Help with holiday pay

muffinmannen

Hoping someone may be able to help with this as not sure where to go for advice.
I've been working part time for the past 3 years whilst studying and I've just handed in my resignation.
I got a call today to say that over the past 3 years I've somehow used up 80 hours holiday that I was not entitled to, this is because when requesting holiday I've asked for '1 day', this is viewed by a manager and authorised but instead of it being taken as 1 whole day / 8 hours, it was marked as 1 hour.
I've yet to see the evidence of this as HR are getting the details together but in a nut shell they are saying I owe about £1000 or so which will soak up my final wage slip and have a fair chunk remaining.
My argument is that it should've firstly been picked up by the system and secondly the manager should've been aware of it but not sure what my position is.

Any advice welcome and appreciated.
Thanks.

Aquamania

muffinmannen wrote: »

Hoping someone may be able to help with this as not sure where to go for advice.
I've been working part time for the past 3 years whilst studying and I've just handed in my resignation.
I got a call today to say that over the past 3 years I've somehow used up 80 hours holiday that I was not entitled to, this is because when requesting holiday I've asked for '1 day', this is viewed by a manager and authorised but instead of it being taken as 1 whole day / 8 hours, it was marked as 1 hour.
I've yet to see the evidence of this as HR are getting the details together but in a nut shell they are saying I owe about £1000 or so which will soak up my final wage slip and have a fair chunk remaining.
My argument is that it should've firstly been picked up by the system and secondly the manager should've been aware of it but not sure what my position is.

Any advice welcome and appreciated.
Thanks.

Your position is that you currently owe the employer about £1000. Fortunately it seems you are owed in excess of this in pay due, so the £1000 will be duducted from the amount otherwise owed to you.

I'm sure the employer will give you every assistance necessary to show you why they feel you owe the £1000 in salary paid to you, but to which you were not entitled since you didn't work those hours.

The employer probably has hundreds if not thousands of paylsips to issue. You receive just 1. My argument to you is surely you should have picked up that you had been paid for 7 hours you didn't work for each holiday taken.

bazzyb

Surely you know what your leave allowance is and how much you have taken? If it was just an odd day or two then I could understand but to have taken an extra two weeks' holiday - surely you must have known that!

getmore4less

Go through your records of hours worked holiday taken and check.

how much were you paid for your holidays how many did you take.

depending on your normal hours, 80hours extra would have been obvious, even for a full timer it is nearly an extra weeks holiday every year..

muffinmannen

Aquamania wrote: »

Your position is that you currently owe the employer about £1000. Fortunately it seems you are owed in excess of this in pay due, so the £1000 will be duducted from the amount otherwise owed to you.

I'm sure the employer will give you every assistance necessary to show you why they feel you owe the £1000 in salary paid to you, but to which you were not entitled since you didn't work those hours.

The employer probably has hundreds if not thousands of paylsips to issue. You receive just 1. My argument to you is surely you should have picked up that you had been paid for 7 hours you didn't work for each holiday taken.

Maybe I didn't explain properly. I would get a set amount each month, if I take holiday the payment doesn't change so I never thought to check for 'additional' hours etc. When combined with the constant use of flex time it made it difficult track so I referred to the system that is updated, an internal system that logs holidays, sickness, etc etc.

If I wanted holiday, I'd refer to this system, it would say you have x amount of days / hours available, I'd put in the request and then it was okayed, more often than not I would buy buy this day or hour with flex time the following week. So I might take a half day holiday on a Fri for example but then work an additional 4 hours the following week whereby I'd then get this half day back, the reason for that mess is that it's far easier to carry holiday entitlement over form one period to another than it is flexitime and also easier to request in bulk.

At this point I don't know if those flex hours of mine were credited or not, 80 hours is a ridiculous amount especially over 3 years and for it not to have been noticed sooner makes me ask the question of why especially when it is reviewed every year.

Why was it not picked up on before being authorised? The process of booking holiday is not a simple one, it first goes via the internal system, is checked by a manager who cross references it with the entitlement and availability of staff and then okayed. Why wasn't it picked up on during hour 2 of these 80 instead of at the point when I resign.

If I owe the full amount then that's fair enough and won't be disputed but to take it all from the final wageslip and leave me screwed with paying rent and bills etc is a bit harsh, is there anything I can do with respect to that?

muffinmannen

bazzyb wrote: »

Surely you know what your leave allowance is and how much you have taken? If it was just an odd day or two then I could understand but to have taken an extra two weeks' holiday - surely you must have known that!

If I had known about it I wouldn't have asked the question that I posted. Thanks for your input.

muffinmannen

getmore4less wrote: »

Go through your records of hours worked holiday taken and check.

how much were you paid for your holidays how many did you take.

depending on your normal hours, 80hours extra would have been obvious, even for a full timer it is nearly an extra weeks holiday every year..

I'll go through records when I get back to work, the problem is as I mentioned above, I would often buy back the holiday with flex time so it'll be a complete minefield as to whether or not that got updated or not. The employer will have records of when I requested holiday and when I wasn't present but updating the leave allowance was dealt with va a manager. It's a complete mess.

getmore4less

muffinmannen wrote: »

I'll go through records when I get back to work, the problem is as I mentioned above, I would often buy back the holiday with flex time so it'll be a complete minefield as to whether or not that got updated or not. The employer will have records of when I requested holiday and when I wasn't present but updating the leave allowance was dealt with va a manager. It's a complete mess.

Why were you not checking it yourself as you went along.

It would have been obvious after the first days holiday if the manager was under recording by that much each time you would notice 7 extra hours.

NEVER trust a companies system for holidays and flexi TOIL.

FBaby

Was it approved when you took back holiday time with flexi time? Did tout always check you were not paid for the flexi time.

muffinmannen

getmore4less wrote: »

Why were you not checking it yourself as you went along.

It would have been obvious after the first days holiday if the manager was under recording by that much each time you would notice 7 extra hours.

NEVER trust a companies system for holidays and flexi TOIL.

It wasn't checked as I didn't think I needed to. In addition to this there was always some mess with holiday, my scheduled contract days were Thurs and Fri for example after the first semester this changed so I'd be working half Monday, half Tuesday and all of Wednesday, this was never updated on the system so when booking holiday for the Monday it would have to be logged as the Fri and so on.

muffinmannen

Seeing as we're getting off topic here could I ask that someone only replies if they've something constructive to add as opposed to 'surely you knew', it's pretty obvious by this point that I didn't know and if I did I wouldn't be posting on here. thanks.