SLA Horizons

A "24-hour SLA" is meaningless if it doesn't account for business hours. When a client in Singapore submits a ticket to a support team in Berlin, the clock ticks differently depending on the contract.

Wall-Clock vs Business-Hour SLAs

Wall-Clock SLA

A strictly literal 24-hour period. If submitted at Friday 14:00 UTC, the deadline is Saturday 14:00 UTC.

Suitable for: Critical incidents, P1 outages.

Business-Hour SLA

Calculated only during standard working hours (e.g., 9-5). If a ticket arrives at 16:00, only 1 hour counts today; the rest carry over.

Suitable for: Standard support, feature requests.

To remove the ambiguity, teams must explicitly state SLA terms in UTC. Use our SLA Horizon Calculator to automate this logic.