Working in restaurant, bring own float?

pelirocco

agrinnall wrote: »

You must have a very small company if you can afford to spend time immediately processing staff expenses. Any organisation with more than a few employees will have a defined procedure, and I would normally expect that to involve a cut-off date each month by which time expense claims have to be submitted, and a later date when payment is made. A wait of up to 6 weeks to get expenses back would be quite usual.

Of course, if there are large or consistent expenses to be met then it might be sensible to issue employees incurring those expenses with a company credit card so that neither the company nor the employee is paying anything until the statement arrives.

31 employees so not especially small.

I would expect larger companies to provide company credit cards for those employees who constantly have large expenses .

A friend of mine was expected to provide his own credit card to book and pay for hotels and fuel ( salesman , out on the road for most of the week ) and then hope he was paid before credit card bill arrived , on the whole this didnt happen, and the company went bust owing him nearly £2k , of course he lost this

I think its very wrong for an employee to be expected to fund these expenses

saintjammyswine

pelirocco wrote: »

I think its very wrong for an employee to be expected to fund these expenses

But very, very normal in many different sectors & industries.


Having worked in public & private across construction, education & manufacturing I can asssure you that it is entirely common for people to have to pay for everyday expenses and reclaim monthly. Exceptions were in one job I had a co. credit card but not all parking meters took cards then and one company had a department that booked all accommodation centrally so we didnt have to.


Everything else was my expense and claimed through my wages monthly. Sometimes petty cash is available to cover, for example, a taxi fare but not the norm.

paddyrg

BTW I do think this is a really very stupid action by the restaurant - they are making it trivially easy for you to screw them just by not putting the orders through the till and there is no way to check. It's not like they can count your till/apron to tally against tickets if there is an undefined amount of your own money in there.

hartcjhart

paddyrg wrote: »

BTW I do think this is a really very stupid action by the restaurant - they are making it trivially easy for you to screw them just by not putting the orders through the till and there is no way to check. It's not like they can count your till/apron to tally against tickets if there is an undefined amount of your own money in there.

it is very canny of the place,as has been said about shortfalls, you cannot dodge around the 'orders' as they will have a copy and that is what you will pay them from your 'float', a very common practice abroad

adouglasmhor

hartcjhart wrote: »

it is very canny of the place,as has been said about shortfalls, you cannot dodge around the 'orders' as they will have a copy and that is what you will pay them from your 'float', a very common practice abroad

Yes but that is abroad (though one bar in Glasgow did this), I used to work in a biercafe in Germany, where waiting staff rented tables and got a kickback for all sales, of course Germans are good tippers too so it was worth it. It did help that I subsidised my table rent with "gifts" of duty free malt whiskys to the owner

custardy

hartcjhart wrote: »

it is very canny of the place,as has been said about shortfalls, you cannot dodge around the 'orders' as they will have a copy and that is what you will pay them from your 'float', a very common practice abroad

having a copy would very much depend on the systems in place

ohreally

CKhalvashi wrote: »

My staff end up paying for fuel and parking, then get reimbursed at the end of the month, and there's something similar on many peoples contracts, in a variety of industries.

Why do you feel it necessary to burden your staff especially when in the past you've hinted the business is profitable.


http://www.fuelgenie.co.uk/info/homepage.aspx

SarEl

I think we are getting off topic somewhat, but I do not think that a formal expenses claim system is burdening staff. We also pay expenses monthly, and to be honest, apart from very small exployers I don't know many who don't. If anyone genuinely found this a burden, say for a first month in work, we would provide a "float" on request to help them get into the swing of it. But paying out expenses daily, as and when, or even weekly, would create an administrative burden we simply couldn't manage. All of those expenses have to go through our systems, be chacked, and are paid within payroll (as some are also taxable). It would be a nightmare doing it in an ad hoc fashion for us.

phill99

In terms of the 'off topic', most companies (including the public sector) have a formalised process for repaying expenses, many of them fortnightly or monthly.

In terms of the OP, the float system is not uncommon in the restaurant trade (TGIs used to, not sure if they still do). It's just one of those things that some companies prefer and many employees accept. .

nickcc

Many major bus companies insist that drivers use their own money for the float and also deduct from the drivers wages any shortages in revenue.