concept · explanation

Calendars, cadence, and timezones

Understand how calendars, cadence, and timezones works in Slash Social.

Overview

Slash Social schedules and publishes posts only when three layers agree: the timezone used to read the clock, the cadence rules that define allowed posting windows, and the open queue slots on your Plan calendar. When any layer conflicts, a post may look fine in a preview modal but end up blocked, queued outside your intent, or rejected at publish time.

The Plan work center brings these layers together. From App Home you can switch between calendar and queue views, configure cadence, fill empty slots, and review items in states such as planned, scheduled, queued, or blocked. Understanding how timezones, cadence, and slots interact saves time when you troubleshoot a missed window or a slot that will not accept a post.

Interactive planning is included on every public plan. Gap-filling suggestions and multi-slot planning start on the Starter plan and above.

How it works

Timezone precedence

Slash Social stores every schedule timestamp in UTC. What you see in Slack, including Plan modals and approval previews, is converted to local time using the effective timezone for that operation.

The precedence order is:

  • Account timezone when the connected social account has one set
  • Brand timezone
  • Organization timezone
  • Configured system defaults

A mismatch between brand timezone and account timezone is a frequent cause of confusion. A slot can look correct in the modal because it is shown in brand local time, then fail validation at publish because the account timezone applies to the target platform.

Cadence and posting windows

Cadence defines when your brand may queue or publish content. It covers quiet hours, day-of-week windows, intensity targets, and platform-specific overrides.

Cadence settings inherit through a chain of scopes. Global defaults apply first, then organization, brand, campaign, pillar, platform, and account settings. The most specific scope wins at each level.

You configure cadence from Settings or through the cadence wizard in Plan. Saving a cadence profile or updating cadence settings writes the effective rules your brand uses for scheduling decisions.

Calendars, queue slots, and channels

Queue defaults define the open slots available before posts are assigned to your brand queue. Plan uses those slots when you place posts manually, run gap-filling suggestions, or use supervised automation such as Autopilot in suggest-only or draft modes.

The Plan calendar and board surfaces show where items sit across the week. The queue view lists items filtered by status so you can see what is in review, approved, queued, or scheduled.

If no posting window is open for a platform at the time you choose, Slash Social blocks the action and shows a visible error. It does not silently move the post to another slot.

During onboarding you choose cadence and approval channels. Those channels control where schedule conflicts and window misses surface for your team.

Examples

Tuesday 9:00 AM looks open, but scheduling fails. Your brand timezone is Eastern Time and your Instagram account timezone is Pacific Time. The modal shows 9:00 AM Eastern, but the account-level window for Instagram may already be outside allowed hours. Align account and brand timezones, or adjust the slot to match the account.

A quiet-hours rule blocks an evening post. Cadence quiet hours run until 8:00 PM local. You try to queue a post at 7:30 PM. Slash Social returns an error instead of queuing the item. Open cadence settings and either move the slot past quiet hours or adjust the quiet-hours window for that platform.

An empty day on the calendar. Gap-filling suggestions scan open slots inside your cadence windows and offer library posts to fill them. Multi-slot planning on Starter and above lets you place several items across a range in one pass. Both features depend on queue defaults and cadence being configured first.

A post stays blocked after approval. The item reached approved status but the target slot is no longer within an open window, or cadence changed since you picked the time. Check the Plan calendar for blocked items and reschedule to an open slot.