hotel confirmations and club timetables all use the local time of their place. A day sheet that does the same can be checked line by line against every one of them. Converting is where the errors come from.

Take a flight from Vienna to London in October. It departs at 13:10 Vienna time (CEST, UTC+2) and lands at 14:35 London time (BST, UTC+1). The clocks say 1h25; the flight takes 2h25. Coming back, a flight that leaves London at 16:40 and lands in Vienna at 19:50 looks like 3h10 and takes 2h10. Every one of those times is right as written. Convert the landing into Vienna time (15:35) and the driver arrives an hour late. Convert the departure into London time (12:10) and the artist reads a time that’s wrong at the airport they’re standing in.

Four rules:

1. Every time is the local time of its place: the departure at the airport it leaves from, the arrival where it lands, the pickup where the car waits, the set at the venue.
2. The venue’s timezone is stated once, at the top. A time in another zone gets its abbreviation: “13:10 CEST”.
3. The 24-hour clock, always. “12:30 am” and “midnight” are how people end up at an airport a day late.
4. Every time carries the day it actually happens on.

A quick test for any line: would someone standing at that airport, hotel or club, looking at the clock on the wall, agree with the time? If not, somebody converted it.

After midnight is the next day

Club nights start on one date and end on the next. Doors at 23:00 on Saturday, a set at 01:00: the set happens on Sunday. Write “Sun 18 Oct 01:00–03:00” and, if it helps, add “(Saturday night)”. Never “Saturday 01:00”, which is a night earlier.

Once it’s in, the mistake spreads. A set entered as Saturday 01:00 sits a day early in every calendar, and hotels and pickups get booked around it. The Friday show has the opposite trap: a set at 02:00 on “Friday night” happens on Saturday, but the artist arrives on Friday afternoon, so the hotel starts on Friday, not on the date next to the set.

Overnight flights and phone calendars

An overnight flight lands on a different date from the one it left on. A flight that leaves New York at 21:45 on Thursday (EDT, UTC−4) lands in Vienna at 11:55 on Friday (CEST, UTC+2), about 8h10 later. Write both ends with their own date and zone, and mark the day change: “lands Fri 11:55 (+1 day)”.

Calendar apps show every event in the phone’s current timezone. A set at 01:00 London time appears as 02:00 while the phone is still in Vienna. That’s technically correct, and confusing the night before departure. Add events with the timezone of their place, and read the times from the day sheet, not from a converted calendar.

Daylight saving weekends

In the EU, summer time starts on the last Sunday of March and ends on the last Sunday of October, at 01:00 UTC in every member state (Directive 2000/84/EC). The UK changes at the same moment. In Vienna the clocks jump from 02:00 to 03:00 in March and fall back from 03:00 to 02:00 in October. In London they jump from 01:00 to 02:00 and fall back from 02:00 to 01:00. Both happen in the middle of a club night.

• October (next: Sunday 25 October 2026). The night is an hour longer. A set from 01:00 to 04:00 in Vienna lasts four hours. Every time between 02:00 and 03:00 happens twice, so a pickup at 02:30 is ambiguous: write “02:30 CEST” for the first one or “02:30 CET” for the second, or move it out of that hour.
• March (next: Sunday 28 March 2027). The night is an hour shorter. The same set lasts two hours, and 02:30 doesn’t exist in Vienna that night.
• Closing times and curfews follow the local clock. Agree in advance whether the extra October hour is played, and paid.
• Flight schedules change on the same weekends, when airlines switch between their summer and winter timetables. Flights booked months ahead often get retimed, so check them again in the last week.
• Outside Europe the dates differ. The US ends summer time on 1 November 2026, so from 25 October to 1 November New York is five hours behind Vienna instead of six. Turkey stays on UTC+3 all year.

A worked example

[Artist A] lives in Vienna and plays a 600-capacity club in London on Saturday 17 October 2026, set 01:00–03:00. Vienna is on CEST (UTC+2), London on BST (UTC+1). The header says: “Times are local to the venue: London, UTC+1.”

Saturday 17 October

Sunday 18 October

Why it holds:

• Pickup after landing, plus luggage. 14:35 plus 45 minutes is 15:20. Arriving in London from Vienna means passport control, so 45 minutes is the minimum, not a buffer. With hand luggage inside Schengen, 30 would do.
• Landing well before the set. The flight lands 10h25 before the set. If it’s cancelled, later flights the same day still arrive in time. On a direct flight, aim for at least three to four hours; under 90 minutes is a problem to solve now, and under 60, look for another flight.
• Hotel before the venue. Check-in at 16:40 leaves seven and a half hours before the venue pickup. A live act with a 14:00 soundcheck and a hotel that checks in from 15:00 would bring their luggage to the soundcheck: arrange early check-in, or luggage storage at the venue.
• Flying home after sleep. The set ends at 03:00, the artist is back at the hotel around 03:45, and the flight home leaves at 16:40. A 07:00 flight would have been cheaper and left no sleep at all.
• Every ride has a driver and a number. Four rides, one driver, name and mobile on the sheet at least three days before the show.

Move the same show a week later, to Saturday 24 October, and the night crosses the change. In London the clocks go back at 02:00 BST to 01:00 GMT, so 01:00 happens twice and even the set start is ambiguous. Written as 01:00–03:00 with no zone, the set lasts three hours from the first 01:00, or two from the second. The day sheet has to say which 01:00 is meant, and both sides have to agree how long the set really is.

The checks every day sheet should pass

Before a day sheet goes out, go through it once against this list:

• Every flight or train that arrives before the show has a pickup, unless the artist travels on by themselves.
• No pickup is before the landing it belongs to, and each leaves luggage time: about 30 minutes with hand luggage inside Schengen, 45–60 with checked bags or passport control.
• On a direct flight, the inbound travel lands at least three to four hours before the set. Under 90 minutes is a problem now; under 60, rebook.
• No leg departs before the previous one arrives, and no flight home departs before the set ends.
• No leg is impossibly short or long. A two-hour flight that comes out at minus one hour or at 26 hours has a wrong date or zone.
• A soundcheck before hotel check-in comes with early check-in or luggage storage.
• Nobody checks out before they’ve slept: late checkout after a late set.
• No time falls into the hour the clocks skip or repeat.
• Every ride the promoter provides has a driver name and phone number three days before the show.
• The set time is confirmed two weeks before the show at the latest.

If a time changes after the sheet has gone out, send a new version with the date in the file name and the changed line marked, so nobody works from the old one.