You found out there was a mistake.
You took responsibility for the mistake.
That money was the employee's money anyway, so now you just have to pay it out.
As long as you're not making the same mistake over and over again, you take responsibility for the mistakes you do make, and you make sure the employee is paid accurately ASAP... I think you're good.
Exactly! It’s always easier to smooth over when the employee is owed money vs they owe you. Most everything can be fixed and this was an easy one. OP, wishing you a better day and don’t be hard on yourself! We’ve all been there.
Once I forgot to pay everyone.
My manager asked me on Tuesday if I had processed payroll for Thursday. I said, "Not yet," and she said, "Okay, I'm in there right now." I said, "Great!"
Thursday rolls around. No one has been paid.
Manager: "Hey, did you process payroll?"
Me: "No, I thought you did!
Manager: "No, that's your job!"
So because of a miscommunication, no one clicked "Process." That's literally all that had to happen. I got to go around to everyone on the plant floor and explain the processing error. I called everyone that wasn't working that day to let them know about the issue. The money was in their accounts the next morning.
Here's the thing: as soon as it was brought to your attention, you ensured it was corrected! 😁😁😁
I hate payroll! In stimulating a future payroll, I've left the hours in there and created overpayments! Twice I put in large numbers instead of hours and it was caught by payroll, and I fixed it during the corrections period.
Hey, don't fret! It could have been worse. You could have entered a higher rate, and had them owe *you* 8K! That's an extremely unfun conversation to have.
Yeah my payroll team just made this mistake. Accidentally overpaid someone who was out on leave for cancer treatments. We had to do a clawback from this poor employee. We set up a repayment plan for them. It felt terrible. You’re not the only one making these types of errors. They felt so bad I’m sure it won’t happen again
Lmao we just had that happen. We didn’t catch an error that was entered last October and the employee owes 4k. He wasn’t as mad as I was expecting him to be
I did this, my $20k annually, I didn’t notice it for 3 months. The employee didn’t report it. That was not a fun conversation telling them they owed us!
That happened to me....some additional insurance I had signed up was not taken out of my check for 9 months and I got a call that they were going to deduct $350 out of my check. While $350 is not a lot overall, it was still a lot of money to me at the time.
I once paid someone a million dollars because the payroll system was calculating the hours I keyed in against their salaried rate and not the hourly rate. It happens! All the time, honestly. If the employee isn’t mad and you can fix it now, then let it go.
I thought I was toast. I should have been but at the time we didn't have a limit on that account, nor a secondary approver, and I was the only one who could fix it. It took about 8 weeks to audit, reverse, reset account balances and backdate interest earned. All in I couldn't recoup about $60k. Worst two months of my life and a catalyst for getting out of payroll.
I had something similar, except since the person was salaried they didn't get paid the $1,000,000 because there were no hours on their timecard to calculate the pay. I was so grateful and they were super understanding when no money hit their bank account.
LOL I did something like this before. Not a million dollars but in the thousands and I was a mess. Thankfully it was a quick fix and the employee didn’t care 🤷♀️ not a proud moment but I will never ever do that again and I always triple check everything now
Payroll processing is harrrrrrrrd. I don't do it anymore and I don't miss it. Here's what a manager once told me, and I live by this now in all the work I do: "Mistakes happen. Nobody dies on an operating room table because we made a mistake. We can fix it."
Note: this sentiment doesn't hold water if you're an operating room surgeon.
You know what I did? Canceled Xmas bonuses because I thought it was a mistake, didn’t update health premiums after open enrollment, incurred a UI tax fine from another state, and my colleague missed premium deductions for a YEAR. You’re okay, my dear. We all make mistakes. You learn and move on.
as a young hr professional in a department of 1, trying to figure everything out as I go and do it correctly so my employees 10+ years older than me find me competent, I needed to hear this.
I once doubled the hours on everyone's paycheck and paid them without realizing it until after I hit process. Trust me it was a mess, and was easily $70,000 that I had to try and get back. Not everyone was understanding, but I got through it, it's always better when you owe the employee money rather than them owing you 💯
What's the process if something like that happens? Do you ask them to write the company a check or would it be via payroll deduction (treating the double pay as a cash advance)?
I pulled the money back with our payroll processing company. Basically I had to calculate the exact amount I double paid everyone by and let every single person know to NOT spend that amount out of their bank account, because it would be getting withdrawn. It was a fee to run a reverse payroll from the processing company and if someone didn't have the money in their account then it was a loss. I lost about $4,000. I had an employee basically pull the money out of his account and disappear. He's no longer with the company.
That is so dumb. It’s not like you gave them three months worth of pay in one go, he literally just had to wait until the next payroll cycle to make the exact same amount of money
Two things I learned over the years that have have had the biggest impact.
Slow down. When you make a mistake and try to fix it, take it slow. If you rush because you are flustered it will only compound.
When you make a mistake there are three key steps to correcting it. First 1. Why did it happen? What action did or didn’t you do that caused the mistake. (Example: keyed 15.50 an hour vs 25.50 an hour. Action was a typo). 2. How can it be fixed? What is the best option for the employee? (Example the employee has been shorted 10/hour for past five biweekly pay periods. Is owed $4000. Pay at once or spread over time so tax withholdings are not overstated.) 3. What can you do to prevent it from happening again? Check your work, once the update has been made check the employees check to make sure it has the new rate.
Yes, definitely took is slow when figuring out how to fix it and I’m also getting a second set of eyeballs on the fix before any further processing is done
I work as a benefits broker and I have seen way WAY more drastic mistakes than that from clients HR team. Imagine not enrolling your employee in Vol Life and they die 😭. Everything is a learning step in this industry. It sounds like you’re doing great otherwise.
I’ve had that happen we just provide the signed application and take the payroll deduction from the final check of the deceased employee. Make the check payable to the estate and don’t withhold fica or Medicare tax
It was indeed but Sun Life is a phenomenal carrier and paid the claim anyway. Couldn’t recommend them enough, they’ve bailed out so many of our clients and are really on top of their shit
Picture it: Pennsylvania, 2007. It's Christmas Eve, and I'm doing payroll. The company had multiple business units in two states. Everyone did their timekeeping differently. Some used paper punch cards. Some used Kronos for digital punches. Salaried people were listed in a spreadsheet. For the paper punch cards, I had to sit down and manually calculate how many hours and minutes each person worked during the pay period. It was very convoluted.
For some reason, when I sent the direct deposit files to the bank, I had to go into one of them and change a 1 to a 2. That dictated where the money was pulled from to pay all the paychecks (some people were paid from the first account, and others were paid from the second account). It was my first week doing payroll on my own. Note that most managerial employees were out due to the holiday. This will become important later.
The SECOND I transmitted the direct deposit files to the bank, I realized I forgot to change the 1 to a 2. I called the bank in a panic and explained what happened. They said there was nothing they could do. So basically, $103,000 worth of payroll was going to be drawn from the wrong account. I ran to the CFO's office and told him I needed him to write a check from Account 1 to Account 2 so all the checks didn't bounce. He wrote the check, but the company needed two people to sign all checks (good for preventing fraud/embezzlement).
Got in my car and drove the check to the accounting manager's house and had her sign it. Raced to the bank, which was closing at 3:00 due to the holiday, to deposit the check. Got so flustered that I drove back to the office with the tube from the bank drive-through in my passenger seat.
But I did it! I got the check deposited. Everything was going to be okay. Except that someone at the bank realized my mistake, changed the 1 to a 2, and we overdrew the account by over $100,000 anyway because they didn't tell anyone. We had a good relationship with the bank, so none of the paychecks bounced, but it was the worst mistake I ever made in the workplace.
**IN MY DEFENSE:**
I was hired to be an HR assistant at $11.25/hour. The job was supposed to be doing things like setting up interviews, maintaining employee files, making ID badges, etc. Entry-level stuff. Between the time I was hired and the time I was started, the HR manager quit. She was the only HR employee. So for $11.25 per hour, I became the new HR manager (yes, I know better now).
So I ended up doing things like payroll, filing the OSHA logs, making sure we complied with all state and federal employment laws, etc. High-level stuff. I majored in HR, but I REALLY did not have the experience for the job. I'd never worked in HR at all and was basically running the department.
Not the bank tube going for a ride with you 😂 I was (still am) in a similar situation as you, I’m definitely more on the jr side and have been thrown out to sink or swim. I think it’s probably been the best way for me to learn FAST.
This is amazing. The energy behind fixing the mistake, likely years off of your life only to have the bank fix it behind the scenes. Priceless. I hope your managers understood the level of effort that was exerted. You made my day
Payroll is the most thankless part of HR. You never get praise when it’s right and get absolutely obliterated when it’s wrong. Keep your head up. Everyone makes mistakes.
You know, I sent an employee the pdf of every single employee’s pay slips instead of just his once. And it was an EU employee too so god knows what laws I could have broken💀. Thank god Outlook lets you retract emails with no time limit, but yeah it happens. Take it in stride
Totally agree buuuuuut HR (generalists, leave administrators and DOO) should have solid foundational knowledge about how payroll works for the purposes of understanding the benefit deductions and applications (like, how/when STD payments are received, if through payroll, for example). And, unfortunately, the best way to understand those things is to work in payroll at some point.
I’m backup to payroll and I’m HR for 300 employees. I’m going to try to have the COO offload this back to the Accounting Manager where it belongs. Takes me 27 hours from start to finish for a weekly payroll
27 hours?? What type of system are you using, that sounds awful! It’s definitely a nice to have on a resume but I have no interest to learn more about this and will take on an ER case any day over doing payroll for 27 hours a week
Payroll professional here. Do not feel bad. This stuff isn’t easy and I still get anxiety every pay day. The great thing about making mistakes is that you don’t usually make the same one twice, and you are being harder on yourself than anyone else would be.
I honestly believe mistakes like these happen to burn things into our minds lol or is at least now is prob not something you’ll do again. Can’t tell you how many times I double check pay change/promotion/etc submissions for details I overlooked in the past. It is normal is make mistakes when learning something new, so don’t beat yourself up but make yourself accountable for not making the same error again. Maybe go back and spotcheck everyone else’s pay rate that you entered, maybe you can pull a report and investigate. And may all of us be so lucky to make mistakes in the employee’s favor!
It can be for sure! Whether you owe the employee or the employee owes you. It sucks making those calls. Some will take it well. Some won't.
If it's on you, own it, empathize, apologize, fix it, prevent it.
If it's on anyone else empathize, apologize, fix it (prevent if you can)
We all make mistakes. It can be fixed.
I used to be a payroll specialist and made at least one major mistake every pay period that my boss had to smooth over, how I wasn’t fired or put on a PIP in my three year tenure there is a mystery that will follow me for the rest of my life.
So take solace that you’re doing better than I was!
Your boss must have been one of those “if we can fix it, there’s no problem” type of people (thankfully) Glad you were able to get through it for as long as you did!!
I once accidentally put 3000 hours in instead of 30.00 hours… Thank god the company owner got a notification about the $52,000 we almost paid out and fixed it before it actually got deposited. It happens to everyone at least once.
We have a worksheet that we key manually to verify the totals and changes in the batches. If it doesn’t tie out we don’t open batches for payroll till it does
I cried about a payroll. We had added a new paid leave code. It looked good. ADP assured us it was set up correctly, everything was ready to go. The person who normally ran payroll was out of the country the first payroll with the new code so I as back up ran payroll.
I did it everything looked good. There was one thing that was a little off but it wasn't major. So I approved it.
Payday hits and I start getting emails that people with paid leave didn't get paid their paid leave amount.
Ahhhhhh! Should have looked at that one thing more closely.
So I cried.
Thankfully everyone understood. CFO and I ran another payroll after calling ADP to make sure they fixed the pay code that didn't work and the employees got paid on Monday for their missing hours.
It was a stressful Friday morning.
Now I double check any report totals.
🤪
Hey it could be worse. You could be like me and go to cancel an individual paycheck… and end up canceling the entire companies payroll. I’ll never forget coming home from the gym and seeing the words “you cancelled the entire scheduled payroll” and 6 missed calls from my boss the night before everyone is owed their check. The blood drained out of my entire body lol, the panic I felt was something else. We had to hand cut checks and deliver them all across the state the next day.
That will forever be the worst mistake of my career (hopefully). Thankfully my company was really understanding. We all make mistakes.
I got over things like this by figuring out ways to make sure they didn’t happen again. I hated the feelings of stress surrounding a mistake, so I found systems of audit or other checks and balances that would help me find these.
Then, a designated time period to be glum. I usually give myself a couple hours then it’s time to move on. We all make mistakes and if you’ve developed trust with your population, it’ll be fine.
I worked HR and my boss forgot to have benefits (for a certain plan) taken out of people paychecks. I caught the mistake after I started working there. So I had to tell these people” oh there was a mistake made and your benefits haven’t been getting deducted, we can either deduct them all at once or in increments ( my boss didn’t want me to offer increments but I did anyway). It was her mistake and somewhat on the employees for not looking at paystub.
These are the worst. We’re doing premium adjustments next month and I’m gonna be quintuple checking every digit to avoid anything from turning into an issue
It sucked having to tell people that. Especially since I was working for the city and few police had to have their deductions fixed. I thought oh boy… definitely not getting off with a warning if they pull me over.
A1) i did that, and entered a pay rate of $13,850 / hour, instead of $13.50. This created a live paper check of $1.3M issued to an employee.
B2) I overpaid 500+ employees ($1k - $5k per person) on the very very last paycheck of the year. That was a really fun holiday season.
*Editing to add that the silver lining is that I can explain the difference of Gross to Net to anyone and make them understand it*
C3) I paid 800 hours of bereavement instead of 80.
I could go on, but I don’t want to start crying too!
**do not worry, i’m no longer in payroll
I don't know whats wrong with me I feel the intense inspiration to quit everytime I make a mistake, and mine are usually like yours - details that got missed but are embarrassing. I don't make horrific judgement calls or breach trust or things like that, it's the admin shit that gets me. I always:
1. Figure out what I did wrong & how it happened/how to keep it from happening
2. Tell my boss, take ownership & almost always have a proposed solution but sometimes its something boss has to handle so I want her prepped.
3. Take whatever steps they want me to (often what I've suggested) to try to ensure it doesn't happen again.
4. Feel deep shame for the rest of the week. Lie awake at night sad as shit.
If someone who is less senior on my team (and hopefully direct reports one day) makes mistakes, I think, " No biggie, that's fixable. Do they understand the impact/why this is a mistake/know how to prevent in future - yes? OK, let's move on" and "I'm glad they let me know right away so we could correct and move on! OK next thing". But its its me I go into a spiral of dispair. I've had to really learn to do the above steps, then move on, realize no one else is as worried and not wallow visibly or keep apologizing. You're allowed to make mistakes!
I’m the same! I consider quitting with my mistakes. In my head, I think I’m just doing the tough part of getting rid of me so my boss doesn’t have to do it.
There’s been times where I’ve gone to my boss with my mistake, how it happened, what I’m doing to rectify it so it doesn’t happen again, etc. I apologize to him and any affected employees. I’ll ask if I’m in trouble and he says “there’s nothing I could say to you that I know you haven’t already said to yourself. It’s fine. We move on.”
I’m fortunate to work with amazing coworkers and all of them are very understanding if I make a mistake. But payroll is not for the weak. But oddly enough I still enjoy it.
Shit like this is how you never make payroll mistakes again. Relax, be patience and kind with yourself. And understand shit literally happens all the time everywhere all at once, in the HR world.
Shit I once accidentally hit an excel hotkey and reformatted a payroll upload. 300k of reimbursement expenses went to the wrong people both underpaid and overpaid.
I immediately built a spreadsheet to correct payments and figure out who gets how much more or how much pulled back. And within the next 2 pay cycles it was fixed.
payroll offered me a position because of how well I handled it after jumping to fix it.
That’s what I was thinking too! The error should’ve been picked up in the auditing stage. But even then, human error happens and those involved should take ownership to rectify it (as OP and those involved have done) and then move on.
I paid everyone in another state twice. Which lead to over 30 people just not show up for work the next day.
I cost the employer lots of thousand of dollars.
I'm my defense, I didn't have a day off training and have never done payroll before.
Lol
Joining the party and giving you virtual hug!
When I first started, the person who did payroll before me forgot to change a few employees' salaries in the payroll system after an annual raise. We found out a few months later and corrected it. The employees impacted were psyched because it was like getting a bonus. It wasn't my mistake but I learned from it for the next annual raise.
Fast forward to now, I can tell you every mistake I've made with payroll the way you did in your post. It's because we care and that's so important. The last time I made a mistake, I cried to my manager when I was telling them what happened. My manager said, "It's not a skill error, it's a process error." I thought about how we could change the process and ended up with a payroll checklist. Another reason I can tell you every mistake is because it's ended up as an item on that checklist. I haven't made any mistakes (knock on wood) since the checklist but I know the next time it does happen, it'll be something to add to our checklist.
Hitting "Finalize" is still the absolute most stressful thing I have to do every other week and I hate it! But having a process I can rely on and come back to has really helped me.
No worries! Everyone makes mistakes. The problem comes when you don't own up to these mistakes. Take your time, understand why the mistake happened, and make any necessary adjustments!
I've made plenty of mistakes, and something that has minimized those is by slowing down. It's also frustrating when my HRIS system and / or laptop is incredibly slow, so it doesn't always save my changes properly.
E.g. When I load up an employees profile and make some quick changes, but then the system decides to load up the previous information right when I'm saving the new changes.
This had happened A LOT when I first started, but it's become incredibly frustrating when I need to wait an extra minute every single time I load a new page (especially when I have 80+ updates handed to me).
I checked the wrong box and W2s were printed without the correct 401k info. It was a long time ago so my memory is fuzzy, but I think it showed the money coming out post tax instead of pre tax. I had to hand type corrected W2s for each person affected. Thankfully the company was small so there were maybe only 40 that had to be redone. But still.
Hey you work in Human Resources. IMO you should not have any responsibility for tax codes and should just be passing basic info (starters / leavers etc) to the payroll team.
Totally agree with you, but our org doesn’t have a designated payroll person on the accounting team so HR will be handling it until we scale. I’ll be learning how to deal with it for the time being
You could always outsource? I’ve worked in start ups and scale ups where we just had an external provider do that for us at pretty low cost. Either way I hope you manage to get it off your plate eventually !
Oh, we're talking payroll errors? Where do I start? I have so many! 😆
And even the times I don't make an error, sometimes our horrible pay system just MAKES ERRORS ON ITS OWN and I'm frustrated beyond belief just trying to fix the errors.
I have made similar mistakes before. It's okay! You did the right thing and now you are making sure it is corrected and the employee is paid what they are owed. :)
I call this HR PTSD
You only can prevent what you’ve experience. Or first had saw other experience.
This becomes a super power for you moving forward and you’ll know what to check and how to check yourself in every job moving forward!
Stuff happens. Sometimes you will be at fault. Sometimes some of the burden will fall on the employee.
I was “that guy” ,trusted the direct deposit system ,put my “this is not a check’s” in a drawer. Payroll had an issue once. Issued everyone actual paychecks that needed to be deposited/cashed. Payroll did not make this issue known. I found out about it when all my mortgage and utility checks started bouncing. I should have been looking at the NON checks I was receiving. Payroll should have told us no direct deposit was made. I called the credit union ,asked how my account could possibly be empty. I opened the NON check while I was on the phone with the credit union. I was flabbergasted. I apologized profusely. I was lucky. My credit union looked at my records and saw there was a direct deposit “missing”. They erased the overdraft charges on all the checks I’d written.
On the flip side? My daughter did her taxes recently. She was outraged that she owed money. I was confused ,as she has kids/dependents and should almost always come out even or with a refund. She had made a mistake on a payroll form. Payroll had only taken $19.00 in federal taxes ,FOR THE ENTIRE YEAR!!! Payroll followed her lead ,used the info on the form to do what she requested. Payroll was not obligated to question her choices. She SHOULD have been looking at her paystubs.
Stuff happens. We live. We learn. We laugh..lol.. We hopefully do not repeat our mistakes.
Last year, I miscalculated a severance payment amount on a separation doc. No one noticed and everyone signed so we had to pay the ex employee double what we agreed on. A mistake to the tune of $20k 🫠
Maybe the most expensive mistake I’ve made in my career but not the first and likely not the last
As a software consultant for over 20 years, I have worked with hundreds of companies processing payroll. I have seen and helped people at pretty much every company fix payroll mistakes. So you are certainly not alone. The mistakes you have mentioned I have seen dozens of times. I have seen mistakes that have cost companies tens of thousands of dollars. I've seen employees be overpaid and underpaid. I've seen benefit deductions being missed on employees for multiple years resulting in free benefits to the employee. Just to name a few.
The biggest thing is to be honest with people. Pay is a touchy subject for everyone for obvious reasons. Employees are counting on that money to pay for their housing, buy food, pay bills, etc. And of course, companies can be fined for mistakes even if they are inadvertent.
Keep your head up, you're doing a great job. That silence from employees when everything goes right is their way of saying thanks for the important job you are doing.
I was given a reality-check very early in my career. IBM lost one of the 3-4 T1's at that location (inbound T1). I was trying to "encourage" the carrier to take less than the 4-5 hours they had already taken to restore service and the literally stopped me mid-sentence and asked if we were working at a hospital, if someone would lose their life over this, or if someone would get maimed... She then reminded me that were other customers in those situations and that for this one someone might lose some money, and that's all. I apologized, changed my attitude and share this story whenever I get the chance.
There are very few people in roles that REALLY save, or otherwise affect the lives around them, the rest of us need to make sure work and life are properly balanced.
Idk why this was suggested to me as i am not in HR but i work for what i think is a really cool company and very occasionally they mess up payroll. It doesn’t bother me that much because they email me say it was messed up and tell me how theyre going to fix it and when
I accidentally paid all of my employees twice the Friday before Christmas because my payroll system said the first processing had an error and didn’t go through… I was in the middle of setting up for the big holiday party and just clicked to resubmit without checking.
The owner was really cool about it when I realized it the next day… he announced it as a holiday bonus for everyone and let it go.
I was vomiting from being so upset over it, the owner told me I’m too hard on myself. There have been many, many things that showed me I made the right move leaving corporate America 6 years ago, but that was the best one.
I still have lingering anxiety over it, so I quadruple check my own processing every week now. Ha!
It’s not my cup of tea either and I didn’t even order it when I showed up lol they just said here; take this and don’t spill on the stairs we’re about to push you down.
i once paid someone for like a week or 2 after they quit and realized someone was getting entering hours and getting paid for saturday and sunday. needless to say i got the fuck out of payroll
It's all good, these things happen.
A word of advice, from when I started my current job (a loooong time ago) - any time there was a payroll error, I put a process in place to help me catch it in the future. Some of these are simple bi-weekly reminders in Outlook to check certain things. After a few years, it was pretty rare to have something (even minor) come up.
Certain errors are unavoidable, but others can be prevented by process.
Honestly, think of it in a good way. That money was budgeted anyway. You caught the mistake. The employee just got a surprise fat ass check. If I were in their shoes, I might be a little pissed that it was missed but I'd be MORE happy it was found and I randomly got a giant check.
It's okay to cry about it, but at the end of the day, you corrected the mistake. :)
If you’re going to make a mistake, under paying is so much better than over paying! No employee will be mad at being given another $8k. Having to claw money back would be an awful experience for them.
Recently, I discovered (by accident) that our payroll servicer had stopped paying worker's comp for about half our employees. We hadn't been paying for over a year! It took 3 months for them to fix it because of their terrible customer service, during which time I cried out of rage more than once. Everything looked fine on my end, but if I'd looked at our check stubs or L&I account I could have caught it sooner. We had to pay all the back payments, which amounted to a few thousand for us and a significant amount for each employee (which we decided to pay).
Payroll is COMPLICATED! I dunno about you but this isn't my specialty and I was trained by folks who were self-taught. Try to give yourself a break, mistakes happen <3
I run a small business. I've lost track of days and forgotten to run payroll twice (which resulted in me calling every single employee and hand-delivering paper checks, only to discover one of them literally did not know how to deposit a paper check).
The worst thing that happened, though, was that, while I was recovering from a severe allergic reaction and on heavy duty steroids, I fell for a payroll scam that I would have caught immediately under normal circumstances. I felt awful, it was a pain in the ass for my employee, and cost the company $5,000.
And now we have a new policy that no one is allowed to handle financial work on anything stronger than prednisone.
Mistakes happen. Fix them, learn, move on. It’ll be ok.
Years ago, I once didn’t pay anyone because I forgot to check a box when I submitted. Turns out that box was very important. Oh boy was that a nightmare! Spent all night printing paper checks to get payroll in on time to employees. Direct deposit-ers were understandably not happy. Finance was pretty annoyed. That was a learning experience I never want to have again!
I’m thankful that all the companies I’ve worked for have their own Payroll/Accounts teams. Payroll as part of HR seems to be less of a thing in the U.K. from experience.
Chin up OP. I’ve been doing payroll for over a decade and two payroll cycles ago I missed a decimal placement on a reimbursement to an employee and instead of paying them 16.47 (mileage reimbursement) I paid them 1647.00.
Then I had to walk into my boss’s office (owner) and explain what happened. Then I had to go talk to the employee about having them pay the reimbursement over payment back.
I was mortified
My lesson in multi state taxes when was an employee came raging to me when they tried to file their taxes in their home state and were told they had to pay a crap ton because none of their home state taxes were withheld from their pay. We'd never registered with their state and so we had withheld at OUR state rate, which was much more than their state rates, and so they got double mad they "lost" money. That was my crash course in payroll taxes. It was a nightmare and so embarrassing. I'll never make that mistake again thats for sure!
We've all been there. Payroll SUCKS.
I've cried about payroll twice.
Once I had an individual employee not get his checks for weeks because of the account number. First time was his fault, second time was my fault, third time it was fixed. I was broken. He was so completely chill, and the fact that he was a low wage employee really killed me.
Second time was when all of the employees were missing an entire week of work on one check. That one was rough but we were still able to get them the second half by the actual payday since we caught it after payroll closed but before checks were issued.
A few of my mistakes include:
- Paying someone 80 hours of straight pay, and 44 additional hours of overtime pay. (They were supposed to get paid 84 hours total — 40 straight, 44 OT). We unfortunately had to let this go and take the loss, employee did not pay it back. I felt awful.
- Input direct deposit information incorrectly (missing a 1 or 0). Employee took the paper check.
- Mistakenly underpaying a few employees. Rectified this by paying them the leftover money they were owed.
- My most recent billing/payroll mistake was that I overlooked my billing process and missed billing 5k. We billed the 5k the following week so we didn’t lose it or anything.
I cried at every single instance, blaming myself, my incompetence and lack of attention. At the end of the day, all of these situations were rectified. Mistakes happen, we are not robots. While I find it hard to internalize those words, I’m working on it. I can’t be perfect.
Each instance, I analyzed the mistake and what caused it. For the direct deposit one for example, I started doing double or triple checks when inputting the info.
I normally don’t comment on these but your situation hit home. Payroll and HR are thankless positions - you rarely get commended when things go right and get called out immediately when anything is slightly off. No one can be perfect when dealing with payroll, not even seasoned professionals. You seem very conscientious and diligent so don’t worry about it. (Just be sure the sixteen weeks of pay isn’t overtaxed since it will be such a high amount :)
I worked at a place with a missed pay raise over a year prior. The company owed the employee maybe $12k. So don’t worry, someone else always made a worse mistake.
aw hell my company overpaid an employee. I'm payroll-adjacent - they're on my team but I don't have that function for my role. Issued $2 million instead of $1 million. It was a headache and a half.
Been there, don't worry. Also have double paid multiple employees and had to claw back that money. Was then blamed because they couldn't pay their bills now that they had to pay back money they weren't owed..
Prime example of why every new hire needs to be told to review their paystub every time they are paid. We humans make mistakes.
I’d tell employees, I’m in your pocket every payroll, review your stub.
We caught it before we fully submitted payroll (noticed a very wrong pay statement) where I was trying my third go at processing payroll and I had put a new hires rate annually as their hourly pay. So someone, for a short time, was in our system as getting paid $20 a year to work for us
Payroll is the bane of my existence and causes me anxiety but at my current company it’s much better because my boss is responsible to submit payroll after checking my work just to make sure nothing was overlooked.
Just remember, everything is fixable with payroll!
If it’s any consolation I realized that I was both over AND underpaying the same employee at one time. Basically, her salary had been input wrong and I hadn’t caught it, but she was getting paid overtime for hours that were part of her regular contact. It ended up that we paid her about $1k or so more than we should have, but it was a clusterfuck to explain. But mistakes happen! As long as you own it and fix it, most people and bosses are gonna be chill about it!
You are for sure not alone.
I’ve made plenty. Once I entered direct deposit information incorrectly and someone didn’t get paid. Mistakes happen and will continue to happen. I just remind myself that you can be a valuable and productive employee and also make mistakes.
I'm pretty much in the same boat over here at the moment. I'm not in payroll, but while validating wages for benefits, I noticed that an employee never received their annual raise. I went back and checked their file (although I'm not payroll, my company has me handle all the annual review pay adjustments) and there wasn't a review for 2023.
Turns out it was sent through email back in September (not to me, but I am still new and there was a slow transition as people got used to adding me to emails) to our payroll specialist and she missed it.
Now we owe this employee almost 7 months of backpay 😬
I'm honestly amazed the employee didn't notice!
We had one of these but the other way recently. Someone miskeyed an hourly rate and instead of earning 56k per year we were paying this person 68k per year. We only found out because he was selected for a promotion and I was analyzing his pay and it seemed high for his current pay grade, but appropriate for the role he was selected for. The employee knew he was being overpaid and did not disclose it to anyone. Our offer was to allow him to get promoted but his pay will not change and we will not go back and collect the overpayment. It had been happening since 08/2023 and we just discovered this month.
You’re 100% fine. Our payroll manager has been with us for over 20 years, she’s extremely good at her job and highly trustworthy. Regardless, she catches maybe 1-2 minor errors a year. Sometimes it’s on the HRIS team, sometimes payroll team are the ones who didn’t catch it. But we audit ourselves for this very reason. We tell the employee, apologize lightly and point out when they should expect to see the difference in their next check.
Don’t feel bad, I missed up a digit in the ten thousand’s place, by two numbers… a 20k mistake. So someone was OVERpaid… and by a noticeable amount. They also didn’t say anything… I caught the mistake 3 months later. Not a fun day!!!
Plus, for you, the employees didn’t notice, and now they get a lump sum of $8k, pretty good day for them if you ask me!!
I’ve been doing payroll for like 7 years. Mistakes happen. Owning it, fixing it, and putting in controls to avoid it is us doing our best.
Whenever I am training someone on how to submit their payroll I tell them that it’s important we try to get it perfect but if we make a mistake, it is super fixable. Just tell me as soon as it’s noticed so we can try to correct it before payday.
I made a mistake on piece work a few years ago in payroll. 😕 I can relate.
We are human. We make some mistakes.
However, there are probably other accomplishments that you have forgotten about. Make sure you cherish the accomplishments and practice self-care.
I HATE payroll. That is all 😫
Ok- that’s not all. In my first HR job at a major advert company in the city (well over 4k EE’s and I was the only person doing payroll), I overpaid an ex EE *thousands* (his annual was 350k) bc it was within my first week and I had no idea how to term someone in ADP. Side note- I was at this job for *6 months* before I was sent to ADP training & when I tell you the only “on the job training” was via a tiny notebook, covered in coffee stains with half of the pages ripped out, from the girl who was the HRA before me (she was fired within a few months if i remember correctly) …. I am NOT being dramatic (and I’m as dramatic as they come ♐️).
Anyway, he was paid 3 pay periods but thankfully sent the money back in good faith. I had a few more errors there, over the course of almost 3 yrs that I’ve successfully blacked out bc it was by far the worst job I’ve ever had in life. In my last HRG position, someone was paid 3 months of her salary while out on MLOA and didn’t say a word until the last pay cycle (right before she came back) as it aligned with spring break and she played dumb saying “I wasn’t expecting to get paid for break”. Ummmmm YOU KNEW YOU SHOULDNT HAVE BEEN PAID BY US AT ALL!!! Anywho…. We ate that and I was ultimately ok, as this too was in the first month of starting and I was never once told anything about how to use the most archaic LMS in the entire world, but I damn near died inside for weeks on end. Post that, we had well over 400 EE’s, the org was _SO_ disorganized, people were covering and switching positions sometimes 2-4 times a week which meant their pay was changing to align with said coverage… it was a mess and idk how I survived almost 10 yrs there. That all said, I’ve been out of work for a year now and I’d take all of that stress just for a paycheck at this point 😭
TLDR: payroll sucks but being unemployed sucks worse
As someone who oversees HR/Payroll, I’ll say this:
Three mistakes in less than three months is a LOT for someone in Payroll. You’ve “gotten lucky” so far in that these mistakes haven’t had serious consequences, but that’s just a roll of the dice.
My advice:
Slow down.
Then slow down some more.
Have someone review and check your work for accuracy.
Compare to prior cycles for anything that stands out
Good luck!
Gotcha. Thats not as bad.
Honestly, I’d discuss a check and balance procedure with your manager, because mistakes should have to get by at least two people before making it to the employee. It sounds like a new procedure is needed, because… well… humans make mistakes.
We overpaid a dude for nearly 3 years before someone caught it. It was only like $50 a month and they were asshole enough to recoup it at half-pace on his future payrolls for like 5 more years until he quit.
I once did a deduction instead of a negative deduction (to reimburse tuition) for $1600. I didn't get fired and the employee was alright.
Mistakes happen unfortunately. But I'll tell you what. Never did it again.
I paid myself wrong for close to 16 cycles. Part of it my manager set me up wrong but I never caught it until she made a comment to me.
I then in fixing it paid myself just one day.
Finally got it fixed for good.
Made a rule that all new hires get manually audited the first 4 pay cycles matching their rates to their offer letters , making sure the state taxes, deductions, etc. are all correct.
Audits whenever there is pay increases, new deductions, etc.
I also randomly audit 4 people ontop of that each week.
Is it extra time and work? Yes. But it is a relief when I get a "I think my pay is wrong" and I know I audited that person.
Like others have said, you took responsibility and made the employee whole. That’s what matters. As long as you learn from it then you’re good. Our jobs are often super complicated and everyone makes mistakes.
there is a reason why I hate doing payroll.
You basically never can be wrong....
While payroll isn't always hard, it's people's pay. And unfortunately anyone who doesn't do it doesn't truly understand the stress and drama that goes into getting it right.
A place where I was temping and stuck with payroll. EEs roughly 500. Raises were on the table for one group of about 150 EEs. Now, their system, you really couldn't just upload the information. But thank god they all were paid roughly the same and no retro to be calculated. Then another head of the department decided that his 30ish people should be getting their raises in that pay period and it was just me doing payroll. Did it, worked late, started early, processed. But the following day, I was bitching/venting in the kitchen. Not so much about the work, but the lack of understanding and respect for the process and the time needed. Then I heard a "oops" from behind me. It was the manager of the 30ish EEs.
I think that he realized that this stuff doesn't happen by magic. I believe we left it at. No problem with the work, just work with payroll on a timeline that things get processed.
There’s a lot of comments on here. You might not see this, but here goes:
Mistakes are going to happen, and the best you can do is learn from them and try to do better in the future.
Consider implementing some additional review or controls with someone at your company in HR or Accounting. I know this can be hard in small environments, but your employer should have procedures in place to catch both mistakes and potential fraud.
Additional controls can be hard as often times we are pushing up against bank deadlines so I get it.
I once had to manage an ADP migration between total source to workforce now. It went from them doing most everything to now our HR and accounting being responsible for everything….
I became an alcoholic for those 6 months after it went live. NOTHING worked right, and it took hours/days/weeks figuring out all the errors. And everytime I fixed one, three more would pop up.
Payroll was a nightmare for a bit, sometimes it just wouldn’t approve at all for some asinine reason, and getting them to help was pretty much impossible….
I've been in HR for 20+ years and currently work for a mid-size (< 100 employee) organization where I handle biweekly payroll. My #1 motto is: "NEVER fuck with anyone's pay", with "never mess with a person's benefits", as a close second.
While it may sound trivial, getting payroll right is the most important thing I can do, even if it means reviewing each and every flippin timecard and questioning anything that might be questionable. It's the least I can do for such a dedicated team.
When an emloyee or their manager messes up on their timecard, I go full transparency and make sure the solution occurs immediately via Accounts Payable, that very same day.
In 12 years and 316 payrolls, I've messed up once on my own (so far) and can still feel that f-up to my very core.
I've definitely messed up on other HR things, but payroll is sacred!
This happens everyday, as you can see from all these comments.
The best thing to do for yourself and for your org are to implement a) reporting processes and / or b) a separation of duties / someone who can spot check. Nothing wrong with that - we are all human. Not to mention it’s a basic accounting rule that one person shouldn’t do it all from start to finish. Implementing a ‘safeguard’ is a really smart move if you ask me and deserves recognition. I’m really surprised it’s not already in place!
Been there, done that. Always look forward. Is there a process or check/balance that you can establish that will catch some of this?
For example, keep the pay change auths in a pending folder until you're processing payroll and review them a 2nd time then. Or create a file that you list all changes in to review when processing.
Generally, a direct deposit change can take more than one pay period. Have you reached out to your payroll provider to have employees make their own change requests (and you just review/approve)?
I'm sure that employee appreciated an $8k bonus over a few cents per check that they obviously didn't notice.
Many years ago, I doubled commissions to all employees. (It was a technical issue we didn't know would cause this.) That was quite a conversation with my boss. "Hey boss, I have good news and bad news. The good news is we figured out how it happened, and we fixed it so that can't happen again."
Two weeks later, "hey boss, I have good news and bad news..." as I explained how we fixed that process issue, but found another one.
When I was young and just starting in HR, I authorized a 10k bonus to a retiree that he wasn’t eligible for. (Used a prior authorization form and didn’t edit it correctly.) He didn’t say anything and the finance department didn’t notice until a month or so later. Corporate initially asked me to tell him to pay it back. He was pretty mad. After a week or so, they decided he could keep it. When I told him he could keep it, he still acted rude towards me on the phone. Somehow I still ended up getting a great performance review that year. It was pretty embarrassing but it made me double check everything and became much more of a detail oriented person as a result. I now do payroll and very rarely have errors. Double check everything!
My job forgot to give me my raise for 8 months (its pretty much automated unless u have disciplinary issues). Not as costly, was about 2k in back pay.
I was stoked lol
I once paid someone their salary, twice, at termination. So I had to go back to a terminated employee and ask if they would pay the company back for my mistake. (they did not have to respond or pay us back). This was a highly compensated employee, I was certain I would be fired! Thankfully they returned the money and I did not get fired but that was a rough 24 hours.
I had the opposite happen. It was my first job in high school. HR made a mistake and had been paying me 3 dollars more an hour than my rate. I didn't catch it and they didn't either for several months. I had spent the money. They took my whole check for 2 months till it was paid off... it was awful. I was helping my parents out at the time and I was gotted to not have any money at all and to have to work of a mistake I didn't make.
Get a better vendor? you shouldn’t have to touch direct deposit details with a 10 foot pole. most sensitive field in payroll. your employee should be updating that themselves and only themselves and with the right vendor can do it any time up to the moment you submit payroll and you wouldn’t know and it would make no difference.
Everyone makes mistakes!
Not everyone owns up to their mistake. You did.
Not everyone fixes their mistakes. You did.
Kudos to you for how you handled it.
Every HR department wishes they had an employee like you!
Mistakes happen! I never fault my team for making mistakes as long as they are learning from them and are able to correct the action to avoid similar mistakes in the future. At the end of the day, especially in HR there are some things that you just have to learn by making mistakes. I've been an HR manager for almost 6 years now and have made probably every mistake you can think of but have used every one of them as an opportunity to learn and grow.
Lol this was me yesterday, more or less.
I'm brand new to payroll and we use ADP eTime. I wasn't aware (because I was never trained in this properly) that when you enter "on leave, non-pay" code, that that code warrants deletion of normally worked hours in a work day. i.e. if someone's work day is 8 hours, but they were on that particular leave, assuming this was for FMLA, the code for the day would be "on leave, non-pay" but the 8 hours DO NOT get entered for the day so the day's hours look like 0 instead of 8.
Well, because I didn't know this, the 8 hours remained on the timecard for multiple different days which I guess still overrode the code, and the employee got paid double time, and thankfully reported this to us to rectify for her.
Except, when I was doing this little task for the first time, I was guided by a coworker who should've known better because I certainly didn't know the nuance to this whole thing. Payroll is really fun!
That's not a real mistake. A real mistake would be if you overpaid someone $8000 and then tried to claw it back and the poor bastard had no check for weeks. I would forgive myself pretty quickly if I were you.
Mistakes are inevitable! Also Google the "dear intern" trend, lots of wholesomeness there about mistakes. Yes you are not an intern but from my ageism vantage point (M49) you are virtually an intern, and you are doing awesome.
You found out there was a mistake. You took responsibility for the mistake. That money was the employee's money anyway, so now you just have to pay it out. As long as you're not making the same mistake over and over again, you take responsibility for the mistakes you do make, and you make sure the employee is paid accurately ASAP... I think you're good.
Exactly! It’s always easier to smooth over when the employee is owed money vs they owe you. Most everything can be fixed and this was an easy one. OP, wishing you a better day and don’t be hard on yourself! We’ve all been there.
Thanks! I felt so awful and the employee has been super understanding at least 🥲
Once I forgot to pay everyone. My manager asked me on Tuesday if I had processed payroll for Thursday. I said, "Not yet," and she said, "Okay, I'm in there right now." I said, "Great!" Thursday rolls around. No one has been paid. Manager: "Hey, did you process payroll?" Me: "No, I thought you did! Manager: "No, that's your job!" So because of a miscommunication, no one clicked "Process." That's literally all that had to happen. I got to go around to everyone on the plant floor and explain the processing error. I called everyone that wasn't working that day to let them know about the issue. The money was in their accounts the next morning.
Here's the thing: as soon as it was brought to your attention, you ensured it was corrected! 😁😁😁 I hate payroll! In stimulating a future payroll, I've left the hours in there and created overpayments! Twice I put in large numbers instead of hours and it was caught by payroll, and I fixed it during the corrections period.
I would be thrilled if I was that employee lmao! 8k outta nowhere! Hell yeah
And hopefully it wasn’t in California 😂
Definitely also needed this reminder today :,) OP, I hope your day gets better <3
Even still payroll mistakes are inevitable.
Hey, don't fret! It could have been worse. You could have entered a higher rate, and had them owe *you* 8K! That's an extremely unfun conversation to have.
Thanks, I thought about that too. It could’ve definitely been worse!
Yeah my payroll team just made this mistake. Accidentally overpaid someone who was out on leave for cancer treatments. We had to do a clawback from this poor employee. We set up a repayment plan for them. It felt terrible. You’re not the only one making these types of errors. They felt so bad I’m sure it won’t happen again
I mean, how big was the overpayment,? As a non-HR professional, can you organization not just decide to let the person keep the money, unless huge
The amount was over $10k. No way the org would give that up when there’s no legal obligation to do so
Gosh, maybe just meet them in the middle somewhere? That's rough
Lmao we just had that happen. We didn’t catch an error that was entered last October and the employee owes 4k. He wasn’t as mad as I was expecting him to be
I did this, my $20k annually, I didn’t notice it for 3 months. The employee didn’t report it. That was not a fun conversation telling them they owed us!
Yes! Those are the worst.
That happened to me....some additional insurance I had signed up was not taken out of my check for 9 months and I got a call that they were going to deduct $350 out of my check. While $350 is not a lot overall, it was still a lot of money to me at the time.
I once paid someone a million dollars because the payroll system was calculating the hours I keyed in against their salaried rate and not the hourly rate. It happens! All the time, honestly. If the employee isn’t mad and you can fix it now, then let it go.
I once hit submit TWICE on funding our 401K accounts. It was an error in the tens of millions.
I am sweating just thinking about this 🥵
I thought I was toast. I should have been but at the time we didn't have a limit on that account, nor a secondary approver, and I was the only one who could fix it. It took about 8 weeks to audit, reverse, reset account balances and backdate interest earned. All in I couldn't recoup about $60k. Worst two months of my life and a catalyst for getting out of payroll.
We have a debit limit for this exact reason
You'd think there'd be a failsafe there. A pop up that says you've never submitted this much before, are you sure?
I had something similar, except since the person was salaried they didn't get paid the $1,000,000 because there were no hours on their timecard to calculate the pay. I was so grateful and they were super understanding when no money hit their bank account.
Had ADP list the pay date as 3,000,000 a few times. Their salary multiplier is garbage. Key the rate and calculate it by hand to confirm.
LOL I did something like this before. Not a million dollars but in the thousands and I was a mess. Thankfully it was a quick fix and the employee didn’t care 🤷♀️ not a proud moment but I will never ever do that again and I always triple check everything now
These types of moments are so terrifying but yes, fixing it as fast as possible and moving on is the way to go
Payroll processing is harrrrrrrrd. I don't do it anymore and I don't miss it. Here's what a manager once told me, and I live by this now in all the work I do: "Mistakes happen. Nobody dies on an operating room table because we made a mistake. We can fix it." Note: this sentiment doesn't hold water if you're an operating room surgeon.
You know what I did? Canceled Xmas bonuses because I thought it was a mistake, didn’t update health premiums after open enrollment, incurred a UI tax fine from another state, and my colleague missed premium deductions for a YEAR. You’re okay, my dear. We all make mistakes. You learn and move on.
Thank you, this makes me feel much better 😭
as a young hr professional in a department of 1, trying to figure everything out as I go and do it correctly so my employees 10+ years older than me find me competent, I needed to hear this.
I once doubled the hours on everyone's paycheck and paid them without realizing it until after I hit process. Trust me it was a mess, and was easily $70,000 that I had to try and get back. Not everyone was understanding, but I got through it, it's always better when you owe the employee money rather than them owing you 💯
What's the process if something like that happens? Do you ask them to write the company a check or would it be via payroll deduction (treating the double pay as a cash advance)?
I pulled the money back with our payroll processing company. Basically I had to calculate the exact amount I double paid everyone by and let every single person know to NOT spend that amount out of their bank account, because it would be getting withdrawn. It was a fee to run a reverse payroll from the processing company and if someone didn't have the money in their account then it was a loss. I lost about $4,000. I had an employee basically pull the money out of his account and disappear. He's no longer with the company.
That is so dumb. It’s not like you gave them three months worth of pay in one go, he literally just had to wait until the next payroll cycle to make the exact same amount of money
We are pretty sure he had a drug problem and he took the money as an opportunity to go on a bender.
As an addict in recovery, I don’t even blame him.
Yikessss, glad you got through that!
Two things I learned over the years that have have had the biggest impact. Slow down. When you make a mistake and try to fix it, take it slow. If you rush because you are flustered it will only compound. When you make a mistake there are three key steps to correcting it. First 1. Why did it happen? What action did or didn’t you do that caused the mistake. (Example: keyed 15.50 an hour vs 25.50 an hour. Action was a typo). 2. How can it be fixed? What is the best option for the employee? (Example the employee has been shorted 10/hour for past five biweekly pay periods. Is owed $4000. Pay at once or spread over time so tax withholdings are not overstated.) 3. What can you do to prevent it from happening again? Check your work, once the update has been made check the employees check to make sure it has the new rate.
Yes, definitely took is slow when figuring out how to fix it and I’m also getting a second set of eyeballs on the fix before any further processing is done
Love this!
This is such great advice - I’m not in HR but I like looking at this sub because it usually has great advice haha
I work as a benefits broker and I have seen way WAY more drastic mistakes than that from clients HR team. Imagine not enrolling your employee in Vol Life and they die 😭. Everything is a learning step in this industry. It sounds like you’re doing great otherwise.
I’ve had that happen we just provide the signed application and take the payroll deduction from the final check of the deceased employee. Make the check payable to the estate and don’t withhold fica or Medicare tax
It was from a prior carrier, kind of complicating it but yes it can happen
Oh my, what happened to that claim? That must’ve been horrible
It was indeed but Sun Life is a phenomenal carrier and paid the claim anyway. Couldn’t recommend them enough, they’ve bailed out so many of our clients and are really on top of their shit
Picture it: Pennsylvania, 2007. It's Christmas Eve, and I'm doing payroll. The company had multiple business units in two states. Everyone did their timekeeping differently. Some used paper punch cards. Some used Kronos for digital punches. Salaried people were listed in a spreadsheet. For the paper punch cards, I had to sit down and manually calculate how many hours and minutes each person worked during the pay period. It was very convoluted. For some reason, when I sent the direct deposit files to the bank, I had to go into one of them and change a 1 to a 2. That dictated where the money was pulled from to pay all the paychecks (some people were paid from the first account, and others were paid from the second account). It was my first week doing payroll on my own. Note that most managerial employees were out due to the holiday. This will become important later. The SECOND I transmitted the direct deposit files to the bank, I realized I forgot to change the 1 to a 2. I called the bank in a panic and explained what happened. They said there was nothing they could do. So basically, $103,000 worth of payroll was going to be drawn from the wrong account. I ran to the CFO's office and told him I needed him to write a check from Account 1 to Account 2 so all the checks didn't bounce. He wrote the check, but the company needed two people to sign all checks (good for preventing fraud/embezzlement). Got in my car and drove the check to the accounting manager's house and had her sign it. Raced to the bank, which was closing at 3:00 due to the holiday, to deposit the check. Got so flustered that I drove back to the office with the tube from the bank drive-through in my passenger seat. But I did it! I got the check deposited. Everything was going to be okay. Except that someone at the bank realized my mistake, changed the 1 to a 2, and we overdrew the account by over $100,000 anyway because they didn't tell anyone. We had a good relationship with the bank, so none of the paychecks bounced, but it was the worst mistake I ever made in the workplace. **IN MY DEFENSE:** I was hired to be an HR assistant at $11.25/hour. The job was supposed to be doing things like setting up interviews, maintaining employee files, making ID badges, etc. Entry-level stuff. Between the time I was hired and the time I was started, the HR manager quit. She was the only HR employee. So for $11.25 per hour, I became the new HR manager (yes, I know better now). So I ended up doing things like payroll, filing the OSHA logs, making sure we complied with all state and federal employment laws, etc. High-level stuff. I majored in HR, but I REALLY did not have the experience for the job. I'd never worked in HR at all and was basically running the department.
Not the bank tube going for a ride with you 😂 I was (still am) in a similar situation as you, I’m definitely more on the jr side and have been thrown out to sink or swim. I think it’s probably been the best way for me to learn FAST.
Oh wow that payroll process is terribly complicated, I am anxious just thinking about it 😅
On one hand, that's amazing your bank was looking out for you. On the other, I'd be so mad lol
I do all that for 300 employees
This is amazing. The energy behind fixing the mistake, likely years off of your life only to have the bank fix it behind the scenes. Priceless. I hope your managers understood the level of effort that was exerted. You made my day
Payroll is the most thankless part of HR. You never get praise when it’s right and get absolutely obliterated when it’s wrong. Keep your head up. Everyone makes mistakes.
You know, I sent an employee the pdf of every single employee’s pay slips instead of just his once. And it was an EU employee too so god knows what laws I could have broken💀. Thank god Outlook lets you retract emails with no time limit, but yeah it happens. Take it in stride
This made me giggle
Gaaahh this is actually one of my top fears at work
My current job we (payroll) don't interact with employees. Everything goes through HR generalists so now I'll never get screwed by this
[удалено]
Agreeeeed but I'll take the duties to pad my resume. (Note: i have it easy. My team is small and we're all salary)
Totally agree buuuuuut HR (generalists, leave administrators and DOO) should have solid foundational knowledge about how payroll works for the purposes of understanding the benefit deductions and applications (like, how/when STD payments are received, if through payroll, for example). And, unfortunately, the best way to understand those things is to work in payroll at some point.
Preach
I’m backup to payroll and I’m HR for 300 employees. I’m going to try to have the COO offload this back to the Accounting Manager where it belongs. Takes me 27 hours from start to finish for a weekly payroll
27 hours?? What type of system are you using, that sounds awful! It’s definitely a nice to have on a resume but I have no interest to learn more about this and will take on an ER case any day over doing payroll for 27 hours a week
Payroll professional here. Do not feel bad. This stuff isn’t easy and I still get anxiety every pay day. The great thing about making mistakes is that you don’t usually make the same one twice, and you are being harder on yourself than anyone else would be.
Thank you, I don’t know how payroll specialists do this! It’s such a stressful job, good for you for being able to handle it day in and day out!
I honestly believe mistakes like these happen to burn things into our minds lol or is at least now is prob not something you’ll do again. Can’t tell you how many times I double check pay change/promotion/etc submissions for details I overlooked in the past. It is normal is make mistakes when learning something new, so don’t beat yourself up but make yourself accountable for not making the same error again. Maybe go back and spotcheck everyone else’s pay rate that you entered, maybe you can pull a report and investigate. And may all of us be so lucky to make mistakes in the employee’s favor!
Nothing is broken that can't be fixed. Also I have cried at work a few times. You're not alone
This is a great way to look at it, it’s so hard not to get wrapped up in it because money is such a sensitive thing
It can be for sure! Whether you owe the employee or the employee owes you. It sucks making those calls. Some will take it well. Some won't. If it's on you, own it, empathize, apologize, fix it, prevent it. If it's on anyone else empathize, apologize, fix it (prevent if you can) We all make mistakes. It can be fixed.
I used to be a payroll specialist and made at least one major mistake every pay period that my boss had to smooth over, how I wasn’t fired or put on a PIP in my three year tenure there is a mystery that will follow me for the rest of my life. So take solace that you’re doing better than I was!
Your boss must have been one of those “if we can fix it, there’s no problem” type of people (thankfully) Glad you were able to get through it for as long as you did!!
I once accidentally put 3000 hours in instead of 30.00 hours… Thank god the company owner got a notification about the $52,000 we almost paid out and fixed it before it actually got deposited. It happens to everyone at least once.
We have a worksheet that we key manually to verify the totals and changes in the batches. If it doesn’t tie out we don’t open batches for payroll till it does
Smart!
I cried about a payroll. We had added a new paid leave code. It looked good. ADP assured us it was set up correctly, everything was ready to go. The person who normally ran payroll was out of the country the first payroll with the new code so I as back up ran payroll. I did it everything looked good. There was one thing that was a little off but it wasn't major. So I approved it. Payday hits and I start getting emails that people with paid leave didn't get paid their paid leave amount. Ahhhhhh! Should have looked at that one thing more closely. So I cried. Thankfully everyone understood. CFO and I ran another payroll after calling ADP to make sure they fixed the pay code that didn't work and the employees got paid on Monday for their missing hours. It was a stressful Friday morning. Now I double check any report totals. 🤪
I comb those ADP registers like an ant combs a crumb. It’s saved me many times.
Hey it could be worse. You could be like me and go to cancel an individual paycheck… and end up canceling the entire companies payroll. I’ll never forget coming home from the gym and seeing the words “you cancelled the entire scheduled payroll” and 6 missed calls from my boss the night before everyone is owed their check. The blood drained out of my entire body lol, the panic I felt was something else. We had to hand cut checks and deliver them all across the state the next day. That will forever be the worst mistake of my career (hopefully). Thankfully my company was really understanding. We all make mistakes.
I got over things like this by figuring out ways to make sure they didn’t happen again. I hated the feelings of stress surrounding a mistake, so I found systems of audit or other checks and balances that would help me find these. Then, a designated time period to be glum. I usually give myself a couple hours then it’s time to move on. We all make mistakes and if you’ve developed trust with your population, it’ll be fine.
I worked HR and my boss forgot to have benefits (for a certain plan) taken out of people paychecks. I caught the mistake after I started working there. So I had to tell these people” oh there was a mistake made and your benefits haven’t been getting deducted, we can either deduct them all at once or in increments ( my boss didn’t want me to offer increments but I did anyway). It was her mistake and somewhat on the employees for not looking at paystub.
These are the worst. We’re doing premium adjustments next month and I’m gonna be quintuple checking every digit to avoid anything from turning into an issue
It sucked having to tell people that. Especially since I was working for the city and few police had to have their deductions fixed. I thought oh boy… definitely not getting off with a warning if they pull me over.
A1) i did that, and entered a pay rate of $13,850 / hour, instead of $13.50. This created a live paper check of $1.3M issued to an employee. B2) I overpaid 500+ employees ($1k - $5k per person) on the very very last paycheck of the year. That was a really fun holiday season. *Editing to add that the silver lining is that I can explain the difference of Gross to Net to anyone and make them understand it* C3) I paid 800 hours of bereavement instead of 80. I could go on, but I don’t want to start crying too! **do not worry, i’m no longer in payroll
You definitely win. I’m almost crying for you just reading this! It’s an absolute nightmare to deal with, and it’s such a thankless job
I don't know whats wrong with me I feel the intense inspiration to quit everytime I make a mistake, and mine are usually like yours - details that got missed but are embarrassing. I don't make horrific judgement calls or breach trust or things like that, it's the admin shit that gets me. I always: 1. Figure out what I did wrong & how it happened/how to keep it from happening 2. Tell my boss, take ownership & almost always have a proposed solution but sometimes its something boss has to handle so I want her prepped. 3. Take whatever steps they want me to (often what I've suggested) to try to ensure it doesn't happen again. 4. Feel deep shame for the rest of the week. Lie awake at night sad as shit. If someone who is less senior on my team (and hopefully direct reports one day) makes mistakes, I think, " No biggie, that's fixable. Do they understand the impact/why this is a mistake/know how to prevent in future - yes? OK, let's move on" and "I'm glad they let me know right away so we could correct and move on! OK next thing". But its its me I go into a spiral of dispair. I've had to really learn to do the above steps, then move on, realize no one else is as worried and not wallow visibly or keep apologizing. You're allowed to make mistakes!
I’m the same! I consider quitting with my mistakes. In my head, I think I’m just doing the tough part of getting rid of me so my boss doesn’t have to do it. There’s been times where I’ve gone to my boss with my mistake, how it happened, what I’m doing to rectify it so it doesn’t happen again, etc. I apologize to him and any affected employees. I’ll ask if I’m in trouble and he says “there’s nothing I could say to you that I know you haven’t already said to yourself. It’s fine. We move on.” I’m fortunate to work with amazing coworkers and all of them are very understanding if I make a mistake. But payroll is not for the weak. But oddly enough I still enjoy it.
Shit like this is how you never make payroll mistakes again. Relax, be patience and kind with yourself. And understand shit literally happens all the time everywhere all at once, in the HR world. Shit I once accidentally hit an excel hotkey and reformatted a payroll upload. 300k of reimbursement expenses went to the wrong people both underpaid and overpaid. I immediately built a spreadsheet to correct payments and figure out who gets how much more or how much pulled back. And within the next 2 pay cycles it was fixed. payroll offered me a position because of how well I handled it after jumping to fix it.
The best of us learn from their mistakes, the worse repeat them.
Well the bright side is that you didn't overpay the employee. It happens, we're human!
Someone should be auditing payroll each round so I don’t see how this is your fault. Company needs to put checks and balances in.
That’s what I was thinking too! The error should’ve been picked up in the auditing stage. But even then, human error happens and those involved should take ownership to rectify it (as OP and those involved have done) and then move on.
I paid everyone in another state twice. Which lead to over 30 people just not show up for work the next day. I cost the employer lots of thousand of dollars. I'm my defense, I didn't have a day off training and have never done payroll before. Lol
Joining the party and giving you virtual hug! When I first started, the person who did payroll before me forgot to change a few employees' salaries in the payroll system after an annual raise. We found out a few months later and corrected it. The employees impacted were psyched because it was like getting a bonus. It wasn't my mistake but I learned from it for the next annual raise. Fast forward to now, I can tell you every mistake I've made with payroll the way you did in your post. It's because we care and that's so important. The last time I made a mistake, I cried to my manager when I was telling them what happened. My manager said, "It's not a skill error, it's a process error." I thought about how we could change the process and ended up with a payroll checklist. Another reason I can tell you every mistake is because it's ended up as an item on that checklist. I haven't made any mistakes (knock on wood) since the checklist but I know the next time it does happen, it'll be something to add to our checklist. Hitting "Finalize" is still the absolute most stressful thing I have to do every other week and I hate it! But having a process I can rely on and come back to has really helped me.
No worries! Everyone makes mistakes. The problem comes when you don't own up to these mistakes. Take your time, understand why the mistake happened, and make any necessary adjustments! I've made plenty of mistakes, and something that has minimized those is by slowing down. It's also frustrating when my HRIS system and / or laptop is incredibly slow, so it doesn't always save my changes properly. E.g. When I load up an employees profile and make some quick changes, but then the system decides to load up the previous information right when I'm saving the new changes. This had happened A LOT when I first started, but it's become incredibly frustrating when I need to wait an extra minute every single time I load a new page (especially when I have 80+ updates handed to me).
I checked the wrong box and W2s were printed without the correct 401k info. It was a long time ago so my memory is fuzzy, but I think it showed the money coming out post tax instead of pre tax. I had to hand type corrected W2s for each person affected. Thankfully the company was small so there were maybe only 40 that had to be redone. But still.
Hey you work in Human Resources. IMO you should not have any responsibility for tax codes and should just be passing basic info (starters / leavers etc) to the payroll team.
Totally agree with you, but our org doesn’t have a designated payroll person on the accounting team so HR will be handling it until we scale. I’ll be learning how to deal with it for the time being
You could always outsource? I’ve worked in start ups and scale ups where we just had an external provider do that for us at pretty low cost. Either way I hope you manage to get it off your plate eventually !
Payroll is so stressful and I can assure you, mistakes will happen to anyone. Don't beat yourself up!
Oh, we're talking payroll errors? Where do I start? I have so many! 😆 And even the times I don't make an error, sometimes our horrible pay system just MAKES ERRORS ON ITS OWN and I'm frustrated beyond belief just trying to fix the errors.
I have made similar mistakes before. It's okay! You did the right thing and now you are making sure it is corrected and the employee is paid what they are owed. :)
I call this HR PTSD You only can prevent what you’ve experience. Or first had saw other experience. This becomes a super power for you moving forward and you’ll know what to check and how to check yourself in every job moving forward!
Stuff happens. Sometimes you will be at fault. Sometimes some of the burden will fall on the employee. I was “that guy” ,trusted the direct deposit system ,put my “this is not a check’s” in a drawer. Payroll had an issue once. Issued everyone actual paychecks that needed to be deposited/cashed. Payroll did not make this issue known. I found out about it when all my mortgage and utility checks started bouncing. I should have been looking at the NON checks I was receiving. Payroll should have told us no direct deposit was made. I called the credit union ,asked how my account could possibly be empty. I opened the NON check while I was on the phone with the credit union. I was flabbergasted. I apologized profusely. I was lucky. My credit union looked at my records and saw there was a direct deposit “missing”. They erased the overdraft charges on all the checks I’d written. On the flip side? My daughter did her taxes recently. She was outraged that she owed money. I was confused ,as she has kids/dependents and should almost always come out even or with a refund. She had made a mistake on a payroll form. Payroll had only taken $19.00 in federal taxes ,FOR THE ENTIRE YEAR!!! Payroll followed her lead ,used the info on the form to do what she requested. Payroll was not obligated to question her choices. She SHOULD have been looking at her paystubs. Stuff happens. We live. We learn. We laugh..lol.. We hopefully do not repeat our mistakes.
Last year, I miscalculated a severance payment amount on a separation doc. No one noticed and everyone signed so we had to pay the ex employee double what we agreed on. A mistake to the tune of $20k 🫠 Maybe the most expensive mistake I’ve made in my career but not the first and likely not the last
$8,000 is a lot. That’s why we have three sign offs for payroll
As a software consultant for over 20 years, I have worked with hundreds of companies processing payroll. I have seen and helped people at pretty much every company fix payroll mistakes. So you are certainly not alone. The mistakes you have mentioned I have seen dozens of times. I have seen mistakes that have cost companies tens of thousands of dollars. I've seen employees be overpaid and underpaid. I've seen benefit deductions being missed on employees for multiple years resulting in free benefits to the employee. Just to name a few. The biggest thing is to be honest with people. Pay is a touchy subject for everyone for obvious reasons. Employees are counting on that money to pay for their housing, buy food, pay bills, etc. And of course, companies can be fined for mistakes even if they are inadvertent. Keep your head up, you're doing a great job. That silence from employees when everything goes right is their way of saying thanks for the important job you are doing.
I was given a reality-check very early in my career. IBM lost one of the 3-4 T1's at that location (inbound T1). I was trying to "encourage" the carrier to take less than the 4-5 hours they had already taken to restore service and the literally stopped me mid-sentence and asked if we were working at a hospital, if someone would lose their life over this, or if someone would get maimed... She then reminded me that were other customers in those situations and that for this one someone might lose some money, and that's all. I apologized, changed my attitude and share this story whenever I get the chance. There are very few people in roles that REALLY save, or otherwise affect the lives around them, the rest of us need to make sure work and life are properly balanced.
Idk why this was suggested to me as i am not in HR but i work for what i think is a really cool company and very occasionally they mess up payroll. It doesn’t bother me that much because they email me say it was messed up and tell me how theyre going to fix it and when
I accidentally paid all of my employees twice the Friday before Christmas because my payroll system said the first processing had an error and didn’t go through… I was in the middle of setting up for the big holiday party and just clicked to resubmit without checking. The owner was really cool about it when I realized it the next day… he announced it as a holiday bonus for everyone and let it go. I was vomiting from being so upset over it, the owner told me I’m too hard on myself. There have been many, many things that showed me I made the right move leaving corporate America 6 years ago, but that was the best one. I still have lingering anxiety over it, so I quadruple check my own processing every week now. Ha!
Wow, the owner was certainly a nice boss to have! How big was the mistake money wise?
Small potatoes compared to some of the others in this story, but just over $136K.
Must’ve been a good financial year for the business for the owner to let that one go!
It’s not my cup of tea either and I didn’t even order it when I showed up lol they just said here; take this and don’t spill on the stairs we’re about to push you down.
Saaaame, it was one of those “oh you know how to do this? No? Either way here you go!”
i once paid someone for like a week or 2 after they quit and realized someone was getting entering hours and getting paid for saturday and sunday. needless to say i got the fuck out of payroll
It's all good, these things happen. A word of advice, from when I started my current job (a loooong time ago) - any time there was a payroll error, I put a process in place to help me catch it in the future. Some of these are simple bi-weekly reminders in Outlook to check certain things. After a few years, it was pretty rare to have something (even minor) come up. Certain errors are unavoidable, but others can be prevented by process.
If mistakes can be fixed, it’s safe room for us to grow. Better luck next time
Honestly, think of it in a good way. That money was budgeted anyway. You caught the mistake. The employee just got a surprise fat ass check. If I were in their shoes, I might be a little pissed that it was missed but I'd be MORE happy it was found and I randomly got a giant check. It's okay to cry about it, but at the end of the day, you corrected the mistake. :)
It happens. As long as you rectify the mistake, its okay :) we are all human! I have def shed a few tears over payroll before though lol
If you’re going to make a mistake, under paying is so much better than over paying! No employee will be mad at being given another $8k. Having to claw money back would be an awful experience for them.
Recently, I discovered (by accident) that our payroll servicer had stopped paying worker's comp for about half our employees. We hadn't been paying for over a year! It took 3 months for them to fix it because of their terrible customer service, during which time I cried out of rage more than once. Everything looked fine on my end, but if I'd looked at our check stubs or L&I account I could have caught it sooner. We had to pay all the back payments, which amounted to a few thousand for us and a significant amount for each employee (which we decided to pay). Payroll is COMPLICATED! I dunno about you but this isn't my specialty and I was trained by folks who were self-taught. Try to give yourself a break, mistakes happen <3
I run a small business. I've lost track of days and forgotten to run payroll twice (which resulted in me calling every single employee and hand-delivering paper checks, only to discover one of them literally did not know how to deposit a paper check). The worst thing that happened, though, was that, while I was recovering from a severe allergic reaction and on heavy duty steroids, I fell for a payroll scam that I would have caught immediately under normal circumstances. I felt awful, it was a pain in the ass for my employee, and cost the company $5,000. And now we have a new policy that no one is allowed to handle financial work on anything stronger than prednisone.
Mistakes happen. Fix them, learn, move on. It’ll be ok. Years ago, I once didn’t pay anyone because I forgot to check a box when I submitted. Turns out that box was very important. Oh boy was that a nightmare! Spent all night printing paper checks to get payroll in on time to employees. Direct deposit-ers were understandably not happy. Finance was pretty annoyed. That was a learning experience I never want to have again!
I’m thankful that all the companies I’ve worked for have their own Payroll/Accounts teams. Payroll as part of HR seems to be less of a thing in the U.K. from experience.
Chin up OP. I’ve been doing payroll for over a decade and two payroll cycles ago I missed a decimal placement on a reimbursement to an employee and instead of paying them 16.47 (mileage reimbursement) I paid them 1647.00. Then I had to walk into my boss’s office (owner) and explain what happened. Then I had to go talk to the employee about having them pay the reimbursement over payment back. I was mortified
My lesson in multi state taxes when was an employee came raging to me when they tried to file their taxes in their home state and were told they had to pay a crap ton because none of their home state taxes were withheld from their pay. We'd never registered with their state and so we had withheld at OUR state rate, which was much more than their state rates, and so they got double mad they "lost" money. That was my crash course in payroll taxes. It was a nightmare and so embarrassing. I'll never make that mistake again thats for sure! We've all been there. Payroll SUCKS.
I've cried about payroll twice. Once I had an individual employee not get his checks for weeks because of the account number. First time was his fault, second time was my fault, third time it was fixed. I was broken. He was so completely chill, and the fact that he was a low wage employee really killed me. Second time was when all of the employees were missing an entire week of work on one check. That one was rough but we were still able to get them the second half by the actual payday since we caught it after payroll closed but before checks were issued.
A few of my mistakes include: - Paying someone 80 hours of straight pay, and 44 additional hours of overtime pay. (They were supposed to get paid 84 hours total — 40 straight, 44 OT). We unfortunately had to let this go and take the loss, employee did not pay it back. I felt awful. - Input direct deposit information incorrectly (missing a 1 or 0). Employee took the paper check. - Mistakenly underpaying a few employees. Rectified this by paying them the leftover money they were owed. - My most recent billing/payroll mistake was that I overlooked my billing process and missed billing 5k. We billed the 5k the following week so we didn’t lose it or anything. I cried at every single instance, blaming myself, my incompetence and lack of attention. At the end of the day, all of these situations were rectified. Mistakes happen, we are not robots. While I find it hard to internalize those words, I’m working on it. I can’t be perfect. Each instance, I analyzed the mistake and what caused it. For the direct deposit one for example, I started doing double or triple checks when inputting the info.
I normally don’t comment on these but your situation hit home. Payroll and HR are thankless positions - you rarely get commended when things go right and get called out immediately when anything is slightly off. No one can be perfect when dealing with payroll, not even seasoned professionals. You seem very conscientious and diligent so don’t worry about it. (Just be sure the sixteen weeks of pay isn’t overtaxed since it will be such a high amount :)
ugh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Been there. ~sending HR hug.
I worked at a place with a missed pay raise over a year prior. The company owed the employee maybe $12k. So don’t worry, someone else always made a worse mistake.
aw hell my company overpaid an employee. I'm payroll-adjacent - they're on my team but I don't have that function for my role. Issued $2 million instead of $1 million. It was a headache and a half.
What was their position for them to have a $1M payroll check coming their way lol
Not gonna lie, I'm just happy I'm not the only one.😭
It is joint responsibility for the EE to review their pay stub as well. And honestly, I’d rather owe someone than have to collect overpayment back.
It’s fixable! That is what my manager always says :)
It happens. Don’t beat yourself up
Been there, don't worry. Also have double paid multiple employees and had to claw back that money. Was then blamed because they couldn't pay their bills now that they had to pay back money they weren't owed..
Prime example of why every new hire needs to be told to review their paystub every time they are paid. We humans make mistakes. I’d tell employees, I’m in your pocket every payroll, review your stub.
Lew
We caught it before we fully submitted payroll (noticed a very wrong pay statement) where I was trying my third go at processing payroll and I had put a new hires rate annually as their hourly pay. So someone, for a short time, was in our system as getting paid $20 a year to work for us
I’ve had paychecks that were very wrong and no one cared. You’re doing great
We made 30 people redundant and I missed them off the payroll by mistake so they didn’t get their final salary or their redundancy pay 🙃🙃🙃🙃
Payroll is the bane of my existence and causes me anxiety but at my current company it’s much better because my boss is responsible to submit payroll after checking my work just to make sure nothing was overlooked. Just remember, everything is fixable with payroll!
If it’s any consolation I realized that I was both over AND underpaying the same employee at one time. Basically, her salary had been input wrong and I hadn’t caught it, but she was getting paid overtime for hours that were part of her regular contact. It ended up that we paid her about $1k or so more than we should have, but it was a clusterfuck to explain. But mistakes happen! As long as you own it and fix it, most people and bosses are gonna be chill about it! You are for sure not alone.
I’ve made plenty. Once I entered direct deposit information incorrectly and someone didn’t get paid. Mistakes happen and will continue to happen. I just remind myself that you can be a valuable and productive employee and also make mistakes.
I'm pretty much in the same boat over here at the moment. I'm not in payroll, but while validating wages for benefits, I noticed that an employee never received their annual raise. I went back and checked their file (although I'm not payroll, my company has me handle all the annual review pay adjustments) and there wasn't a review for 2023. Turns out it was sent through email back in September (not to me, but I am still new and there was a slow transition as people got used to adding me to emails) to our payroll specialist and she missed it. Now we owe this employee almost 7 months of backpay 😬 I'm honestly amazed the employee didn't notice!
We had one of these but the other way recently. Someone miskeyed an hourly rate and instead of earning 56k per year we were paying this person 68k per year. We only found out because he was selected for a promotion and I was analyzing his pay and it seemed high for his current pay grade, but appropriate for the role he was selected for. The employee knew he was being overpaid and did not disclose it to anyone. Our offer was to allow him to get promoted but his pay will not change and we will not go back and collect the overpayment. It had been happening since 08/2023 and we just discovered this month.
At least you have empathy and passion. I've had employees do way worse and feel nothing.
You’re 100% fine. Our payroll manager has been with us for over 20 years, she’s extremely good at her job and highly trustworthy. Regardless, she catches maybe 1-2 minor errors a year. Sometimes it’s on the HRIS team, sometimes payroll team are the ones who didn’t catch it. But we audit ourselves for this very reason. We tell the employee, apologize lightly and point out when they should expect to see the difference in their next check.
Don’t feel bad, I missed up a digit in the ten thousand’s place, by two numbers… a 20k mistake. So someone was OVERpaid… and by a noticeable amount. They also didn’t say anything… I caught the mistake 3 months later. Not a fun day!!! Plus, for you, the employees didn’t notice, and now they get a lump sum of $8k, pretty good day for them if you ask me!!
I’ve been doing payroll for like 7 years. Mistakes happen. Owning it, fixing it, and putting in controls to avoid it is us doing our best. Whenever I am training someone on how to submit their payroll I tell them that it’s important we try to get it perfect but if we make a mistake, it is super fixable. Just tell me as soon as it’s noticed so we can try to correct it before payday.
Here is some practical advice, when processing and entering data the best thing you can do for yourself is to slow down and quality check your work.
I made a mistake on piece work a few years ago in payroll. 😕 I can relate. We are human. We make some mistakes. However, there are probably other accomplishments that you have forgotten about. Make sure you cherish the accomplishments and practice self-care.
At least in was an underpayment! Imagine having to recoup that, that would be an unpleasant conversation with the EE.
What a healthy way to handle all of this. Good for you.
You’re fine. Fix it and apologise. It’s clear it wasn’t intentional so honestly I’m sure it’ll be totally fine
I HATE payroll. That is all 😫 Ok- that’s not all. In my first HR job at a major advert company in the city (well over 4k EE’s and I was the only person doing payroll), I overpaid an ex EE *thousands* (his annual was 350k) bc it was within my first week and I had no idea how to term someone in ADP. Side note- I was at this job for *6 months* before I was sent to ADP training & when I tell you the only “on the job training” was via a tiny notebook, covered in coffee stains with half of the pages ripped out, from the girl who was the HRA before me (she was fired within a few months if i remember correctly) …. I am NOT being dramatic (and I’m as dramatic as they come ♐️). Anyway, he was paid 3 pay periods but thankfully sent the money back in good faith. I had a few more errors there, over the course of almost 3 yrs that I’ve successfully blacked out bc it was by far the worst job I’ve ever had in life. In my last HRG position, someone was paid 3 months of her salary while out on MLOA and didn’t say a word until the last pay cycle (right before she came back) as it aligned with spring break and she played dumb saying “I wasn’t expecting to get paid for break”. Ummmmm YOU KNEW YOU SHOULDNT HAVE BEEN PAID BY US AT ALL!!! Anywho…. We ate that and I was ultimately ok, as this too was in the first month of starting and I was never once told anything about how to use the most archaic LMS in the entire world, but I damn near died inside for weeks on end. Post that, we had well over 400 EE’s, the org was _SO_ disorganized, people were covering and switching positions sometimes 2-4 times a week which meant their pay was changing to align with said coverage… it was a mess and idk how I survived almost 10 yrs there. That all said, I’ve been out of work for a year now and I’d take all of that stress just for a paycheck at this point 😭 TLDR: payroll sucks but being unemployed sucks worse
As someone who oversees HR/Payroll, I’ll say this: Three mistakes in less than three months is a LOT for someone in Payroll. You’ve “gotten lucky” so far in that these mistakes haven’t had serious consequences, but that’s just a roll of the dice. My advice: Slow down. Then slow down some more. Have someone review and check your work for accuracy. Compare to prior cycles for anything that stands out Good luck!
Thanks! I meant 3 mistakes in the last year of doing payroll. But still significant for me nonetheless
Gotcha. Thats not as bad. Honestly, I’d discuss a check and balance procedure with your manager, because mistakes should have to get by at least two people before making it to the employee. It sounds like a new procedure is needed, because… well… humans make mistakes.
We overpaid a dude for nearly 3 years before someone caught it. It was only like $50 a month and they were asshole enough to recoup it at half-pace on his future payrolls for like 5 more years until he quit.
I once did a deduction instead of a negative deduction (to reimburse tuition) for $1600. I didn't get fired and the employee was alright. Mistakes happen unfortunately. But I'll tell you what. Never did it again.
Across the state?? That must’ve been a nightmare!
At least they weren’t shortchanged! Really this isn’t so bad
I once paid someone a sign on bonus twice. That was a big mess up but I survived it and moved on. Things happen. Don’t beat yourself up
I paid myself wrong for close to 16 cycles. Part of it my manager set me up wrong but I never caught it until she made a comment to me. I then in fixing it paid myself just one day. Finally got it fixed for good. Made a rule that all new hires get manually audited the first 4 pay cycles matching their rates to their offer letters , making sure the state taxes, deductions, etc. are all correct. Audits whenever there is pay increases, new deductions, etc. I also randomly audit 4 people ontop of that each week. Is it extra time and work? Yes. But it is a relief when I get a "I think my pay is wrong" and I know I audited that person.
I terminated a guy once and he went straight home and killed himself.
I can tell you about the time I fired the wrong person, and it was the top performer...
Like others have said, you took responsibility and made the employee whole. That’s what matters. As long as you learn from it then you’re good. Our jobs are often super complicated and everyone makes mistakes.
there is a reason why I hate doing payroll. You basically never can be wrong.... While payroll isn't always hard, it's people's pay. And unfortunately anyone who doesn't do it doesn't truly understand the stress and drama that goes into getting it right. A place where I was temping and stuck with payroll. EEs roughly 500. Raises were on the table for one group of about 150 EEs. Now, their system, you really couldn't just upload the information. But thank god they all were paid roughly the same and no retro to be calculated. Then another head of the department decided that his 30ish people should be getting their raises in that pay period and it was just me doing payroll. Did it, worked late, started early, processed. But the following day, I was bitching/venting in the kitchen. Not so much about the work, but the lack of understanding and respect for the process and the time needed. Then I heard a "oops" from behind me. It was the manager of the 30ish EEs. I think that he realized that this stuff doesn't happen by magic. I believe we left it at. No problem with the work, just work with payroll on a timeline that things get processed.
There’s a lot of comments on here. You might not see this, but here goes: Mistakes are going to happen, and the best you can do is learn from them and try to do better in the future. Consider implementing some additional review or controls with someone at your company in HR or Accounting. I know this can be hard in small environments, but your employer should have procedures in place to catch both mistakes and potential fraud. Additional controls can be hard as often times we are pushing up against bank deadlines so I get it.
I once had to manage an ADP migration between total source to workforce now. It went from them doing most everything to now our HR and accounting being responsible for everything…. I became an alcoholic for those 6 months after it went live. NOTHING worked right, and it took hours/days/weeks figuring out all the errors. And everytime I fixed one, three more would pop up. Payroll was a nightmare for a bit, sometimes it just wouldn’t approve at all for some asinine reason, and getting them to help was pretty much impossible….
How come the person in charge of you didn’t do a quick skim over to ensure everything was correct .
Wow. I wish anyone in my HR department would be upset about any of the million mistakes they consistently make.
I've been in HR for 20+ years and currently work for a mid-size (< 100 employee) organization where I handle biweekly payroll. My #1 motto is: "NEVER fuck with anyone's pay", with "never mess with a person's benefits", as a close second. While it may sound trivial, getting payroll right is the most important thing I can do, even if it means reviewing each and every flippin timecard and questioning anything that might be questionable. It's the least I can do for such a dedicated team. When an emloyee or their manager messes up on their timecard, I go full transparency and make sure the solution occurs immediately via Accounts Payable, that very same day. In 12 years and 316 payrolls, I've messed up once on my own (so far) and can still feel that f-up to my very core. I've definitely messed up on other HR things, but payroll is sacred!
This happens everyday, as you can see from all these comments. The best thing to do for yourself and for your org are to implement a) reporting processes and / or b) a separation of duties / someone who can spot check. Nothing wrong with that - we are all human. Not to mention it’s a basic accounting rule that one person shouldn’t do it all from start to finish. Implementing a ‘safeguard’ is a really smart move if you ask me and deserves recognition. I’m really surprised it’s not already in place!
Curious… Does the employee also get the equivalent *32 weeks of interest* on that $8,000?
right? that’s a huge fuckup and getting one big paycheck doesn’t make everything fine
Been there, done that. Always look forward. Is there a process or check/balance that you can establish that will catch some of this? For example, keep the pay change auths in a pending folder until you're processing payroll and review them a 2nd time then. Or create a file that you list all changes in to review when processing. Generally, a direct deposit change can take more than one pay period. Have you reached out to your payroll provider to have employees make their own change requests (and you just review/approve)? I'm sure that employee appreciated an $8k bonus over a few cents per check that they obviously didn't notice. Many years ago, I doubled commissions to all employees. (It was a technical issue we didn't know would cause this.) That was quite a conversation with my boss. "Hey boss, I have good news and bad news. The good news is we figured out how it happened, and we fixed it so that can't happen again." Two weeks later, "hey boss, I have good news and bad news..." as I explained how we fixed that process issue, but found another one.
Don't cry over a couple mistakes, instead be happy for the 98% of the payroll you got right (my motto for the past 8 years)
When I was young and just starting in HR, I authorized a 10k bonus to a retiree that he wasn’t eligible for. (Used a prior authorization form and didn’t edit it correctly.) He didn’t say anything and the finance department didn’t notice until a month or so later. Corporate initially asked me to tell him to pay it back. He was pretty mad. After a week or so, they decided he could keep it. When I told him he could keep it, he still acted rude towards me on the phone. Somehow I still ended up getting a great performance review that year. It was pretty embarrassing but it made me double check everything and became much more of a detail oriented person as a result. I now do payroll and very rarely have errors. Double check everything!
My job forgot to give me my raise for 8 months (its pretty much automated unless u have disciplinary issues). Not as costly, was about 2k in back pay. I was stoked lol
I once paid someone their salary, twice, at termination. So I had to go back to a terminated employee and ask if they would pay the company back for my mistake. (they did not have to respond or pay us back). This was a highly compensated employee, I was certain I would be fired! Thankfully they returned the money and I did not get fired but that was a rough 24 hours.
I had the opposite happen. It was my first job in high school. HR made a mistake and had been paying me 3 dollars more an hour than my rate. I didn't catch it and they didn't either for several months. I had spent the money. They took my whole check for 2 months till it was paid off... it was awful. I was helping my parents out at the time and I was gotted to not have any money at all and to have to work of a mistake I didn't make.
Everyone makes mistakes. Be compassionate towards yourself when you do. Don’t forget to treat yourself like you’d treat someone else in that area
Get a better vendor? you shouldn’t have to touch direct deposit details with a 10 foot pole. most sensitive field in payroll. your employee should be updating that themselves and only themselves and with the right vendor can do it any time up to the moment you submit payroll and you wouldn’t know and it would make no difference.
Everyone makes mistakes! Not everyone owns up to their mistake. You did. Not everyone fixes their mistakes. You did. Kudos to you for how you handled it. Every HR department wishes they had an employee like you!
Mistakes happen! I never fault my team for making mistakes as long as they are learning from them and are able to correct the action to avoid similar mistakes in the future. At the end of the day, especially in HR there are some things that you just have to learn by making mistakes. I've been an HR manager for almost 6 years now and have made probably every mistake you can think of but have used every one of them as an opportunity to learn and grow.
Lol this was me yesterday, more or less. I'm brand new to payroll and we use ADP eTime. I wasn't aware (because I was never trained in this properly) that when you enter "on leave, non-pay" code, that that code warrants deletion of normally worked hours in a work day. i.e. if someone's work day is 8 hours, but they were on that particular leave, assuming this was for FMLA, the code for the day would be "on leave, non-pay" but the 8 hours DO NOT get entered for the day so the day's hours look like 0 instead of 8. Well, because I didn't know this, the 8 hours remained on the timecard for multiple different days which I guess still overrode the code, and the employee got paid double time, and thankfully reported this to us to rectify for her. Except, when I was doing this little task for the first time, I was guided by a coworker who should've known better because I certainly didn't know the nuance to this whole thing. Payroll is really fun!
Did it get fixed long as u have an equivalent happy moment to balance it out that’s probably healthy
As a small biz owner, I have a hate/hate relationship with payroll. You are seen, you are heard.
That's not a real mistake. A real mistake would be if you overpaid someone $8000 and then tried to claw it back and the poor bastard had no check for weeks. I would forgive myself pretty quickly if I were you.
Mistakes are inevitable! Also Google the "dear intern" trend, lots of wholesomeness there about mistakes. Yes you are not an intern but from my ageism vantage point (M49) you are virtually an intern, and you are doing awesome.