# Date Handling

All dates and timestamps in the 1099Policy API are represented as Unix timestamps  (integers) and are always in UTC (Coordinated Universal Time). When sending date  values in API requests, provide them as Unix timestamps representing UTC time.

## Date Format

Dates are represented as Unix timestamps (seconds since January 1, 1970 UTC).  For example, `1705312800` represents January 15, 2024 at 10:00:00 AM UTC.

## Same-Day Date Handling

When creating quotes or assignments, if the `end_date` and `effective_date` are  on the same day, the API automatically adjusts the `end_date` to the start of the  next day (midnight UTC). This ensures proper date range validation and prevents  same-day date conflicts.

## Date Validation Rules

- `effective_date` must be in the future (with a small grace period for clock skew) - `end_date` must be after `effective_date` - `end_date` must be within one year of `effective_date` - Both dates are validated and normalized to UTC before processing

When working with dates in your application, ensure you convert local times to  UTC before sending timestamps to the API. All date comparisons and validations  performed by the API use UTC.

## Example
```basic
{
  "effective_date": 1705312800,
  "end_date": 1705338000
}
```

In the example above, both dates are on the same day (January 15, 2024), so the  API will automatically adjust `end_date` to January 16, 2024 00:00:00 UTC.