Worried about a mistake at work

[Tillow4ever]

I discovered on Friday that I hade a mistake on a form at work that I completed a few months ago. I was trying to work out why one of our customer invoices for a promotion they ran for us was so much higher than the pot of money we had accrued to cover this (basically, for every unit of our product they sold at the promotional price, we agreed to pay them a certain amount of money - we forecast how many units we expected them to sell, multiplied it by the agreed amount, and accrued that money to pay the invoices against). When I did some digging, I realised that I had put the wrong pence per unit amount on the form - I had taken the amount in the wrong column on a spreadsheet because I forgot that, unlike our other promotions, this one has a permanent off invoice discount as well as the promotion funding - I put the off invoice discount in the box.

This has resulted in just under £130,000 more being invoiced than would have been if I had put the correct trigger on the form. The moment I realised what had happened, I reported it to the account manager, apologised profusely and explained what had happened, then offered to contact the customer and pretty much beg them to honour the usual trigger as it was clearly a mistake. The account manager has said to hold off til Monday, he is going to speak to the buyer as our relationship is good with the customer at the minute. I asked if I should let my line manager know, but he told me to wait until Monday and see what the customer says first. I pulled all of the sakes and invoice data on Friday so we could calculate the amount exactly, and I’ve sent this plus copy invoices etc to the account manager.

I have spent the whole weekend thinking about this, feeling sick and terrified I’m going to lose my job, I have worked here for 22 years, I’ve been in my current role for 13 years and am seen as an expert in what I do - but ultimately I’m very low in the business and easily replaceable.

The business is a multi billion pound, global business. So whilst it’s a massive, massive sum of money, it’s practically chump change to them. I’ve saved the business more than this over the years through my record keeping as I’m able to challenge audit claims and prove we don’t owe money that otherwise would be difficult to prove and we’d have had to pay them. But memories are short, and what I saved them elsewhere isn’t going to help me here.

Does anyone know if they can sack me for this? It was a genuine mistake. I’ve owned up the moment I realised what happened (and I am fairly certain if I’d kept quiet no-one would have realised, but I couldn’t do that, I’m not a person who would hide the truth to save their own skin). I am hopeful we can get the customer to repay it. But I’m wondering if this is the sort of thing someone can be sacked for regardless of whether or not it is recovered? I’m spiralling.

Please be kind. This isn’t AIBU - I know I’ve fucked up. I don’t think anyone can be harsher on me than I already am. I’m posting for some empathy and a genuine view on whether people think it is a sackable offence or not. Thank you.

thats not how AI works, you don’t just chuck something to it and expect an answer 🙂

firstly you’d put figures in , not identifiable info, secondly you’d do some calculations yourself (online portal) and you’d break down which parts need validating via AI

either way if you’re not used to using this or not up for exploring , not worth discussing , but this process could benefit from some type of assurance ; it’s not really about you getting older or peri menopausal, it’s about human error which is extremely common. Have a think of who/what can assure/ validate which piece to give you some piece of mind

don’t think holistically, break down and think each bit other wise you ll end up having a heart attack (imagine if it happens again )

Anything like this , is a massive opportunity for learning and improvement and just think how you ll come across today to your boss/client if you say “I own up to it but … I found a way to strengthen our processes , here is what I suggest we do …”

good luck for today x

That wouldn’t have stopped this error though. I copied the wrong column of a spreadsheet into an online form. I wasn’t doing the calcs etc. the format of the document had changed, and I simply copied the wrong column.

we can’t put anything into the Ai about our pricing and funding. That is strictly against our AI policy. Doing that WOULD get me fired.

The person who does all the calculations etc is the account manager.

Update.

My boss was very kind. He thanked me for my honest/integrity/openness and for speaking up so quickly. He told me not to worry, we’d find a solution and thanked me for starting on trying to find this with the account manager. He told me not to beat myself up, we all make mistakes etc. He said the key thing is the learnings we get from this. Then he told me that if he were to write down all the mistakes he’d made that cost the business money, he’d be writing all afternoon.

I’ve looked back through and can see it’s about a week after I started taking HRT, at the start of our final period of the year which is always extra busy, and I was asked to load 15 different promotional nomination forms all to be done that same day. There was one form for the same items but a much better/deeper deal which had higher triggers than usual - so when I then copied for the promotion I made the mistake on, because the trigger was lower than what I’d just done, it didn’t stand out as being wrong. So at least I’ve identified why and how - now to agree a process that doesn’t add in a ton of work for someone else but means this mistake is unlikely to happen to anyone in the future.

Glad it all worked out well for you! I remember the first time I accidentally billed (internally) an order before I should have - breaking Sarbanes Oxely, which we had to adhere to as the company has been very very naughty previously - and I was terrified I was going to get fired!

Wasn't the most fun though having to call the foreign arm of the company and asking them to create a $6million credit note...

Then I did it 5 more times in my 8 years there 😂

Thank you for sharing this. I hope to God I don’t this again. I’ve put off going for a promotion for years because I have very little self confidence, and being seen as an expert in what I do, knowing I’m good at my job, truly loving my job too…. But I really have been thinking about wanting to take the next step in my career before it’s too late, I hope this mistake isn’t going to get in my head and drop me back down to my previous state of being too scared to put myself out there. That’s probably another post though.

I would really like to thank everyone that took time out of the evening last night and day today to help me to feel better, reassure me etc. You didn’t have to do that, but you did and you genuinely made me feel better going into work today. Thank you all.

Sorry just seen update

No worries! Thank you for thinking of me and asking!

He hasn’t given any indication re what he’s planning to do

there isn’t many options

Update client. Apologise profusely. Reimburse . I can’t understand why he’s sitting on this

Glad to hear how this panned out for you, OP. I was crossing my fingers for you.

Glad to hear how this panned out for you, OP. I was crossing my fingers for you.

sorry perhaps I didn’t articulate properly … you don’t need to use AI to assure what you’re doing

this was just an example

the point is there might be opportunities for process improvement (not just one person who does and submits ) which seems your boss picked up on - he seems nice you’re super lucky

well done ! Enjoy stress free evening x

It’s all with the account manager to try to ask our customer to repay it based on our JBP agreement. They seem pretty confident that they will. If it’s the other way around, ie they undercharge us on these triggers due to a mistake at their end, we always repay it - it’s mutually beneficial it would seem.

My boss told me multiple times not to worry, these things happen. I have no reason to distrust him on this. For now I’ve said I will think of ways we can reduce the risk in the future.

Gotcha! We are definitely embracing AI where possible. I myself joined the Responsible AI community for early access and am keen to learn ways it can help in our work. We’ve just launched a new AI for the business with Gemini as well which has considerably more capability than the first AI we had. I would love there to be a way for it to be a second set of eyes for me - maybe that will come one day!

You’re great you got it ! (I’m a consultant and sorting out processes is part of what I do 🤣)

there is always little steps you can do to make your life better and cover your back. And if you can introduce them yourself ..even better for you 😉

well done Op x

Solidarity.

I once made a minor admin error on a form resulting in a seven figure overpayment in my current role.

Similar to you, once identified, I owned the issue, self reported, tried to fix it as quickly as possible and worked to implement process improvements to mitigate against similar issues in future.

I expected disciplinary/to lose my job but everyone was very kind, we (eventually) sorted it & moved on. We're all only human.

You must have felt awful! I know I did/do. But I guess it’s that feeling that makes us want to find a way of avoiding this happening again - and our bosses can probably see we were punishing ourselves far more than they could. Still not something I ever want to happen again. I suppose that’s always a danger if you’re in a role where there’s a lot of finance admin.

I am probably not going to remember to check this thread again, unless someone tags me directly for any reason. I hope that it helps someone else in the future if they’re searching after a similar thing happens to them.

So who checked the calculations on the form and approved it? I assume a large company like this has procedures and controls to pick up simple errors like this on important documents that have financial effects? Everyone makes honest mistakes and it is the responsibility of management to implement processes and controls to pick them up before they cause financial loss. They sign a representation letter every year when their audited accounts are signed off to confirm they have done so, that’s a standard part of the audit process. So don’t be so quick to take this all on your own head.

An example from my own experience. I prepared a VAT return for my organisation which included an unusually large input tax reclaim due to an unusual transaction. Unknown to me our tax department had made a last minute adjustment to the last return to claim that same tax, but hadn’t told me. So I over claimed several million pounds due to the double counting. HMRC immediately queried the return and we had to declare the mistake. No one got sacked or disciplined, we all just dealt with the matter and reviewed and improved controls to prevent it happening again. I would say a similar process would be appropriate in this case.