I have fucked up

[Royallyscrewed]

NC for this post- not an aibu more a wwyd.

I have a corporate card for work travel expenses and a few weeks back I linked it to my phone to use tap in and out tickets On a trip to London. I’ve just gone to pay my bill (we pay the balance of the card each month and then claim expenses back via our work online finance system) and literally everything I’ve paid by Apple Pay or online through my phone has gone onto my corporate card. It’s gross misconduct to use it inappropriately and immediate suspension. This was a genuine mistake and I cleared the card straight away but I don’t know how to confess to my manager. For context she’s always on at me about my expenses because I quite often miss the cut off date and am pretty disorganised with them. I’m absolutely shitting myself. Any advice on how to come clean?

I agree with PP that you need a written record. Even if you tell your manager verbally first, follow up with an email. Confirm in writing that that you have settled the card in full and that you will only claim for the work related expenses.

I struggle to understand how it could be gross misconduct if you don’t claim for the amounts. The company has suffered no loss or harm.

Honesty is definitely the best policy, but as it's an honest mistake you have nothing to hide.

I'm awful with routine admin like expenses, the only remedy I've found for this is nagging myself via Google calendar, setting it to send me repeated alerts from before when i should be thinking about doing things.

I don't understand why you'd link it to your phone to begin with.

Go in there and own up- this is not gross misconduct (well linking it to your phone was a stupid error but not gross misconduct). You have paid it in full when you realised your mistake. You will now go see her in person and back up in email (cc HR if you wish for clarity). Back it up with a paper trial from the bank highlighting work and personal expenses and what has been paid and when. As a lawyer, a gross misconduct would not apply, though I would expect a written warning to ensure it is not linked to a personal account again.

I don’t owe anything on it now as I cleared it as soon as I found out but my expenses go via a central finance team and are heavily audited

It will depend on how your expenses system works. Our corporate Amex cards are just standard gold corporate cards which are convenient for separating work spend. The bill comes to me and I charge in expenses. In that scenario the only way anyone would know is if they have an agreement with Amex to flag up certain classes of expense (which some companies do).

Other organisations pay the corporate card directly and are billed directly - that is where it is usually a disciplinary issue.

What type of card process is it?

@Stuckinanutshell has excellent advice. I audit expenses and it's really common. Fortunately I work in a very flexible workplace so people just pay it back, it's no problem other than creating a bit of additional paperwork.

I can see that your workplace appears to be less flexible though (I've worked in places like this too) so I'd report it immediately and follow the steps to the letter to get everything rectified.

Since you've had a card for a while (presumably because your manager has mentioned your lack of organisation before) it might be worth including why you added it to your phone this time . . . if there's a mitigating reason.

You've paid off the balance so go and talk to your manager and tell her it was an honest mistake. You can get some legal advice from your union/ HR if necessary

What everyone else has said!

But also, put a recurring event into your work calendar for sorting out your expenses, so that you never miss them again.

If I was your manager, I'd be exasperated by you doing this - and it would add to my concerns about your ability to organise yourself! (I wouldn't fire you though!)

How can there be anything for you to get in to trouble for? You realised the mistake, you paid the bill. Tell your boss so they know what happened.

How can you get in trouble for this?

@BrieAndChilli it's not unusual at all for corporate cards to work like that. I've had it like that in several companies.

Normally you file your expenses online, check against the card statement that comes in at whatever point in the month, submit the claim, the approver approves the payment and the bill gets paid.

If you don't file your expenses or submit them, the card bill would come out of your personal account so it's a good way to get people to keep on top of their expenses, too.

OP - I honestly wouldn't worry too much. I've done it myself before and last year one of my team accidentally paid for a dining table on his card! He'd done exactly what I'd previously done myself - very similar looking corporate card to his personal card and same PIN for both. It's easily done.

Tell her! Anything else will look like you are in the wrong. Tell her and it will get sorted l.

This happened to me last year with Paypal. I bought Christmas presents online via a clothes website and hadn't realized that the works paypal had linked instead of my own. I realized as soon as i went online to check why my balance hadn't gone done and cancelled it.
My boss had also seen it and we'd emailed each other at the same time. She was fine with it when i explained what had happened and no money had gone out.

Same system at my old work, and I made an almost identical mistake as a pp. used it to buy business items from Amazon and somehow set it as the default card. I nearly had hysterics when I got the bill, And hot footed it straight to finance. It was fine.

Tell people immediately, in writing.
Keep you expenses very clean, on time and organised for the next years - a once off should be ok, but not if there is a pattern

Where I work it wouldn't be an issue - as long as the ash is repaid. In fact so often does it happen that there is check box in concur stating "personal expense do not reimburse".

It’s not gross misconduct for the event to happen - but if you wait a week or two to report, and then THEY find out first, and YOU say ‘I was going to say something, honest’, and they go ‘err... yeah right’ and you have the bad luck to have a fairly robust decision maker who doesn’t believe you - then yes, it could be gross misconduct.

If its a company card that you settle then the agreement is between you and the card co. (If its Amex then the Corp gets a kickback from Amex which is why this sort of scheme is common. In which case the company is on sticky ground mandating how you use it. Amex offer a feed to expense systems which reduces the paper that needs to ping back and forth - but more a benefit to Corp than you.)

If you leave without paying off the card then the card company will chase you not your employer. Basically you are carrying the risk. You gain absolutely no benefit - unless your credit rating is crap.

I suspect you'll find that your employment terms say something like 'if you have xx card then it must be used for company expenses otherwise they may not be reimbursed' ie you don't actually have to take the company card.

If its a cc rather than charge card then even more so because your employee would be in the position of telling you to sign a credit agreement - which is a regulated activity,

In my case I just asked my bank for a second card that I used for expenses, much less faffing about - ours was Amex and they frequently messed up the billing cycle/the feed to company expenses.

@Pinkyyy did you not even bother to read the opening paragraph? OP explained exactly why she linked the card with her phone there - to use to tap in and out on the Tube via her phone. Presumably the company card was a credit one, which don't tend to be contactless, yet the tube travel was a work expense, so she needed to pay via the work account. She thought it was an easier way than buying a temporary Oyster card, which it is, but forgot to 'unlink' her phone and the card once she'd finished.

OP if you are worried what your direct manager might say because you've had previous issues, is there anyone else who you get on well with that you can raise it too first? I.e. a higher/more senior boss, or someone in the finance team? Then you can still make your boss aware and do all the things mentioned above - explain it's been paid straight off and what you will do so it doesn't happen again (buy an Oyster/remember to unlink phone) but can add 'I've already told xy and they've said it's fine,' so your manager will look unreasonable if she gets too annoyed at you.'

At the end of the day you haven't actually cost the company anything so it's a bit extreme if they take it too far.

A company is perfectly entitled to set a policy in how the corporate card is used, even if the cards are set up on individual liability. Yes, the card company will chase the individual for an unpaid balance but if they are unsuccessful (ie if the employee has left the company with aged debt) then it will eventually get written off and will affect the company's kick-back. Hopefully in OPs case the company's definition of 'inappropriate use' would be something worse than accidentally linking it to your Apple Pay.

@onceandneveragain yes I did, that's not a reason to link a work card to your personal phone. That's not appropriate in my eyes.

OP if you are worried what your direct manager might say because you've had previous issues, is there anyone else who you get on well with that you can raise it too first? I.e. a higher/more senior boss, or someone in the finance team? Then you can still make your boss aware and do all the things mentioned above - explain it's been paid straight off and what you will do so it doesn't happen again (buy an Oyster/remember to unlink phone) but can add 'I've already told xy and they've said it's fine,' so your manager will look unreasonable if she gets too annoyed at you.'

I’d expect a very dim view would be taken if the op took that advice.

The auditing is to prevent people stealing from the business, you have made a mistake admit it asap otherwise it may look dodgy and be more difficult to explain. Nothing will happen.

Only actually abusing the card or repeatedly making this mistake would be an issue.

We have exactly the same system. What with Apple Pay etc. It's easy to see how this happens. Instead of posting here, I would be emailing my boss and as @MarthasGinYard says, setting out your plans to stop it happening again.

OP if you are worried what your direct manager might say because you've had previous issues, is there anyone else who you get on well with that you can raise it too first? I.e. a higher/more senior boss, or someone in the finance team? Then you can still make your boss aware and do all the things mentioned above - explain it's been paid straight off and what you will do so it doesn't happen again (buy an Oyster/remember to unlink phone) but can add 'I've already told xy and they've said it's fine,' so your manager will look unreasonable if she gets too annoyed at you.'

You can't be serious @onceandneveragain !