Add or subtract dates and times in Zaps

Written by Owner

Updated at August 20th, 2025

+ More

Table of Contents

1. Add a Formatter step 2. Set up your transform 3. Test your action

Available on plans:

Free

Pro

Team

Enterprise

Formatter's Date/Time action allows you to adjust a date and time by adding or subtracting days, months, years, hours, minutes, or seconds.

You can use this to accomplish tasks such as:

Formatter: Dates & Times

1. Add a Formatter step

In the Zap outline, click the Action step or the plus sign + to add a new action. A dialog box will open.
In the search box, search for and select Formatter. The right sidebar will open to the Setup tab.
Click the Action event dropdown menu and select Date / Time.
Click Continue to continue to the Configure tab.

Click the Transform field dropdown menu and select Add/Subtract Time.
In the Input field, manually enter the date/time or map the field from the previous step.
In the Expression field add the amount of time you want to add or subtract to the date. This field accepts formats such as +8 hours 1 minute, +1 month -2 days, -1 day +8 hours.
Click the To Format dropdown menu and select from the pre-defined format options.
(Optional) To ensure Zapier interprets the date and time format in your Input field, you can explicitly set it.
- Click the From Format dropdown menu and select from the pre-defined format options.
Click Continue to continue to the Test tab.

Tip

To enter today's date, enter {{zap_meta_human_now}} into the field. Learn more about using custom timestamps in Zaps.
If a date and time format is missing from the dropdown menu, you can customize the format using a custom value.

Test your action to verify it is calculating the date and time correctly.

Click Test step.
The Data out tab will display the Output with the new date and time.
If the new date time is not what you expect, you can adjust the transform settings and retest the step again.

Once you’ve set up your Formatter action, you can use the results in further actions in your Zap.

Tip

You can add a filter or paths to your Zap based on the calculated date and time to set time-based conditions or branching logic.