Overpaid and now wanting to hand in notice

[partystress]

My DD has had a very part-time job with a national chain for the past year. They massively overpaid her for the first two months. She flagged it immediately and has raised it in writing and verbally with several managers. They did have one month where she wasn’t paid, so clearly they knew there needed to be an adjustment, but then it was back to normal pay.

She will be leaving to go to uni at the end of the summer and there are now fewer shifts left than it would take for them to clawback the overpayment (around £1200, which I am holding for her so she doesn’t accidentally spend it).

She doesn’t want to be pressured into doing extra shifts to make up the overpayment, she just wants to give it back (or even better, keep it but with a clear conscience!).

Any advice on how she could handle this would be welcome - could she just give them a cheque for instance?

If it's a big chain, they'll have a payroll department. Can she get contact details from her line manager and email them directly to explain the situation and seek advice?

Why doesn't she just arrange to pay the money back?

Surely she is capable of talking to someone in head office to organise this?

She's flagged it up.
Keep working and hand in her notice when it suits. Add to the formal notice that she's happy to pay back any outstanding overpayment if they advise her of the amount and an account to pay it into.
Keep the money safe in the meantime and don't worry about it.

She should simply hand in her notice and in her letter ask for details of how the overpayment will be dealt with to be provided in advance of her leaving date. It’s good that you’re holding the money so she can’t spend it!

She hands in her notice like anyone else. She can't be made to work off the debt. If they want the cash they'll ask for it.

@Fleur405 and @Beamur that’s a good plan. Thank you.

@00100001 She has no contact with head office. The branch has no dedicated HR. She has raised it with her branch managers multiple times in writing and verbally and been assured it will be sorted. She works 8 hours a week and is in the middle of A levels. It shouldn’t really be down to her to work out how to make a credit to a multinational company in a way that will be properly recorded and discharge her ‘debt’.

We'll, it is usually the employees responsibility to make sure they're paid correctly and pay money back.

She needs to find the numbers and get it sorted.

Just get her to hand in her notice and then it will be magically sorted I'm sure.

PS if the payroll team don't ask for the money back right away, still keep it for her. They could come back for it much later when they sort out all the details. I had this once when my employer didnt figure out the detail of the mistake until the next tax year!

If this is the employers fault then at this stage an agreement should have been made as to how they would clawback the funds such as £100 per month for X months.

She really needs to contact their payroll department and get this sorted out - branch managers generally don't have a clue about this stuff & how it all works.

@WhatsInAMolatovMocktail thank you. I suspect the handing in of notice will trigger something, but if not, it is tricky to know how long it might take them to claim it. The error happened last tax year., and the one month they didn’t pay her (and so clawed a bit back) was February, but I guess there might be other audits that would show it. I think though that the error arose from her hours being input wrongly, so if she hadn’t said anything, I’m not sure how it would have been picked up.

My ex left a job where he'd had an overpayment, they contacted him after he'd left and he just paid installments at a level he could afford until it was clear.