I've been overpaid by my employer, WWYD?

[Whattodowithoverpayment]

I work on a minimum-wage, zero-hours contract for a huge multinational company. I've just opened my latest payslip and they've overpaid me by around £750. I can see that whoever processed the payment has miscalculated the hours I worked last month. If the company was smaller I'd fess up, but they definitely won't miss £750. I'm flat broke and the money will mean so much to my family this Christmas. But I'm worried they'll find out and make me pay it back. What should I do?

I am a Director of HR. They will find out, especially if it is a larger organisation . We do regular payroll audits, and find overpayments as they do happen. Employees have a duty to report overpayments. For those saying it is not criminal - the underpayment isn't. The not disclosing money that you know you are not entitled to, it is. It is fraud. I Just last week passed over a potential fraud case for this issue. What happens if there is an ongoing error and you get paid the same next month? Will you keep and spend that? I have seen many people go down this road and it never ends well for them. This money isn't yours. If everyone in your company did this, it would be out of business. Even if they don't refer you, they can sack you.

I had this happen to me. I told my employer. There's a chance they might not have noticed but I think later on they might have done. Not worth the risk.

They may well just take it back from your next wage so it’s better to tell them. I was paid twice in my first month at my employer. I called my manager right away and HR then called and asked whether I wanted to return it or have zero wage the following month and that would balance it. I opted for zero wage and kept the money in my savings till the following pay day. I thought it wax better to have zero wages to ensure my tax, student loan etc was correct and also I was worried about sending that amount of back to an HR department to get lost in transit.

Lots of people are honest. In fact I think most people are honest. Thankfully.
It wouldn’t cross my mind to keep it.
I definitely judge people who are dishonest especially people who generally see themselves as decent people but who bend the rules to suit themselves or make excuses to why their dishonesty is ‘ok’. The OP has done this by saying she would give the money back if it was a small company but isn’t going to because it’s a large company. Either it’s dishonest or it’s not dishonest.
If people think it’s ok deprive ‘big compainies’ then they can pretty much justify all stealing as people often have things insured. Maybe that’s what the phones thieves in London all think when they nick people’s phones.
Ive almost more time for thieves who are upfront with not giving a shit about anyone else.

A large company making an error one day is going to realise soon enough. They will do an audit and you will need to pay it back. So save yourself the future ‘my employer overpaid me 2 years ago and now I don’t have £700 it’s going to put me in to financial distress’ thread.

Take the easiest and honest course of action.
Let HR/Payroll know straightaway.

Tell them.

It will get picked up in due course and you will be required to pay it back.

Tell them now: it might be a tax repayment or something, you will not be marked out as a chancer, and you won’t have the repayment hanging over you.

I would be unimpressed if an employee kept quiet about an obvious over payment.

This happened to me once, I was expecting around £200 and got around £800. I messaged my manager and said I wasnt sure the amount was right (it definitely wasnt, it was a few days holiday pay) but nothing ever came of it and I never had to pay anything back. I find it hard to believe it was correct but I wasnt gonna argue!

What does your payslip say. Has your normal pay been changed as it will keep recurring until it’s been picked up.
If it’s back pay or something it should be on a separate line.

If you claim uc or any benefits coz this could affect you getting paid next month coz you will have been paid more than your normal and they will deduct it even if you’ve had to pay it back . Make sure you speak to your work if they have it back as you will also have paid more contributions so they need to take those out of the money too . Otherwise you’ve earnt less money by receiving that overpayment .

It’s their fault, why in hells name would they fire her and give her a criminal record?

they will make her pay it back over a period of time .

some people talk a load of bollocks!

If they realise and they probably will, you are going to look dishonest at the very least. I personally could not go into work each day with my employer thinking I had hung on to money which I knew was not mine, even if they couldn't prove anything. An hours overpayment maybe, but £750? No one would believe you didn't notice that

If the OP’s timesheet is wrong for whatever reason an audit isnt going to pick that up because the auditor won’t know what hours she did.

Don’t they just.

Legally it is not yours. You can be asked to pay it back. Don’t spend it whatever you do.

Based on experience, unless the error is picked up straight away, they are unlikely to find it unless they randomly pick it out for review at audit which could be months away.

I know everyone is saying they will notice...I have worked for various payroll teams and the majority of the time we wouldn't have a way to notice these things.
Yes we would reconciliations every month but they wouldn't necessarily uncover overpayment.
I've worked for medium sized companies and a F100 company.
On top of that I've processed many paybacks from overpayment in my time.

It's never been the case of someone getting in trouble, it's usually considered as much the companies fault as the person, a payment plan is agreed and it is paid back over a certain amount of months. One person was paid 14k over a few years, she paid back 200 per month when it was eventually picked up on.

None of this to say you should keep it and keep quiet, just balancing out all the posts saying they will definitely find out, ex payroll/HR person and there's plenty we didn't find out about.

In this particular case I would suggest putting it aside, it isn’t your money so if they ask for it back you will need to repay. It’s also possible it’s to do with paying earlier for Christmas so not extra at all. If in a few months they haven’t requested it then it’s yours, but do not spend it now.

OP is on a minimum-wage, zero-hours contract for a huge multinational company. Her employer is obviously exploitative and pays its staff as little as they can get away with without breaking the law.

I'm hardly going to feel sorry for OP's employer if OP keeps the £750 that was transferred to her bank account. I don't think that OP would be morally wrong to keep it but I would probably advise against it in case there are legal repercussions for OP in addition to having to pay the money back.

You'd get a criminal record for stealing because taking money off someone that they know you are giving you for exchange of goods or services that you haven't given them IS stealing. If you bought an £100 item off me and I accidently sent you a £10 item, would you be ok with me not replacing or refunding the item because I did send you an item and it was only by accident that it was a cheaper item?! Even if I could prove beyond all doubt that I had only done it by accident, I don't think you'd be ok with me not sending the other item or refunding £90 or £100 if you didn't want the £10 item.

I was over paid once - I’d left my job but they paid me for an extra month. I kept the money. That was about 30 years ago and there’ve been no repercussions yet!

Also to add, I've worked with HR colleagues who have noticed the mistake but it highlights that they haven't done their job correctly so they keep their mouth shut and move on.

As an example we used a spreadsheet to compare last months net pay to this month's net pay, anything over £500 would be checked and see why there is a difference. This is what might catch you but if it does happen and they pull you up just tell them this has caused you a lot of stress and you thought you had money available for Xmas that you spent. You can payback at say £100 a month.

Another company would compare the payroll bill from one month to the next, one month 1.2m, next month 1.4m. They will think why is there a 200k increase, ah yes we did a lot of overtime, no problem, no investigating needed.

Morally you should tell them but not many people would blame you if your struggling at Xmas. And it's crazy how many people don't keep a check on their banks, they don't know from one month to the next what they have available in the bank so you can easily be one of those people.

Tell them, because paying it back now will be so much easier than spending it and having to pay them back later when they realise

OK seriously, I've processed MANY payroll errors and overpayments. Not once has the word theft or criminal record been mentioned. It's an error, they will fix it if and when they find out. There's no ringing the police, calm yourself down.

It's not yours to keep, tempting though it may be. Every time it pops into your head, you will feel bad about it. It's not worth it.

Because you have knowingly received money to which you are not entitled. It does not matter that they have made an error - once you have become aware you are legally obliged to notify them., if you do not do so, the act of NOT telling them is where you become guilty of fraud.

Just email them and apprise them of the error and CC your manager when doing so.