Mistake at work - help please!

[nevereverplease]

I had a client who owes £500 for work carried out, instead I sent the money to the wrong place for £1100.

I made this mistake an hour ago so will speak to the merchant first thing but assuming I can't reverse it, will take days to refund back to the client.

I will explain all to the client tomorrow, process the refund ASAP and offer a gesture of goodwill of £50.

Is this reasonable? I guess I'm just looking for someone to say it'll be fine in the end although I think it won't 😬

Btw I'm self employed so job isn't on the line but I just feel terrible

I don't understand. Have you sent £1100 of the client's actual money to the wrong place? Is that what you're saying? How do you have access to their account to do this in the first place?

Because they provided their details to me to make the payment over the phone. I keyed it incorrectly and only when we hung up did I notice what happened.

Stop worrying so much and why even say anything to the client? Just refund the client, talk to the merchant.

They owe you £500 but you sent someone else £1,100?

Sorry OP this isn't making much sense. Surely they still owe you the £500, you just need to get your £1,100 back from wherever it went.

Why would you need to apologise to the client?

@Lineofconcepcion they will see it debited. Perhaps I am worrying too much I just feel terrible. Also angry at myself as I pride myself on never ever making errors. In fact, my whole career cannot tell you I've ever made a blunder of this kind

Ah, x post. Yes what you suggest would be fine. If they incur overdraft charges, you will need to cover those.

@Lockheart because it's come out of their account to pay for a service, I sent it to the wrong service provider for the wrong amount so they've paid £600 more than they need to m. Yes I'll refund it of course but it just makes me look incompetent and isn't ideal for them to have £600 out their account even if temporarily

Ok, but surely when you take payment over the phone via a PDQ machine it sends the money to your account? How have you managed to send it somewhere else? Are you sure it's not just slightly slow to arrive in your account?

Do you mean the client is owed rather than owes?

@Lockheart no it's not a handheld device it's online payment system lbs we use where you log in and I logged into the wrong system.

Mistakes happen, don't beat yourself up, just put it right as best you can.
However, re the method of payment, I'm not sure you should be using the clients payment details. Shouldn't you be receiving their payment into your account, then making payment to the merchant from your account?

@PoorMansPaulaRadcliffe are you seriously picking at my grammar right now?? That's the last of my issues! But thanks for your observation.

@PoorMansPaulaRadcliffe if you were genuinely asking then owes yes he still hasn't made the payment to us as I keyed it incorrectly I didn't bother call her and take details again I'll worry about my payment later

Is the client a huge business or a small business/individual?

@HotSince63 individual 😬

What a mess, I will not sleep tonight

The way I read this is; client owes service provider A £500, OP has facilitated a payment from them to service provider B (who they owe nothing) for £1100

@HotSince63 if a huge business I would feel bad but nowhere near to this extent

@KarlKennedysDurianFruit you are spot on yes that's correct

There’s a big difference between owes and is owed @nevereverplease. They’re polar opposites so the OP wasn’t picking at your grammar but trying to understand which it was

@Lineofconcepcion no the way our business works they do not allow us to pay on behalf of the client. I've processed the payment in real time, just like you'd pay for any service over the phone so that's not the issue.

The issue is it's gone to the wrong place for the wrong amount.

I’m not really too sure what you mean, how have you used there bank details to send money?
But just speaking about the gist of it, I think you need to refund the £600 excess out of your own cash in the interim so they aren’t out of pocket waiting for a refund over Xmas.

Their bank should be able to recall the payment immediately, this happened to me because a tradesperson gave me a slightly wrong account number, noticed just after i sent the payment, I got the money back within 24 hours. Might be worth calling them as their bank customer service will still be open and it's better it doesn't go over into a weekend which it might if left until tomorrow

@HappyHomeWorker sorry I know hence why I messaged a second time sorry!

I'm just pretty anxious right now.

And yes it's owes. The client still owes me £500 for handling the matter

I can't make head nor tail of this tbh, but expecting an individual to be £600 down, this close to Christmas, for however long it takes you to sort out your cock up is not acceptable, no.