Finance Manager "accidentally" paid £80,000 into her own bank account!!

[Babooshka1234]

I need to rant and ask your thoughts about a member of staff who is in a managerial position responsible in HR & Finance yet is terrible at her job and the Director doesn't do anything about it. Have I become a bit too obsessed with this women and my lack of confidence in her ability and should also ignore it or can anything be done about it? I will list a few of the things she does... yesterday paid £80,000 into her own personal bank account in error because the banking app she uses is linked to both the business account and her personal account! Last year she almost lost the business £150,000 due to a scam again using this banking app, fortunately it was stopped just in time. She pays the wages for everyone and regularly changes them if she doesn't agree with the time sheets. And despite being told numerous times not to come to work early, she still comes in over an hour early to claim overtime at time & a half and daily plays the clocking in machine to her advantage yet stamps down on anyone else if they are a minute over or under their clocking in. There are so many other things she does to annoy people and I think most people in the office have no confidence in her yet she is allowed to continue. I think what annoys me is that she is in this position of responsibility and gets away with things like this.

What type of business is this OP? Is there a board or holding company above the director you could whistleblow to?

Are you highlighting these errors to her boss? Or are you her boss?

All you can do is keep meticulous records of your shifts, keep a close eye on your pay slips, and complain -in writing-each and every time she affects your pay in any way.
The rest of it is above your head and, if it doesn’t directly affect you, is up to those higher up to worry about tbh. Don’t let her steal your peace, it sounds as if you are giving her a lot of your head space.

Its just an independant service business with around 50 staff with just a youngish Managing Director

Are you highlighting these errors to her boss?

The other managers are fully aware of these errors and just complain to each other about her. I'm a member of the admin team, not her boss

Does she have a personal link to the boss? These examples are really egregious and she deserves to be fired.

The 150k scam would have been enough for me to let her go.

The 80k is egregious and I would also let her go for that.

This is nonsense and I would whistle blow.

If you manage this person you need to be issuing performance improvement plans, warnings... the own bank account thing is pretty close to gross misconduct... I'm assuming they owned up straight away or they should be fired. You need to give warnings for clocking in early and written evidence she is not to do it and it will be seen as theft.

Thank you ok I will do that and try not to let it frustrate me so much :-)

What is her relationship with the director and is it possible the director is up to financial impropriety too? (speaking from bitter personal experience).

Absolutely! but they didnt do anything about it. The perfect opportunity to give at least a written warning

No she has no link to the boss and even he complains about her, i wonder if she has info that she could hold against him or that he just has no balls and cant be bothered with the hassle?

She pays the wages for everyone and regularly changes them if she doesn't agree with the time sheets.

She does what now?!

Whistle-blow.

Both of the major fuck ups you’ve mentioned amount to gross negligence, and I’d be looking to dismiss. First one, too much time has elapsed. Second, you’ve got more chance on as more recent. How long has she been there?

Who owns the business and do they know what is going on? Is the MD the owner or just an employee? Who found out she had accidentally paid herself £80,000, did she just say it herself or was she caught? A system where personal and business transactions are being carried out on the same app in such a way they can be mixed up sounds monumentally stupid, do the accountants know this goes on, I assume this person has no formal qualifications for this role (or I hope not!).

To be honest I’d look for another job because sooner or later that level of incompetence is going to destabilise the company finances. In the meantime I’d cover my back in terms of timesheets, pay slips etc and avoid all the office chat about her. Everyone knows what she’s doing and nothing is happening to address is, so it now is just office gossip and you’ll keep ranting to yourself which just takes up headspace you don’t have.

I’m curious how the 80k was discovered and whether or not this has happened before…

agree with pp that you should look for another job because this is a badly run company that may well run into difficulties soon

eta I suspect there may well be some interesting issues with HMRC if she is running payroll like this

She changes the pay for employees? Does she update the tax on the new pay? Does the business owe money to HMRC because monthly payroll has been filed incorrectly?
This alone needs a full audit since she started working for the company. I would advise the business owner to flag this up with the accountants ASAP.
Near miss on a scam, she needs to undergo a proper IT training session with a qualified IT provider.
Using the same app in the same phone for work and personal logins is absolutely a no-no. She should be provided with a work phone which she can only use for business purposes only.
In fact, the business needs to seriously consider the risk level here and sort out all the IT security, software and end user responsibilities.
At that point in time, if she makes one more mistake she would need to go.

I would consider securing another job before you blow the whistle. I volunteered for a charity where the fiddling of the books went all the way to the top. My manager had a quiet word with a few of us one day and suggested we all step down before it all came out. (In the end they got away with it because there were too many people involved and the main perpetrator had information on all of them).

This is so serious. Nobody in finance accidentally pays themselves 80K. They need to leave immediately as they are a major risk to the business. Please whistle blow to the managing director.

if she were changing my wages due to changing my clocking in and out times she would feel the full wrath of me and my union.

The staff need to take this up with their unions/lawyers/ACAS.

Shes going to bankrupt the company. It sounds like a small company to £150k would significantly impact on it's viability. The £80k sounds like potential fraud. The app sounds like very bad judgement to start with but surely after the first mistake you'd stop using it?

If there a professional body you could whistle-blower to?

Normally Id say, keep your nose out of it but this is going to have significant impact on lots of people.

point out to the MD and other managers that if she is messing with the wages, they are facing a massive ET problem.

Do the staff know she is doing this?

Accounts being linked is really annoying - community group accounts get linked to your personal account and when you stop being a signatory it cancels your own access to your banking app. You then have to sort that all out which is a faff.

It's crap. And crap in part due to the apps they make.

Banks suck generally at lots of things.
My lloyds account sent me an email which Gmail says:
Be careful with this message.
This message isn't authenticated and the sender can't be verified. Be careful when clicking links, downloading attachments, or replying with personal information.

It's a real email from the bank - but clearly their security isn't up to scratch.
(I know this bit is a bit irrelevant but it seemed better to tuck it here than simmer about how annoying I find it!)