Mail Merge Fields for Formatting Timestamp

Chargebee follows UTC and the dates are by default displayed in DD-MMM-YYYY format.

However, Chargebee provides you with the option to format the date and timezone in the desired email template using two mail merge attributes:

• format: You can use this mail merge attribute to reformat the date and time.
• timezone: You can use this mail merge attribute to convert the date and time to a specific timezone.

Follow the steps below to navigate to the email templates and mail-merge fields:

1. Go to Settings > Configure Chargebee > Email Notifications
2. Click on the desired email template category.
3. Click Edit for the desired email template.
4. Click View all mail merge fields
   
5. Select the relevant email notification category from the drop-down menu on top.
6. Expand the relevant section and find the desired date/timestamp field.
   

You can now customize these mail merge fields according to the following scenarios and use them while editing your email templates.

Here are a few scenarios with examples:

1. To display date in a different format and also display the timezone Chargebee uses:

2. To convert and display just the date and time in PST:

3. To display date, time, timezone and convert the timezone to PST, here’s what you can do:

As you can see, when you specify the timezone (PST for example), the date and time are converted from UTC to PST and displayed in the email.

Supported date/time formats

Here's a list of date/time formats that you can use along with the format attribute:

Date and Time Pattern	Result
"yyyy-MM-dd G 'at' HH:mm:ss z"	2001-07-04 AD at 12:08:56 UTC
"EEE, MMM d, ''yy"	Wed, Jul 4, '01
"h:mm a"	12:08 PM
"hh 'o''clock' a, zzzz"	12 o'clock PM, Coordinated Universal Time
"K:mm a, z"	0:08 PM, UTC
"yyyyy-MMMM-dd GGG hh:mm aaa"	02001-July-04 AD 12:08 PM
"EEE, d MMM yyyy HH:mm:ss Z"	Wed, 4 Jul 2001 12:08:56 -0700
"yyMMddHHmmssZ"	010704120856-0700
"yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss.SSSZ"	2001-07-04T12:08:56.235-0700
"yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss.SSSXXX"	2001-07-04T12:08:56.235-07:00
"YYYY-'W'ww-u"	2001-W27-3

Patterns and letters that can be used in formatting

Letter	Date or Time Component	Presentation	Examples
G	Era designator	Text	AD
y	Year	Year	1996; 96
Y	Week year	Year	2009; 09
M	Month in year	Month	July; Jul; 07
w	Week in year	Number	27
W	Week in month	Number	2
D	Day in year	Number	189
d	Day in month	Number	10
F	Day of week in month	Number	2
E	Day name in week	Text	Tuesday; Tue
u	Day number of week (1 = Monday, ..., 7 = Sunday)	Number	1
a	am/pm marker	Text	PM
H	Hour in day (0-23)	Number	0
k	Hour in day (1-24)	Number	24
K	Hour in am/pm (0-11)	Number	0
h	Hour in am/pm (1-12)	Number	12
m	Minute in hour	Number	30
s	Second in minute	Number	55
S	Millisecond	Number	978
z	Time zone	General time zone	Coordinated Universal Time; UTC
Z	Time zone	RFC 822 time zone	+0000
X	Time zone	ISO 8601 time zone	+00; +0000; +00:00