Looking for help, is employer breaking the law?

Xbigman

There are multiple issues here.

If you use your personal bank account to transfer money to other employee's you will probably be in breach of your bank accounts terms and conditions as most prohibit business use. Don't do it.

If the issue is late time sheets then stop accepting them, If a time sheet comes in late then hold it over until the next pay period. It won't be long before they are in on time.

Correcting mistakes does not necessarily mean an instant payment. Mistakes of small amounts can be held over and corrected in the following pay period.



Darren

Beartricks

I'm confused here. Have they underpaid someone and overpaid you with the wages that that person should have received, or have they just underpaid that person and are expecting other employees to cover what they owe them?

In the first instance it would be kind of reasonable for them to ask you to transfer your money right over, but really they should take that money off you and give it to the other person. That remedies the fact that you were overpaid, and makes sure the money goes to the right person.

If they're expecting you to just pay the person out of your wages, when you're an employee also, then that sounds incredibly illegal to me. It isn't your problem that they haven't paid someone, it's theirs, and they should not be holding other employees responsible. It kind of sounds to me as if they're trying to placate one employee by inconveniencing another. It also sounds like they're trying to do it off the books so it could end up looking like a gift from you.

I was at a major national company who still did their timesheets on paper and it was a complete disaster. Every so often we'd earn a thousand pounds here and there for good work, which was supposed to go towards bonuses for staff, charity donations or staff events. Every time I suggested it should go towards some kind of automated clocking in system but instead it always went on cheap wine and crisps.

NeilCr

It "sounds" like the OP and their colleague have some responsibility for the correct calculation of pay. The trustees appear to be taking the view that if they get that wrong then it's down to them, personally, to make up the shortfall.

Can't get my head round that, to be honest. As others have indicated the staff are owed the money by the charity so they should just make the difference up as they have in the past (via cheque)

Not sure whether or not there is a back story here. Old or not (and as an old git I take offence at one or two comments) I can't understand why they take this view

OP. Have you actually asked them why they have made this change?

getmore4less

Make sure everyone is overpaid then there will be no need to do top ups.


Implement peer review process for the spreadsheet, it will take longer but reduce errors at that stage.

The simple solution to timesheet->pay errors is to fix the following pay cycle.
works ok for small errors but if these are massive then you need a later checks in the process to catch those.

Geoff1963

How do the underpaid employees know they have been underpaid ? Is there a cut-off date to the calculation, which is several days before the payment is arranged ?

Is it possible to send out a statement of pay, a few days beforehand ; allowing any mistakes to be highlighted and rectified in time ? Any mistakes identified too close to the payment date, would have to be rectified at the next pay period.

Perhaps the trustees can set up a business account for you, with a "float", so you can make any corrections as necessary.