Overpayment- employer wants gross pay back

GwylimT

You wont be short this month, you will have the entire over payment from last month, instead of the over payment and usual wage. If you have managed to spend £1500 without noticing, you have far bigger financial problems.

Kynthia

If the overpayment had been over a long period of time, especially if it hadn't been obvious you were over payed, then repayment in installments is entirely reasonable. A lump sum only last month should still be in your bank account as you knew it wasn't yours and shouldn't have spent it so it's entirely reasonable to take it back this month.

If you are poor at managing your money then plead with them to take it back in 2 installments. Say Christmas and some unexpected bills have made things difficult.

CarlHerts

FBaby wrote: »

Why would you have spent the money that you knew you were not supposed to have? Surely that is you fault as the principle is that you should have kept the money to last until the end of the following month?

I haven't spent it. The point is I will have less disposable income due to the loan/pension contributions being increased involuntarily

CarlHerts

Thank you for those who didn't make presumptions and left helpful responses.

I haven't spent a penny of it. The point is, I will have less disposable income over Christmas and will likely not be able to book the flights I wanted as a result. Yes, I haven't lost out per se as an increased contribution to my loan and pension fund isn't inherently negative, but the point is it is ME who should decide if I want to increase my contributions, not my employer (unless, of course, they give me a pay rise). I prefer to make extra payments to my mortgage rather than my student loan- that's my choice.

Ultimately I will lose out on money in my pocket as a result of paying back the gross overpayment rather than the net. It's not as bad as I first thought but the least I deserve is an explanation.

FBaby

You've already been told that your pension contributions will be less as a result of the reduced income and most likely the same will apply to your loan so you should end up with exactly the same disposable income.

It sounds like you'd hope to be able to use the extra payment to pay your flight and then being able to repay your company in installment, ie. getting a 0% interest free loan. You are wrong to believe it was for you to decide to do it that way.

ohreally

CarlHerts wrote: »

The point is I will have less disposable income due to the loan/pension contributions being increased involuntarily

Enquire how they will facilitate the return of this to you, in addition the increase of NI contributions while they're at it!

CarlHerts

FBaby wrote: »

You've already been told that your pension contributions will be less as a result of the reduced income and most likely the same will apply to your loan so you should end up with exactly the same disposable income.

It sounds like you'd hope to be able to use the extra payment to pay your flight and then being able to repay your company in installment, ie. getting a 0% interest free loan. You are wrong to believe it was for you to decide to do it that way.

The extra NET earnings (£1050ish) has been put away and won't be touched. I have been planning to purchase a flight for the last few months based on my normal, steady income- I am not used to receiving wildly varying amounts each month. The prospect of getting an interest free loan from my employer hasn't even occurred to me. Yes, quite likely my pension contribution will equal out next month as it is paid at a fixed percentage of monthly income, but as far as I know student loan repayments are paid according to an income band; therefore if that is the case I may well still lose out by a few hundred.

I don't know if my net salary this month and next month will equal out to two normal months' salary. Hopefully you are right and it will. But I'm not going to make any large expenditures until I know for a fact that is the case. As far as I'm concerned, it's for HR to explain that to me. The overpayment is after all their fault, not mine, and I notified them of it. The least I expect is a phone call or an email- so far I've had nothing- even the initial email informing I'd have the gross taken out of next month's salary was found by chance- it wasn't actually sent to me. Everything I've read suggests that a reasonable employer would usually contact an employee and at least check that they won't be unduly inconvenienced by the repayment schedule.

Even if I don't end up a penny out of pocket, I think I have the right to be annoyed/upset by their response. Especially as I've recently worked a lot of (unpaid!) overtime for them. An apology at least would go a long way. When I first found out about this, I thought I was going to lose out financially. Now it appears that's not the case. It's a shame I had to find this out from the internet rather than my colleagues in HR.

chrisbur

Your employer should produce a payment to you next time which when combined with the one you have just had will be exactly the same as if the correct payments had been made on both occasions. For example if your net pay for each month should have been £1000 then the net pay for the two months added together should equal £2000.
Trouble is that from the details you have given this may not happen as it will probably require some degree of manual intervention and they may just rely on the computer doing it all. I would recommend putting the full figures on here when you have the two payslips so that they can be checked if you are in way doubtful that the two combined do not exactly equal what would have appeared on the two payslips had they been correct.

Regarding an explanation you certainly should have been given one; payroll should have shown you what your payslips should have been for this month and next month and what they will be like to show the error and how it is being corrected so that you could see that the two versions (ie what should have been and what is actually happening) produce the same figures for everything, tax, NI, pension, student loan and net pay. Unfortunately it is often the case these days that payroll staff rely on the computer to do all the calculations and do not know how to work them out themselves.

General_Grant

CarlHerts wrote: »

I don't know if my net salary this month and next month will equal out to two normal months' salary. Hopefully you are right and it will. But I'm not going to make any large expenditures until I know for a fact that is the case. As far as I'm concerned, it's for HR to explain that to me. The overpayment is after all their fault, not mine, and I notified them of it. The least I expect is a phone call or an email- so far I've had nothing- even the initial email informing I'd have the gross taken out of next month's salary was found by chance- it wasn't actually sent to me. Everything I've read suggests that a reasonable employer would usually contact an employee and at least check that they won't be unduly inconvenienced by the repayment schedule.

If you yourself notified HR of the error then there may be a misunderstanding on their part. They knew you were aware of the over-payment and thought you would expect them to make the correction the next time you were paid. Therefore they omitted to confirm this to you.

"By chance"? Does that mean you were reading some other person's emails? If so, presumably you are in a role which entitles you to do so.

daisy23169

If you post the figures off your payslip (the one which includes the overpayment), and what your normal gross pay should be for December (ie. not taking into account the deduction for the overpayment) then I should be able to tell you whether you'll be any worse off or if it will balance out, rather than having to wait til payday.

Apparently I love payroll so much that spending all week doing this stuff just isn't enough for me and I've resorted to spending Fri night at it too.. Jeez