Library regional settings: country, formats, time zone and currency

Open Library settings → Library design → Region settings to choose the regional defaults shared by your services. An administrator can save one set of defaults for Builder and all available environments.

Regional settings reference

Setting	Stored property	Effect
Country	`defaultCountryCode`	A two-letter country code, such as GB or CA. Suggests regional formats, currency and defaults for new address questions.
Regional format	`defaultLocale`	A language-and-region identifier such as en-GB or en-CA. Controls number/currency formatting and the date order suggested for new date questions. It does not translate service content.
Service time zone	`defaultTimeZone`	A named time zone such as Europe/London or America/Toronto. Controls service day boundaries, Collection opening/closing dates, unzoned date-time input and calendar calculations.
Currency	`defaultCurrency`	A three-letter currency code such as GBP or CAD. Used when formatting amounts without an explicit currency. It neither converts amounts nor changes payment settings.

Libraries without saved regional settings retain the compatibility defaults GB, en-GB, Europe/London and GBP. New libraries may start with suggestions from their account. Review the values shown rather than relying on the fallback.

Choose and save the defaults

Select Country. Changing it resets the draft regional format and currency to the country's suggestions.
Review the examples for date entry, numbers and currency. Open Customise formats and currency to choose different values.
Select the Service time zone. Countries with several time zones need a deliberate choice. Choose a specific location offers locations with historical clock rules; a location selected there replaces the main time-zone choice.
Select Save region settings. Without JavaScript, use Update suggestions and review the proposed values before saving.

All four settings must be valid. Country suggestions are editable defaults, and an incomplete suggestion must be resolved before saving.

Understand the environment status

Saving updates Builder immediately and queues automatic updates for QA, Staging and Production where available. There are no separate regional Apply buttons. A successful save does not mean every environment has already received it.

Status	Meaning
Up to date	The environment has acknowledged the saved settings.
Updating	Delivery is pending; before the first save, save the defaults to start it.
Retrying	Delivery has not completed and Govform will retry automatically.
Unavailable	The environment is not available for this library.

Check existing services before changing defaults

Default-based number/currency formatting and service date calculations change in live services as each environment updates. Check conditions around midnight, date arithmetic and Collection deadlines before changing the service time zone. A service operating in Eastern Time uses Eastern day boundaries even when a respondent is in California.

New date and address questions inherit the relevant defaults. Existing question formats and explicit Liquid arguments remain as configured. Address defaults include supported address-search country filters and postal-code labels; they do not redesign every country's address form. A date-of-birth answer keeps its entered calendar date.

Regional settings do not change the hosting/data-residency region, translate content, change a merchant account or convert payment amounts. Billing months continue to use UTC.

Use the defaults in Liquid

{{ amount | format_currency: true }}
{{ amount | format_number }}
{{ library.profile.countryCode }}
{{ library.profile.locale }}
{{ library.profile.timeZone }}
{{ library.profile.currency }}

Timestamps normally display in the viewer's browser time zone. Background rendering falls back to the deployed Service time zone, then Europe/London. For exact display and API formats, see Dates, time zones, currencies and API timestamps.