The date field, with or without time

A date field holds either a calendar date — 2026-08-13, the same day everywhere on earth — or an exact moment, 2026-07-28T10:24:00.000Z. The demo plant shop's Orders table has one of each: Placed records the moment an order came in; Deliver by is a promise about a day.

Which of the two a field is gets decided once, at creation.

Include time is permanent

The Include time switch is set when you create the field and is locked afterward — the field editor greys it out, and the API refuses the flip with the same reason. This isn't caution for its own sake: the two kinds are stored as genuinely different things. A date-only value is a plain calendar date with no timezone and no clock; a with-time value is an instant, stored in universal time. Converting between them would mean inventing a time of day for every existing record, or destroying one — both are silent damage, so neither happens.

If a field turns out to be the wrong kind, add a new field of the right kind, move what moves, and delete the old one. Honest work beats invented data.

The display options

• Format — five ways to draw the day: 2026-07-20 · 07/20/2026 · 20/07/2026 · Jul 20, 2026 · July 20, 2026. New fields made in the editor start on Jul 20, 2026; fields created over the API with no format read as 2026-07-20.
• Time format (with time on) — 18:30 or 6:30 pm.

Both are display only, changeable any time, and fixed rather than per-viewer: everyone reads the same column the same way.

Editing

The cell opens a calendar — pick a day, or hit Today or Clear. With time on there's a time box beside it that accepts nearly anything a person types: 13:47, 1:47 pm, 9. Pasted values work too; a pasted time with no timezone on it is read in the database's timezone.

"Today" is the database's today

A with-time value is one instant, but which day that instant belongs to depends on a timezone — and Tabla resolves it with the database timezone, a per-database setting. The grid displays with-time values in it, and a filter on "today" flips at its midnight, the same moment for every member wherever they sit. One shared clock, no per-viewer surprises. Set it once for where the work happens — details at Database timezone.

Date-only values ignore all of this: a promise about 2026-08-13 needs no clock.

Filter operators: is, before, after, on or before, on or after, the empty pair — with relative values like today available where you'd type a date. Date fields also power the calendar view.

Over the API

The two kinds read differently:

{ "fields": { "Placed": "2026-07-28T10:24:00.000Z", "Deliver by": "2026-07-31" } }

With-time values are ISO timestamps in universal time — convert for display yourself. Date-only values are bare YYYY-MM-DD strings.

Writes take "2026-07-31" for date-only, and a timestamp with at least hours and minutes for with-time — include an offset (Z, +02:00) to be unambiguous. Free-text dates ("July 2", "07/02/2026") are refused rather than guessed at: a silently misread date is worse than a rejected one.

When it's the wrong field

A length of time (1:30) is a duration, not a date. A "done" flag with no meaningful day is a checkbox. And if the date should follow from other fields, a formula can compute one.