Finance Manager "accidentally" paid £80,000 into her own bank account!!

Hi,
Could you not ask to see the person who is in charge of this woman. Don't tell anyone you're going above her but if you can report her for this behaviour I'm sure you should get some support. Gill.

Who owns the company? Do they know what she's up to?

@BumpyWinds it is rubbish isn't it! Actually, thinking about it, I've done the same as you, but fortunately for me it was another personal account it defaulted to rather than one of the business ones! It was fairly recently and I couldn't work out for the life of me why I transfered the money from my joint account when I was sure I was in my personal account screen - no biggie as I just transferred it over, but I only noticed as I went into my overdraft and got a text!

I'm not sure why this bit of the Natwest app is so rubbish, as overall it's miles better for functionality than Barclays, which is who else I have accounts with!

Not sure if you saw my post, but I mentioned the NatWest app too.

It's really annoying.

Oh and to the poster after me that said she was an accountant and would never do this.

I am an accountant and did do this!

That said, mine was for £300, not £80,000 and I'd be so, so, SO careful double and triple checking any payment of that level.

It all smacks of a company that hasn't updated their systems and procedures as they've grown. Unfortunately some companies like this will only change their systems once they've actually lost money.

The changing pay because she doesn't believe the timesheets is outrageous though. She could be opening the company up to all sorts of claims there, including potentially paying people less than the minimum wage if she's not paying people for all their hours. If you get caught with that your company will go on the name and shame list for all current and future employees to see.

Whilst she sounds like a total disaster, the banking app mistake wouldn't be that hard to do! I bank with Natwest and manage payments for our business through Natwest as well and the app is a massive PITA - for some reason DD2's Rooster and my My Rewards tab show up under both Personal and Business???

And all the stored payee list isn't separated into personal and business, so it would be really easy to make a mistake if you were in a hurry.

I make all payments on the website as it is just easier to see and double check everything is going out of and going into the correct accounts (which she should be doing, obviously), but it could be set up much better.

You need to blow the whistle on this person. Tell senior management in writing exactly what she has done, and how she alters wages on a whim. If you let this continue this could also affect any pension fund you and the company are paying into, as well. I'd tell senior management then go and see her face to face and tell her, too. Do it while you have a company to work for

Is she a member of any of the accounting qualifications, like AAT, ACCA, CIMA etc? Those are massive ethical issues that can be flagged to her membership body, potentially as money laundering. In my company, the payments are created by me (the finance manager) and then checked and approved by someone else (the CEO or Ops manager) to ensure there things like you have described can't happen. In any big business, it's required to have different people approving the payments, "segregation of duties". There is no excuse for "accidentally" paying yourself £80k, she's up to something dodgy

In charge of the payroll, tinkering with the timesheets, accidentally paying herself £80k, nearly paying £150k to another of her accounts a scam. It amazes me that colleagues at her level or senior do nothing and even more amazing that the MD hasn’t reacted assuming he knows about all the things you mention OP.

I may be too cynical but I worked somewhere once where someone dealing with timesheets and wages had created a dummy employee in the payroll space previously occupied by an employee who left and wasn’t replaced and she was paying herself that salary too (I think that’s what was going on). It only came to light because she left something on her desk that caught the eye of someone senior who then rightly took it upon herself to dig a bit further. The payroll person claimed it was a mistake too, and at first it looked like it was but it was quickly shown to have been going on for over a year. The employee had been there a few years so was trusted but I think had got into debt and found a “solution” to the problem.

The arriving early could be struggling to cope with the job and having to put in the time to try and manage but either way she needs to go. Apart from the potential costs of errors or fraud it does nothing for staff morale to see nothing done.

Expect to see her name in connection with a bestselling book and film about walking the Pembrokeshire Coastal Path, whilst relying on nature and the kindness of strangers, to ease her suffering and pain in a couple of years' time... 🤔

Seriously though, I'm sorry you're dealing with this. As others have suggested, keep meticulous records to cover yourself (including copies of original spreadsheets that she may subsequently edit and submit for processing). Save them independently onto a memory stick if you need to/are able to. I'd probably also be looking elsewhere for work before this blows up (and it will, one day). I'm sorry. Best wishes to you.

I would contact ACAS and CAB, ASAP.

this woman would have been sacked in a heart beat if this was my work place.

1. timesheets should be approved by managers, she shouldn't have the ability to amend anyone's against a managers approval

1. using the same app for business and personal sounds very odd...but also it would be two different accounts and logins? theres no way she "accidentally" paid herself by accident and she would have had to select her account on the payment screen to pay herself. not sure how she explained that

I worked in finance, audit, internal audit and risk management and none of this makes any sense.

There should be no scenario where 1 person can move sums of money like that without someone else also having to approve it. No way should 1 person be changing salaries without secondary check and approval. Absolutely no situation where a company finances should be managed in one person’s personal app.

Whoever is in charge of Finance is either grossly incompetent or actively dishonest.

You need to flag your concerns up the hierarchy - 1 person with what appears to be free access to company money could bring the whole company down. This is madness.

So many 🚩 across this.
The audit exposure, the lack of separation of duties, the issue overtime control.

You really need to raise this in a factual way, the company will go bankrupt.

Does she also do the financial statements? be worth checking those too.

This is spot on. Lots of businesses have an MD who doesn't own the company. I have been MD of a company of a similar size to the OP's and had only a tiny shareholding. So if the MD won't listen, the person or people who stand to lose their houses might.

😂😂😂

It’s posts like this when I miss ability to simply 😂a post

This screams fraud to me! At the very least, total incompetence not just of the individual but also the company owners/directors

Where are the control checks that should be in place? Dual authorisation on bank payments as a starting point.

@Nina1013 that is so shit - it’s unbelievable that a bank of all institutions would set up an app that would allow it. I would be the same and demand that I was removed from the business account or I’d cancel my Barclaycard.

I couldn’t agree more with the poster who asked OP to really think about how she knows this and who is telling her.

there are overwhelming number of suggestions/ instructions in this thread. As someone who does this type of investigation fora living most of them are no good.

the most important thing OP is that you resign and get another job first. From what you’ve said you are unlikely to survive any action you take with your employment in tact. But again, this goes back to how accurate your knowledge of the situation is.

I am too, and do the same. However, Barclays has a ‘glitch’ where if you bank personally with Barclays (or hold a barclaycard), as soon as you are added to a Barclays business account, it jumps immediately into your personal app for BC or BB, and it is the default account. You go to make a payment, and it defaults to the business account, and so on.

I don’t have a bank account, only a Barclaycard, so while it’s mildly irritating and a bit weird, it doesn’t impact me. However, it’s caused a couple of directors issues. It’s payments not receipts though (you think you’re paying X person from your personal account and it’s glitched back to the business one). As an external accountant, I would have insisted I was removed from the business bank account if I had a Barclays Bank account personally as it is far too easy to make a mistake and it’s a stress I don’t need. Internal employees tend to be more lax, from what I’ve seen (talking about SME not large corporate environments).

Is her name Rachel?

curious about all the NI & tax comments. If they are feeding the timesheets into the payroll software, there are zero issues. What you pay in tax NI is what shows on your wage slip.

Where the issue comes is changing the actual hours worked.

Or she is defrauding the company and getting up to all sorts when she is the only person in the office in the mornings. Or she's fiddling her timesheets by saying she's working an extra hour every day to clock up overtime but is actually doing her online shopping and personal emails.

Sorry to sound cynical but I work in HR and nothing would surprise me anymore. This woman is raising so many red flags that I suspect she isn't as ditsy and incompetent as she is letting on and a proper audit would uncover a lot.

However OP....you need to consider how you know this information and your own job here. You're part of the admin team so wouldn't have any part of her employment relationship. If she was given a written warning you should have no idea about it. I suspect she hasn't been due to ineffectual senior management but that's besides the point. Are you listening to the office gossip or are you the PA to the MD so have seen the emails? I ask because you have to be careful what accusations you are making. If I worked at your company I could identify you just from this post I bet.

I do agree with PPs that an anonymous tip off to HMRC could be illuminating but I'd be very careful nothing can be traced back to you.

I would whistleblow this to the Chair of the Audit Committee if there is one, or if not, the Chair of the Board. They have a duty to manage risk for the company, so would be very interested in these types of “errors’.

I would whistleblow to the auditors. When I was involved in a similar sort of situation, it turned out that the CEO and some of the board were involved in a major scam. I was an interim deputy to said CEO, and one of the alarm bells was that the Finance Manager resigned on my first day in post. I contacted some previous auditors for advice, and the main thing they told me was to document EVERYTHING. Which I did. When the police eventually came knocking I was able to demonstrate I had not been involved except as an innocent interim cover trying to keep the organisation afloat (it folded once the scale of the deception was uncovered).

I also def wouldn't very surprised if she was fiddling the books....