Working with a Nepal software team from Australia

Kathmandu runs on UTC+5:45. It is one of the few time zones in the world offset by a quarter hour, and it makes every meeting invite look slightly wrong. A 2:00 pm call in Brisbane is 9:45 am in Lalitpur, which is where our office is.

We work with clients in Australia as well as Nepal, and the time difference is the first thing Australian founders ask about. In practice, a Nepal software team overlaps with the east coast of Australia for about three to four hours a day in winter and less in summer, and the Nepali week runs Sunday to Friday. Plan meetings for the Australian afternoon, and use Nepal's Sunday as a working day you get for free.

The overlap, city by city

Our office hours are 9:00 am to 6:00 pm Nepal time, Sunday to Friday. Here is what that means in Australian time:

Your city	Nepal is behind by	Our 9:00 am is your	Our 6:00 pm is your
Brisbane (no daylight saving)	4h 15m	1:15 pm	10:15 pm
Sydney, Melbourne (April to October)	4h 15m	1:15 pm	10:15 pm
Sydney, Melbourne (October to April)	5h 15m	2:15 pm	11:15 pm
Adelaide (April to October)	3h 45m	12:45 pm	9:45 pm
Perth	2h 15m	11:15 am	8:15 pm

If your business day ends at 5:00 pm, an east-coast client gets about 3 hours 45 minutes of shared working time in winter and 2 hours 45 minutes in summer. Perth gets nearly six.

Nepal doesn't change its clocks, so the gap moves only when yours does. Put a reminder in your calendar for the first Sunday in October and the first Sunday in April. Those are the two weeks when recurring meetings land an hour off and someone waits on a call alone.

Put the meetings in your afternoon, the work in your evening

The overlap is short, so use it for things that need two people: decisions, reviews, unblocking. Everything else should be written down.

A rhythm that fits the gap: a short call in your early afternoon (our late morning) to review what shipped and agree on what's next. Then our team keeps working for several hours after that call, while you are finishing your day and asleep. When you start the next morning, the work from the call is usually waiting for you. Written feedback sent before you log off reaches a team that is still at its desks.

The opposite rhythm, a 9:00 am standup in Sydney, lands at 4:45 am in Lalitpur in winter. Nobody is there, so the question waits until your afternoon and the day's first hours of work are spent waiting.

Sunday is the day you didn't know you had

The Nepali working week runs Sunday to Friday, with Saturday off. Australia works Monday to Friday. So you share five weekdays, and Nepal adds Sunday.

That makes Friday the most useful day of your week. Feedback sent at 3:00 pm on a Sydney Friday in winter arrives at 10:45 am in Lalitpur, so the team still has most of its Friday, and then all of Sunday, before your Monday starts. A round of changes can happen over what is your weekend, with nobody working on a day off.

The trade is that Sunday has no client available. Anything that needs a decision from you has to be settled by Friday, or Sunday's work stops at the question.

Holidays that don't match yours

Nepal's biggest holidays, Dashain and Tihar, fall in autumn on dates that follow the lunar calendar and move each year. We share our full list of closure dates for the year with clients at the start of each year, and at the start of any new project, so nobody finds out about Dashain from an out-of-office reply. Australian public holidays don't apply here, and ours don't apply to you. The fix is boring: share both holiday calendars at the start of the project and put release dates where both teams are working.

What to ask a Nepal team before you sign

Ask what their office hours are in your time zone, and whether they will keep a fixed overlap window or "be flexible". Flexible usually means the team is tired. Ask who is your single point of contact, and whether that person speaks to you directly or through a sales layer. Ask how they report progress between calls: a written update, a ticket board, a demo link. And ask which of their clients are in your country. Ours include the Avaani group, for whom we've built the Avaani Enterprise, Avaani Real Estate and Avaani Cricket Club websites.

You can see the work we've done in both markets on our projects page, and more about the team on the about page. If you're in Australia and want to talk, pick a time in your afternoon and send us a note. We'll be at our desks.