I was fired for Gross Misconduct today.

[HoldingOnatoday]

Just need to talk to someone outside of my family really. It’s been a tough time recently, lost my mum and then I got Pneumonia and ended up in intensive care for six weeks.

I returned to work on Friday and had an investigation meeting where I was accused of submitting fraudulent expense mileage claims. I disputed some which were left on an agree to disagrees. Some id accidentally left in, where I’d been to visit clients homes, the clients had cancelled and I’d forgot to remove the mileage. Its auto done for us but alas I should’ve manually removed them. I accept responsibility and this is on me.

I’ve put in £10,000 (I do a lot of driving/stay in hotels) worth of expenses in the last year and £900 was found to be fraud. These were the cancelled ones I’d not deleted. They’re going to contact the police and I’m not sure if anything will come to it. It was done more job negligence (I’ve not been up to par) than maliciously. I’ve been scattered brained, driving 7 hours a day for work often and running on empty.

The thing is I’m good at my job, I’m a good person I’d like to think. But I’m so broken by this, I’ve finally got a good credit rating, which will now be damaged by mortgage repayments and bills being missed. I’m also scared at the prospect of going to prison/declaring this to future employers. I have offered to pay back and this was rejected.

Im not looking for Sympathy, just for a way forward because I really feel like ending it all today. I’ve applied for Christmas temp work today but not sure if anything will come from it.

It sounds horrible. So that I understand:

Expenses are put on for you when the appointment is booked automatically

If the meeting is cancelled then its up to YOU to remove that expense claim

If you are claiming £10k per year you must be doing over 20K business miles at 45ppm. That is high mileage.

You claim the expenses but your boss signs them off whithout checking which tbh I wouldnt expect them to as they clearly trust you.

How did they find out the mileage claim wasnt correct? Bet it was some finance team who are just looking for this type of thing. I was queried many years ago now because I put Newcastle on my claim and the officious little twerp reported the mismatch of claim to my line manager AND one above. All because she checked my mileage and assumed Newcastle was Newcastle Under Lyme which was much closer to the office. These people are NO idea what its like driving around, appointments run late, traffic let alone all the things that gone in peoples lives.

Yes - speak to ACAS - and consider getting a decent employment lawyer to defend you - thinking that they could negotiate for you to have the reason for dismissal reduced from Gross Misconduct due to mitigating circumstances, ineffectual procedures, undue pressure at work. Take care of yourself and good luck.

Seek legal advice.

You have an automated system that occasionally you have to override manually. Your manager should be checking everything he signs off.

Why didn't your manager remind you the first time this had happened? If anything, it's a joint error and your manager should also be caught up in this as he has signed this off as being correct.

Please call your gp, Samaritans, friends/family, please keep yourself safe. Nothing and I mean NOTHING is worth harming yourself over.

You could also get the ball rolling re: money. Have a look at uc online, speak to your mortgage provider, utility companies.

Please don't worry yourself too much, it's a crap situation but not one that can't be rectified.

So basically our mileage counts automatically for all journeys recorded in our system. If a journey is cancelled, sometimes the system will automatically remove this, sometimes not

Based purely on this, they have implemented a system that unpredictably or at random submits expenses for journeys that haven't happened.

This should be the focus if it's causing consequences they don't want. Sort the system out so that there's not an unreasonable risk of human error.

@HoldingOnatoday the thing that stands out for me is that the system sometimes cancels and sometimes it doesn't. That creates confusion and doubt for employees. Also that your manager has signed your claims off for 9 months with no checks or queries. FWIW I don't think they have a chance of proving the intent to defraud and for £900 that you've already offered to repay doubt the police /CPS will be interested.
Get advice from ACAS/union/employment lawyer and see whether there are grounds to negotiate a mutual termination with an NDA instead of dismissal. £900 in lieu of notice is nothing for a large firm.

Agreed. It’s a very confusing system.

I’m a magistrate, even if they took criminal action against you, you would not be going to prison for this. At worst you’d get a community sentence, but honestly given the circumstances you’d probably get a fine or even a conditional discharge (so no criminal penalty).

The audit was done during my six weeks off. I got out of hospital last Monday, and returned to work on Friday on which was to be a planned phased return of 4 hours per day. I was invited to the meeting within one hour of returning on Friday and told what they’d found. They said I couldn’t have representation as it was informal. I was then invited again on Sunday, for today with 24 hours notice which I didn’t take representation to as I couldn’t bear to tell anyone stupidly. I was then told I was being immediately dismissed on the grounds of Gross misconduct for fraud and the police were being contacted. I then reinterated the amount was £900, they said yes. I offered to pay it back or have it taken from my final wage and they declined this.

A few strange things did happen up to this happening though. When I first got the job, 17 months ago, it was a permanent position. I then suddenly was told I’d be covering the area of someone on maternity leave hence the long drives, hotel stays etc. I checked my contract, permanent not maternity cover.

Recently, the lady who I was covering has returned to work and they barely had any work for me to do. So that’s been another thing then obviously my time off. I’m not disregarding the expense claims, I’d like to think if my colleagues were audited they’d also be some due to the nature of the system but I don’t know. I’d also whistleblown about someone on the team doing something against safeguarding and never received a response. This person had been there 13 years and was well loved.

im taking time today to take it all in. Not spiral. To maybe just breathe a little. I’ve put in a claim for UC, applied for Christmas jobs. I’ll give myself til the new year and try and begin again.

What is the point of the manager ‘checking’ then? If I was the manager I would be checking it was correct before signing off on it.

No it’s not. It’s an excellent system, and very common. Quite simply the system records visits, calculated mileage does the admin, when a cancellation is recorded in the system, then it removes the mileage, but sometimes it’s not captured as a cancellation ie the client calls, the op doesn’t go, the system doesn’t know, so doesn’t remove the mileage. The ops job is to confirm she made all the trips and submit. If she didn’t then remove them.

i am unsure why folks keep saying it’s a joint error. It doesn’t change what has happened to the op. It is gross misconduct, as over a long period. And for a lot of money. Claiming for trios she didn’t make.

the manager will also face disciplinary, she at no point said the manager faces no action. Quite simply disciplinary action is confidential so the op will not be informed of what action he faces; she simply has to address the issue of fraudulent claims, made worse by the fact she knew she had a manager who didn’t check.

its pointless trying to say she was unable to do her job correctly to the extent she made the these errors for nine months running, she should have went off on sick leave. And she can’t blame the manager and say she shouldn’t be fired, because she should have not been submitting fraudulent mileage claims in the first place, the fact he let it through doesn’t change this fact.

I get she has a back story, it was human error, but everyone who does their expenses has a story, so companies do not take it into account. Once or twice maybe, but not nine months running.

I too think this is because of your sickness record OP.
An employment lawyer would have good grounds to fight this. I would leap on the flawed system for starters, basically if it can lead to gross misconduct, it shouldn’t be flawed! It sometimes deletes expenses, it sometimes doesn’t…nope, not good enough. Also, the manager’s sloppiness at signing off. It’s his job, especially since the system is flawed in the first place. S/he should be extra thorough.
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Could your employers be hoping that this just might be the straw that breaks the camel’s back? That you’ll just roll over and be grateful if they get rid of you and relieved that they held off police involvement?

Get advice, get an employment lawyer, do everything other posters have suggested.
You naturally feel you haven’t the strength to challenge this, so get the right people on board who can. Hugs

I would argue this - if the system automatically adds in the miles, I would expect to automatically remove them if the meeting was cancelled. Even if the onus was for the employee to check, this is a manual process, employee's best endeavours and would be susceptible to human error.

There was a lot going on at the time, you have been ill, you have lost your mum and during this time you have done your job to the best of your ability and tried to keep all the balls in the air. You submitted the expenses in good faith, you submitted the expenses as timely as possible so you were not out of pocket. It is unreasonable for them to discipline you over a system's limitation on their side.
If miles are automatically added they also should be removed automatically putting the onus on the employee is them admitting their is a flaw in their process and software.

Best of luck and I would fight them.

Mmm if you’ve only been there for 17 months then except in special circumstances you can’t make a claim for unfair dismissal. I agree they just didn’t need you anymore but they could have just said so. The only fight worth having is to get the reason for dismissal removed for the future. You still don’t sound well you can use sick notes to help with your uc claim to protect your health. Just asking do you have a partner or children? Do you rent or buy?

If Op has less than two years’ service, employment can be terminated unless on discriminatory grounds. If you can, look at the company process for gm and check it has been followed. The absence itself might have been sufficient grounds for disciplinary but this is more pressing and quicker. Were there expense claims prior to the nine months?

There is no way round the fact she submitted fraudulent mileage claims nine months, and benefitted to the tune of 900. Most companies have zero tolerance for this. If they just didn’t need her they’d let her go. They didn’t make up the fraudulent claims.

I would argue this - if the system automatically adds in the miles, I would expect to automatically remove them if the meeting was cancelled.

Not if the system isn’t “told” that the appointment has been cancelled. By OP. It’s her job to do that and her responsibility to remove the trips from the expense claims. She didn’t do it. Not sure why the system is at fault.

Exactly, if the cancellation is not recorded then it can’t cancel them. This is not an overly onerous responsibility on the employee. And all the other employees are apparently doing it just fine and have been for however long the system has been in.

i think people with no experience are responding, trying to be kind and find someone else to blame. It’s the system, it’s the manager. However it will not change the fact the op submitted repeated fraudulent claims. And it is gross misconduct. Whatever disciplinary the manager faces will not change it. The op knew her responsibilities. She knew not correcting it meant she was being paid money she wasn’t owed. And so she is better focusing on trying to get a decent reference and no police action.

That's not quite the case, though. The system submits, the system sometimes deletes, she has to manually delete sometimes when the system hasn't.

It's set up for people to fail because they're not manually putting in the claims.

Besides, if you think your boss is checking, that's another reason it's failed.

Yes she ended up claiming too much because she wasn't on top of checking, but it's harsh to not allow her to repay it and to report to the police.

I know the reporting is to cover themselves, but they must know it's way over the top in these specific circumstances.

I agree with those thinking this is a load more to do with her sickness, they must have been beside themselves with joy when they realised she'd messed up not cancelling the expenses.

I've not read the whole thread, but basically there is a 9% error in your expenses. I don't see how a reasonable person can interpret that as gross misconduct or deliberate fraud. It sounds like there is something underhand at play here. I hope you can get the right union, HR or legal support you deserve.

No it’s not.

if it’s recorded in the system it deletes. If not it doesn’t. The employee prior to submission checks each day and verifies it is accurate. Thay they did that trip. If they did not, they delete it, as the system didn’t know. They then submit. It couldn’t be simpler.and it appears everyone else is more than capable of confirming if they did a visit on a given day or not.

And I very much doubt they were besides themselves with joy knowing they now need to hire someone else. Train them up and over paid 900 quid. If the op was crap at her job they’d have just let her go. They have fired her as she repeatedly submitted fraudulent expenses. For whatever reason, she did that, sickness, over sight, whatever, she verified they were accurate and submitted, knowing some were cancelled and knowing she’d be paid.

and most people who do their expenses it is small amounts over a long period. And it is always gross misconduct and dismissal/

approx 1 in 10 visits being cancelled at the last moment so the company doesn’t know?

you wording is also unclear and strongly implies that sometimes you had got to the client home before being cancelled - the company have to pay for that

You should at least be able to argue for a compromise agreement so you could leave without being fired and with an agreed reference. Follow the suggestions here. Good to see examples of people who've got past this happening and are now in other jobs.

I think she must mean that the mileage is automatically added and she forgot to delete it? Sounds like a daft system IMHO.

I know you are exhausted and don’t want to fight, but I think you have a case against your employer here, as they have a duty of care to you that has not been upheld. The workload put upon you and the lack of ensuring your wellbeing in your circumstances could well be seen as unreasonable. I would get some legal advice, explaining all you have said here and see what they think. Maybe some push back and a legal letter of intent to contest this may be enough to dissuade them from pursuing this