Dear Steven,
First of all, thanks for the praise.
The system uses UTC time, so it's simpler to always set the time from the e-smith-manager and let e-smith automatically decide how to correctly set the hardware clock to UTC time.
If you set the time from the e-smith manager and reboot the machine, then if you go back into the time-setting function on the e-smith manager (without setting the time again), does it still show the correct time? If so, the time is being set properly. (From the BIOS it'll probably show GMT time)
If you try the above and the time seems to change after rebooting, can you post what sort of discrepancies you are getting?
Thanks!
Regards,
Kim