The $18K Make.com Mistake Nobody Talks About

Your Make.com automation just broke at 3 AM, and you have no idea why. The culprit? Date and time handling that looks perfect in testing but falls apart in production. This happens because Make.com processes dates in ways that seem counterintuitive. Your scenario runs fine during setup, then mysteriously fails when it hits different timezones or edge cases like month boundaries. The result? Broken workflows, missed triggers, and that sinking feeling when you realize your "automated" process needs constant babysitting. Nico Hartwell has seen this exact scenario cost clients thousands. In this episode, he breaks down the specific date/time quirks that trip up even experienced automation builders and shows you how to handle them properly. In This Episode: > Why Make.com's UTC storage vs. display timezone creates phantom bugs > The 20+ formatDate codes you actually need (and the ones that break everything) > How addDays and addHours functions handle month/year rollovers automatically > Why scheduled scenarios drift up to 5 minutes during peak load > Real examples of date arithmetic that works across timezones > The debugging approach that saves hours when datetime logic fails You'll walk away knowing exactly how to structure date operations so they work consistently, regardless of when they run or where your users are located. Timestamps: 00:00 The $18K automation failure 02:30 UTC vs display timezone explained 05:15 Essential formatDate functions 08:20 Date arithmetic best practices 10:45 Debugging datetime issues If you're building automation that actually needs to work reliably, hit follow. The Value Engine drops multiple episodes daily with proven AI implementation strategies that pay for themselves. More episodes available at The Value Engine --------- Keywords: ai revenue, automation tools, automation roi, make.com, ai tools