I Falsified an expenses claim, so now what

[feelprettyawful]

sorry long explanation, but decision is whether to come clean or not...

Normal practice at my work is we pay in advance out of pocket for travel expenses & claim back later. This worked fine until sudden trip cancellations due to covid.

I tried to get refunds for everything covid-cancelled but then to keep the repayment claim applications simple, on one item I claimed full price rather than the 3 different partial refund claims I could have done for same value. Difference from auditors' viewpoint is about £40 out of Account A that I was actually refunded for and should have claimed out of Account B. I don't know if I still have all the original tickets etc. but I may have images of them. And emails showing partial refunds, etc.

Auditor is asking for proof I tried to get refunds on everything. I either come clean about the falsification using my partial/failed real claims to refund.. or ... try to keep up the lies. I am half tempted to come clean & if I lose my job and career that might have its own merits, anyway, although it would upset a lot of people and put me in poverty, I suppose.

It matters to me that I have worked about 300 hours unpaid this year. All the time I spend trying talking to auditor is also unpaid hours. I understand that The auditor won't give a shit about my unpaid hours and neither do I suppose will most MNers. I am net out of pocket still, technically, just £4 or so.

Irk. How fucked am I?

Another voting for act thick...if you have a paper trail and were not tea leafing surely you wont lose your job for a difference of 4quid

I would lie.
They will be junior auditors doing a spot check.

I'd fudge the emails from vendors (fwd the emails but edit the content)
there are never going to follow up directly.

For his sake woman plead ignorance act dumb don’t admit this!!!!

so in my professional no one would bat an eyelid at the original mistake but you would be struck off for this:

"I'd fudge the emails from vendors (fwd the emails but edit the content)
there are never going to follow up directly"

don't do it.

Please do not fudge e-mails.

It is very, very easy to get caught out this way.

Don’t lie. It will come back to bite you. It’s wrong.
Speak to your manager. Say you’ve messed up and explain. Offer to make up the difference. It will be fine unless your organisation is pretty short sighted. Most aren’t. Most would remind you of policy and ask you were more careful in the future.

@Justiceisblind

so in my professional no one would bat an eyelid at the original mistake but you would be struck off for this:

"I'd fudge the emails from vendors (fwd the emails but edit the content)
there are never going to follow up directly"

don't do it.

100% agree with this. I've done lots of forensic accounting investigations into expenses fraud and I wouldn't care about your claim at all but editing emails to try and cover your tracks would be a massive red flag.

imagine you tell the truth and get fired because they overreact. will you ever work again? sure.

imagine you edit the emails but get caught. now you really won't work again and you will have become what you felt like (dishonest)

Come clean and play dumb because they will find out

I don't think you have to 'act thick'.

I think you need to say what you have here, that you had to act quickly, didn't realise that monies were coming out of the wrong account, and have been too snowed under since then to think about it again until asked to.

As long of you offer to rectify your error if there is one, then I can't see the problem.

But agree that altering emails etc is definitely not the way to go.

I’m an auditor and I can tell you there is no way I would care about £40. Are they the external year end auditors or what? Or internal auditors?
I would come clean personally, it sounds confusing to be honest and your work might let £40 slide

You won't get fired if you tell the truth and explain it was a genuine mistake that you've only just realised thanks to the audit.

You may well get fired if you try to lie your way out of this. The size of the expense amount won't matter but the lie will.

TELL THE TRUTH.

I write this as an ex-auditor in Financial Services (and consultant who books expenses to clients on a regular basis).

say you submitted the expense in a simplified way.

That is precisely true, so I appreciate that perspective a lot.

At the time I submitted I also didn't have full refunds, didn't know what refunds I was going to get, I was trying to just get back to even before the window for making claims closed -- oh, and my contract finished.

Thanks for the advice. My guess is that it will take ~2-6 hours to assemble all the documents. After that they will still keep asking questions. Auditor doesn't care about Account B but I can't explain the overcharge to Account A without explaining the charges made to Account B and the efforts made to get refunds for every single purchase... It's complicated.

Luckily we have a boring Christmas coming up.

Don’t fudge emails. Don’t lie or act thick - you’re clearly in a position of trust and professionalism, with which acting thick would be at odds. Don’t mention your extra hours - not relevant and makes you look shady (as written way more eloquently above). Don’t say you did it incorrectly deliberately for brevity/simplicity. These are bad suggestions that’ll make things worse.

Do do as another poster suggested, hand them your evidence as requested with an ‘oops, on review, £40 has been allocated incorrectly and I haven’t reclaimed £4’.

I accidentally double claimed an expense once which was picked up on audit. I apologised, said I was confused.

I'd be more worried about your 300 hours unpaid. Just stop! And do your expenses and talking to auditors in their time not yours!
Up to six hours to chase £40 ... fuck em.

I wouldn't act thick either but I would act slightly harassed and have it dawn on you what's happened here ...

Mention first that you are out of pocket by £4. Say you've gone over it again for the past few hours and you think you can spot what has happened. You've claimed against A as opposed to B which leads to a deficit for you and could they arrange payment of this

So something along those lines

Remember the old saying 'Never apologise, Never explain.' You clearly need to explain - fully yet also with a light touch and don't apologise

I agree that especially that this is really not that big of a deal. Recast it in your mind and reply honestly but not overly grovellingly. Something like

“After looking back at my records I seem to have made an error here. Note x around from account A and x from account B. This means I under claimed by £4 but clearly there was inaccuracy in which account it was claimed from in the speed and complexity of sorting out the partial refunds. Hope that clears this up for you. Merry Christmas”

This is a paperwork mistake, not a lie. Seriously, you made a small mistake on a form. It got caught at audit. It’s not a big deal.

Don’t lie.

Sit down and write everything down that you’ve done and get receipts and emails for everything - even if you need to co act the provider to ask for a copy.

This will show that you were just bundled it together for ease, rather than falsification. I don’t actually think it’s falsification either - you were lazy in doing your expenses. Falsification implies you’ve claimed for something you shouldn’t have done - it’s not on you that these are cross charged from different account. You just need to go out of you way to ensure that what you have claimed reconciles.

Doubt you’d lose your job, but wouldn’t be surprised if a disciplinary resulted in a written warning and further training. If you lie you’re more likely to lose your job if they find out - you would have undermined trust and confidence, more so gross misconduct than misconduct.

Umm, I'm not sure that I'd be spending hours of my own time assembling documents to prove a complicated situation which amounts to the material sum of £40 discrepancy tbh.

I would be escalating this up to my line manager for her/his guidance. If you make it a hassle for your manager, it may magically be sorted out.

@ruthieness

My advice is not EVER to mention the "unpaid hours". if you do then it may be suspected that you decided to "arrange" your own payment by falsifying expenses and it will get the investigation off on the wrong foot.

Totally agree with that. As an employer, I would take you mentioning the unpaid hours as an admission of guilt that you had deliberately fiddled the expenses.

Just say that you had made a note of the total expense and that you accidentally entered the total in your claim form, instead of the three separate components. Which, other than the fact that it wasn't accidental, is all you have actually done.

I pick this kind of thing up at work and let me tell you now that it is so easy to spot the people who lie.

My advice is to say having looked at the information again you think you might have made a careless error and would be more than happy to repay any monies that you have claimed in error if this is found to be the case.

I would do exactly what @Moneuxly says:

Act thick and ask them to explain the problem.

Then "understand" and offer to rectify with their help.

I would do a quick excel spreadsheet detailing the covid refund complexities (showing each transaction) and make sure your loss is also highlighted.

Don't lie - they could easily outwit you and choose to keep digging.

Remember they're human and this type of thing happens all the time - it's purely a little error/misunderstanding.

How about a baffled 'I have no recollection at all of filling in that form. I must have, obviously, but frankly I've been so exhausted by all the overtime that I have no memory of it.'

If you were trying to commit embezzlement you would have gone for more than £40. It's a mistake-sized sum.