Manager has refused mileage claim - AIBU?

[wonderingwanderer2]

I work in the community and so submit my mileage expenses each month. I tend to write my visits in before I do them otherwise I worry I will forget - this is clearly not a good strategy due to what has happened below and I will now do them retrospectively.

I submitted my July mileage and my manager rejected it on the basis that there was one entry that was incorrect - a face-to-face visit had been changed to an online one and I had forgotten to delete the entry - she had seen that it was a Teams meeting in my diary. I apologised and deleted the entry and resubmitted it. I have only just noticed that the mileage for the whole month (a substantial amount) has been rejected again.

Is she allowed to do this? Obviously I was at fault for not deleting the other entry when the meeting was changed to an online one, but AIBU to think she's wrong to not pay my mileage for the rest of the month now the incorrect entry has been deleted? How should I raise this with her?

If it's in your contract that you get mileage then she's definitely not allowed to do that.

What did she say when you asked her why she denied it?

If your contract says you are to be paid for mileage, yes she is wrong. If not then SOL.

@RoomOfRequirement @LondonQueen it's in my contract that I should be paid for mileage. I haven't raised it with her yet as I only noticed this evening after working hours. I'm so cross she didn't even tell me that she'd refused it. Do you think I could contact her over the weekend about it? I'm leaving this job in 2 weeks so I don't really care if it pisses her off tbh!

Rather than work yourself up over potentially nothing, maybe ask why she has rejected it this time? Perhaps there is another mistake or she didn’t notice you had removed the incorrect part of the claim

Only if it is clear she is refusing to approve valid mileage should you escalate

Yes text her tomorrow. Say you’re concerned the corrected mileage form has been rejected and ask what the issue is.

I should imagine that she wants to check it properly before she approves it.

How do you know she has rejected it again, do you get paid with your salary and it’s not showing on payslip?
If so initial rejection may mean it missed the pay deadline and will be processed on next pay run.

Ask her.

System probably means she can only approve or reject it fully, not accept part of it. So if it is partially incorrect she has to deny it so you can resubmit the correct claim.

Not sure how your system works but as part as my role I check and approve mileage for my bosses direct employees (I’m EA) if you’d submitted something and I’d caught out a mistake where your claimed for a journey that didn’t happen even when resubmitted it would be rejected because I’d be required to do a full audit.

Not suggesting you did do it on purpose and hope you didn’t get checked because honest mistakes happen but it would flag our systems and I’d have to do a full audit of your current claim and then possibly look at old claims just to be sure

Exactly. You got it wrong first time & I bet she’ll review and approve.

you are choosing to get worked up over nothing

you need to ask her, simple, perhaps there is another error

Sadly, what you were doing, completing time-sheest/mileage etc, before actually doing the work/mileage, was fraudulent.
So your boss, or the accounts department, may well be auditing the rest of your claim for that month (or indeed, all of your previous claims), which they would be obliged to do.
If you are a registered professional, i would suggest ypu get in touch with your union as a pre-emptive strike
And be prepared to explain to your next employer if your current one passes this info on

Clearestblue:

OP has already said it was updated, resubmitted and rejected

Dramatic much 🙄

It was one genuine mistake that the OP corrected

And if I were the manager of an employee who had submitted a mileage claim for a journey they didn't take I would be suspending their claims until a full audit of every claim they had made had been completed. But I am "petty" like that...

It was no doubt a genuine mistake by the OP but they really aren't in a strong position here. There is no defence for making a false claim. They may have been in the habit of filling in the mileage before they made a journey, but that is (as the OP accepts themselves) entirely wrong. Quite apart from anything else, how can you know what your mileage will be before you have made the journey? Even regular journeys can unexpectedly deviate from the planned route and so vary from the normal mileage.

A polite request about her claim(s) is in order, and nothing more. People have been disciplined or dismissed for this kind of mistake, and claiming expenses you haven't incurred is a serious matter.

It's probably just a system thing and you'll have to delete the wrong entry, update the. Claim and submit again.
That's how ours works anyway.
There would be no way for the approver to approve without the claim being updated and resubmitted.
But yeah, as PPs have said, ask her.

I overheard one of the finance people in our office moaning that we don't fill the expenses form before we arrive and hand it in with the return journey filled in. I think that'd be wrong. Even though we know we get expenses there and back. In my mind you should complete the journey first.

No. The OP says it was one genuine mistake. The employer is not obliged to accept that answer. Losing ones job is very definitely possible, and it's not remotely overdramatic to think that the employer will be making sure that there have been no other genuine mistakes. FWWIW, I do know of someone who lost his job over "one genuine mistake" on his mileage claim - admittedly they were looking for an excuse, but the employer dismissed and the dismissal was ruled fair.

Not dramatic, it was technically fraud, so if her manager was minded to do so, s/he could take it further.
You may think such 'petty' crime is reasonable, others do not.

No it’s not. In my work place it would count as possible fraudulent behaviour. All the claims would need to be audited to make sure it was a genuine mistake not a pattern that handy be noticed before. Anyone could claim it was a honest mistake when caught out.

in my workplace it’s done online and it clearly says in very big red lettering you are entitled to claim
mileage only for the distance from
your place of work to the destination. Not home to destination because if you were coming to work as normal
you wouldn’t get paid mileage for that journey.

we had one person move departments who tried claiming mileage from home to destination so they were audit when I picked it up. Turns out they’d been doing it a lot but they didn’t have anyone to audit they’re claims in Previous position due to understaffing so they’d just got used to getting away with it.

I’m not saying OP is lying and it wasn’t a genuine mistake but their claims might be checked as part of that mistake

Sorry. Wrong thread, no idea how I did that

and @XelaM , the OP stated she always did this so it was not a 'genuine mistake'. She was commiting fraud and the company can be penalised:

'companies battling mileage fraud can be a hefty fine from HM Revenue and Customs (HRMC) on the tax owed on these fraudulent expenses. If HMRC investigate expenses and discover mileage fraud, your company could be fined up to £3,000 per employee in the UK'.

So, OP was acting criminally. But do tell, which crimes do you see as 'mistakes' and which crimes really are crimes?