If your work accidentally paid you a huge bonus would you tell them?

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I've been paid a big bonus in my last pay and I know my company has made mistake - I changed roles, and I don't know what they've done but it's along the lines of them paying me my full years sales commission, despite already being paid it quarterly throughout the year. It's about 2 months salary. I work for a huge company with complex bonus/sales commission rules and I'm pretty confident they would never notice or ask for the money back if I said nothing. The money would be nice, since I've already quit to be a full time carer for my disabled son and going forward things will be very tight (I'm just working out my notice). I had to take 6 months unpaid leave already this year to care for him, another reason why the money would be handy and also why I'm confident I'm not entitled to the bonus!

I'm a good honest person so I've already told HR and they are looking into it. I assume they will rectify their mistake and ask for the money back, although I suppose there's a chance the admin will be more hassle than it's worth and they'll let me keep it! It did make me wonder though, how many people would be this honest/stupid?

I would say, because I would worry too much not to!

I have worked as a senior level in the finance department as an accountant for multinational organisations. I would expect this to be picked up well before an annual audit, in fact if anything it might slip through an audit (or it might not).

It should be picked up very quickly through monthly management review and reporting. Your very large company will be broken down into cost centres and each cost centre will have an owner and they will be managing and reporting against a budget on a monthly basis. They should investigate discrepancies and anomalies like this. I would not expect this to go unnoticed for more than a couple of weeks. If it does, then there are really shocking processes in place.

I’d definitely have flagged it to; keeping it would likely be theft.

I never keep what isn't mine. Its stealing. I am not a thief. Its that simple.

I’d just leave it for them to notice their mistake. I won’t be taking time out of my day to be chasing someone else’s mistake. I’ve done it twice before in very similar circumstances and it wasn’t worth the effort.

Yeah but OP says she changed jobs, with one lot of commission paid quartly and the other yearly. So two different cost centres would both sign off.

sadly I can totes see the multinational I work for never catching this.

well done OP you are a good person. But don’t chase them up to take it back toooo hard

The chances of a statutory audit finding this are slim to none.

I assume they will take it from your final pay as you are still working your notice so presumably will still be owed a wage? Or just ask you to transfer the money back to them as you have it and no you can’t spend it so it should be simple.

They will never let you keep it, for a start their tax accounts wouldn't add up. Do you honestly think they will think, ahhh I can't be arsed, let her keep it ?!?!

Given that you’ve left, I’d be really tempted to not notice it. 😳

Make sure they give you a new correct payslip for that month. Will be a headache for them as will need to redo the payroll for you then redo pension submission etc

Another mnetter had the same issue a few days ago & was advised to email the CEO because finance was being slow. I think it was sorted pretty quickly after that. This is what I'd do, email both finance and HR and copy in the CEO/ senior management. This way you've shown you've tried to repay the money. Don't spend it, keep it in a separate account because you will have to pay it back.

She says in the OP she’s already told them.

I didn't return to work after mat leave but they paid me a full month's salary the month I would have returned to work. I flagged it to hr and was told to keep it!

Sounds awful but the company I work for has had similar things happen and yes they do catch up eventually. They’ve even taken people to court and set up payment plans. Good for you being honest, nothing worse than being stressed out if you’d spent it then had to repay 😨

Good that you've reported it OP but be aware of HMRC as you're leaving your job so may or may not be due a tax refund. This happened to my DH, he was overpaid accidentally by a month during his notice period (they sacked him), he repaid it immediately but then it fucked up his claim for UC because according to HMRC he'd earned too much money.

As someone who has worked in finance and done payroll and also reconciled payroll amounts I would have picked this up at the end of the month but I guess if a company is doing thousands and thousands they wouldn’t notice. Personally I would never raise it as theft or a sackable offence if I found a mistake has been made. I’d just write to the person and tell them the error and tell them it will be reversed the following month in the next payroll. Personally I would raise a mistake myself (and as I happens I was once overpaid by 10k due to an extra 0!) as I would assume it would be picked up. Most departments reconcile against budgets monthly or quarterly or at worst yearly so somewhere along the way it would get flagged up.

Did you even read the OP?

Put it in a savings account with high interest and see what HR says. I wouldn't spend it.

It doesn’t matter that she changed jobs. This cost will have been posted to a specific cost centre, there will be a cost centre owner responsible for managing that and they will have been hit with this unusual amount and they will want to get to the bottom of it themselves. Even if the cost centre / business owner is lax, the finance team will perform the second review, they will review cost centre reports and will query it.

I have worked in multinationals for thirty years and have done a lot of this kind of work and investigation. I have been CFO and head of finance with annual payroll budgets over $1billion and I feel very confident that any multinational would be set up to find this kind of anomaly within a couple of weeks of month end. There should be financial processes in place to capture this kind of error. It is inconceivable to me that there wouldn’t be.

Although I disagree with some posters that have said the annual accounts preparation would flag it up. This is not the type of thing the team preparing the annual accounts would be looking for, so unless it came up in audit sampling, it would probably go through - although as I say, I believe it would have been picked up well before that through the management review processes.

I got overpaid significantly during maternity leave (approx £25k). I work in sales for a huge tech firm and sometimes our commission cheques are pretty big. I genuinely didn't know it was a mistake, just assumed we got really well paid on mat leave!

Anyway, they noticed and I got an email saying it would be clawed back. It was a galling email to receive, especially as I wasn't expecting it! I think they do usually notice these things so it's good you flagged it (I know how tempting it would have been to keep it!) maybe they'll be nice and write it off 🤷🏼‍♀️

I have posted on this elsewhere so won’t repeat myself. But I have a multinational background and can assure you they also have processes to prevent (or at least detect) these things as well.

Yes I'll definitely check with the company

No way would an accountant look this closely into each individual's pay for any month - especially if there's loads of employees! The amount will be hidden amongst the normal fluctuation of gross pay from month to month.

An audit MIGHT pick it up but only if one of the higher paid employees

This happened to me once. It wasn’t a lot though, about £400. I told them, and they told me to keep it! A little bonus severance pay. I bought my first car with it! (£450!)

Could that have been a payout in lieu of accrued annual leave?