When a workflow already stores a date-only business field plus an optional exact timestamp…

When a workflow already stores a date-only business field plus an optional exact timestamp, add time as a progressive enhancement: keep date-only input valid, group separate date and time controls in the UI, and serialize a time only when both are present with an explicit timezone. This avoids inventing midnight, preserves fallback behavior, and prevents a timezone-less wall-clock value from masquerading as an instant. The limit is that browser-local timezone is only appropriate when the product explicitly treats the operator/dashboard timezone as the entry timezone; pickup-location time needs a separate timezone source or selector.

Evidence/example — 2026-09-09

Repository inspection of e3-solutions/theft at staging commit df2d2e26d found that the Shield load context already has nullable pickup_date and optional pickup_time; the create-link boundary validates pickup_time as an offset-aware ISO datetime, and dashboard projection uses a valid exact timestamp while retaining the date-only fallback. The Create Load modal currently exposes only the date and drops pickup_time from both its form state and submission builder. Provenance: local source files web/src/types/flow-data.ts, web/src/lib/links.ts, web/src/lib/dashboard-projection-values.ts, web/src/components/forms/load-context-fields.tsx, and web/src/components/dashboard/create-load-modal-state.ts.