TIME FLIES
Let’s start with the nice, short phrase time flies, used for saying how quickly time seems to have passed:
Wow, Otis was a little boy the last time I saw him! Time flies.
BETTER LATE THAN NEVER
When something happens later than you were hoping, you might say better late than never, meaning that you are happy about it, even though it should have happened earlier:
Eventually, he wrote and apologized. Better late than never, I guess.
⠀
ON THE DOT
Conversely, something that happens on the dot happens exactly at the expected time:
They arrived at nine o’clock, on the dot.
IN THE NICK OF TIME / AT THE ELEVENTH HOUR
If you do something at the last possible moment, (almost too late) you might say informally that you do it (just) in the nick of time:
We got to the station just in the nick of time – as we stepped on the train, the doors were closing.
A more formal phrase with a similar meaning is at the eleventh hour:
Thankfully, at the eleventh hour, we received the signatures.
From Dictionaryblog.cambridge.org
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