Outsourced Payroll Questions:

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I have been employed with a well known company for about a year. When I became pregnant I found out I wasn’t entitled to maternity as I hadn’t been employed long enough which I accepted.

I therefore decided I would return to work after the baby was born and have been back in work 2 months. Well since I have been back I haven’t been paid and for my first month I was paid less than a pound!

My manager said it was the outsourced payroll company that messed and I still haven’t been paid. This is a joke.

Can someone please help?

Outsourced Payroll Team Opinion:

We are sorry to hear about your circumstances and would suggest you approach your manager for a cash advance on your wages if they have not paid you the correct amount.

The outsourced payroll company can only react to the data supplied by the company they are working for and therefore would be unable to do anything other than respond to a management instruction.

If, as your manager said, the payroll company has messed up, it would be a simple matter for him or her to arrange a cash advance against known earnings.

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I have a question for the Outsourced Payroll Team.

11 months ago I started working for a large well known company. During the early months I became pregnant and as with most companies length of service policy I was not entitled to the statutory maternity pay.

I therefore had to claim maternity allowance. Knowing I was pregnant I did not use any of my holidays and saved them so that I could book my holidays for the 3 weeks before I was due to go on maternity leave.

Therefore my final months pay should have been 3 weeks holiday pay and nothing for 1 week as I was then on maternity leave. I was under paid by £311 and when I checked with the payroll department they admitted they had paid me 2 weeks maternity rather than the 3 weeks holiday pay!

It has now been over 6 weeks and nothing has been resolved. Payroll said someone from head office would deal with it and numerous calls by myself to my previous area manager have not been returned.

How do I get them to return my money?

Outsourced Payroll Team Opinion:

We would always suggest you seek legal advice but will offer our opinions where we can.

It is sad when you hear cases of previous employees being treated this way.

We would send a recorded delivery letter asking for your pay to be corrected with immediate effect. Give them a reasonable deadline to sort out the mistake with the understanding that failure to do so would result in you taking legal action.

You can seek advice from the Citizens Advice Bureau and probably put a claim through the small claims court.

We usually find that this is usually an oversight on the part of the company and not malicious. However, someone needs to react sooner rather than later.

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I’m hoping someone can provide help and advice for a friend of mine. He is a co director in his business and is about to go bankrupt.

He wants to retain an interest in his business which he built from scratch so was wondering if he could sell his share in the business to a trusted friend and then be employed as an advisor on the payroll of the company?

He is about to lose everything and his ex greedy wife is taking him to the cleaners for everything she can get. Do you know how he can extricate himself from the business and become an employee before he becomes bankrupt and loses everything?

Outsourced Payroll Team Opinion:

First of all we must advise that your friend seeks legal advice first.

In our humble opinion and from past experience he is unlikely to be able to do what you have suggested unless he sells his share for the market rate.

As we understand it the official receiver will look back over transactions occurring 12 months prior to being made bankrupt. This is to ensure assets that could have been used to pay off debts have not been ‘given’ away for nominal sums.

If the shares are sold for the market rate and your friend becomes an employer then we see no issue in that? Of course the receiver would want to know what your friend has done with the proceeds of the sale.

Again our speciality is outsourced payroll and would therefore suggest you seek legal advice or contact an accountant in your friend’s local area who specialises in bankruptcy.

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I have a question for the Outsourced Payroll Team regarding contract employees working through an agency for a company.

Recently there was a bad snow storm and the company decided to shut up shop and send everyone home. We had no choice and were ordered home.

We had been expecting to work for the full 8 hour shift and was quite willing to continue doing our work.

Now we have only received 4 hours pay and can’t afford to lose the other 4 hours we were willing to work.

What is the law and our rights in this situation?

Outsourced Payroll Team Opinion:

We would always suggest you seek legal advice but will offer our opinions where we can.

Unfortunately you only worked 4 hours so that is all you are entitled to.

The employer, in this case the company you are working for, has a duty of care for all its employees safety and if the employer believed that your safety may be at risk once you left work they are obligated to take the necessary measures to ensure you safety.

In this case, send you home early before the weather worsened.

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My mate has worked part-time for a well known British clothes shop since November 2008, and as of January 18th, he has still not received any money.

He told me this is because of a series of mistakes made by his managers, (he has had 3 different managers so far), submitting incorrect bank account details to their outsourced payroll company.

A couple of weeks ago, his present manager called the payroll company and discovered that my mate’s pay was hours away from being transferred into the wrong account. The details were amended, and the payroll company promised that the money would reach my friend’s account in a maximum of ten days time.

When he still hadn’t received his pay after twelve days his manager called the outsourced payroll company again and was informed that the details were still incorrect. They also informed him that the cut-off date for changing details was three days ago. They say that because of this, the money (around £990) should be paid next Friday, January the 25th.

Is there anything my mate can do to get them to pay up, or even receive compensation?

Thanks.

Outsourced Payroll Team Opinion:

Bad administration and communication can, on occasion, lead to situations such as the one your friend finds himself in.

It is unlikely he would receive any compensation; however he could ask his manager for a cash advance on his pay to help him with his living expenses until he receives his pay next Friday.

That wouldn’t be an unreasonable request.

The outsourced payroll company can only work with the information it is supplied and is unable to act beyond the instructions of the company for whom they are doing the work.

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My husband started work in September and throughout the month of September he got paid erratically here and there sometimes with a cheque, another time by transfer. We found this hard to track and keep our bank balance right.

His last payment received was on the 28^th October and the cheque bounced!

His employer has continued to make excuses such as “the outsourced payroll company was at fault” but every time my husband broaches the subject he quickly points in the direction of customer service!

It is now November and he hasn’t received Octobers pay yet and the wage slip he brought home didn’t look official rather it was just something printed on a piece of paper.

We have asked advice from CAB and the Jobcentre but no-one was able to offer any advice or help.

With no other work about and a very young family my husband cannot afford to give up the job as we would not receive any allowances and the only work available is temporary work.

Can anyone offer any help?

Outsourced Payroll Services Team Opinion:

We would always suggest you seek legal advice but will offer our opinions where we can.

Your husband’s employer claims to be using an outsourced payroll company and yet the wage slip was on a piece of paper so it’s highly likely that no external company is dealing with payroll.

The fact that the cheque bounced and the other problems you mentioned it would appear that the company your husband works for may have cash-flow problems and the situation could very well get worse.

Personally, we would be seeking employment elsewhere and seeking legal advice as to how to claim the non-paid wages.

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We have a question for the Outsourced Payroll Team.

Me and my previous work mates are very unhappy at the way we have been treated and are concerned that others following in our footsteps are going to be abused in the same manner.

Between us we had either worked for this company for a few months or in my case a few years. During the past few months he has refused to pay us so some of the people working for him have just left and given up trying to receive their wages.

It had crossed our minds to do the same but we realised that he would just do the same to the next mug that came along.

This guy is totally unreasonable and may be insane? As far as we know he has no-one on his payroll and pays less than minimum wage. He doesn’t care about health and safety or any of the regulations.

He bullies, harasses, is abusive and roars at everybody.

Is he fit to run a business and could we get him banned?

Outsourced Payroll Team Opinion:

We would always suggest you seek legal advice but will offer our opinions where we can.

No-one can legally hold back wages that you have earned.

If he is paying less than minimum wage you can report him to the HM Revenue and Customs. We have provided a link here.

If you know he is blatantly abusing the health and safety rules you can report him to the local authorities who would send an officer around to investigate.

How you are going to get your wages back off such an unreasonable person we are not sure. We would strongly suggest that as a group you seek legal advice and treat it as one claim.

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The payroll officer of the company I work for received my return to work on the last day it could be submitted but did not forward it to the payroll department.

As a result I did not get paid for 2 months and was unable to pay some bills. I asked for extensions from these creditors but of course was still charged.

When I eventually received my pay I received too much and the company took the overpayment back the following month so I have gone into debt again and my credit rating is now very poor.

Is there any legal action I may take?

Outsourced Payroll Team Opinion:

We would always suggest you seek legal advice but will offer our opinions where we can.

It is your responsibility when dealing with creditors and the first question we would ask is if you approached your employer for a cash advance once you realised that your return to work paper had not been filed in time.

To leave yourself without pay for 2 months without trying to sort an interim solution may not be the responsibility of your employer.

In the case of being overpaid, again it is your responsibility to suspect that you may have been over paid and report it. We doubt that ignorance is not an acceptable excuse.

As we stated at the beginning, seek legal advice if you believe you have been wronged.

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I have a question for the Outsourced Payroll Team.

Some months ago I submitted my letter of resignation including my resignation date but it looks as though someone failed to notify payroll.

After resigning I left to work abroad but gave full contact details of my family to the company. My family have been opening my mail and have banked the cheques.

Is it illegal to deposit the cheques and am I making myself liable for future lawsuits by depositing these cheques?

No-one from the company or payroll has tried to contact me but I continue to receive the cheques!

Outsourcing Payroll Services Team Opinion:

We would always suggest you seek legal advice but will offer our opinions where we can.

You were right when you said it looks as though someone failed to inform the payroll department.

This is a genuine mistake and a genuine set of circumstances so there will be no need for lawsuits.

What you must do is contact the company and inform them of their mistake and explain that you have been away and only just been made aware of the situation. You can then come to some arrangement to pay the cheques back.

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The company for whom I have been working for over the past 22 months was sold to a new owner. He paid me by bacs until the end of the month.

I was always paid weekly but was informed by my new employer that from now on that the outsourced payroll company would pay me monthly.

My questions are:

Have I lost my rights and holiday entitlements?

What happened to my week in hand, holiday pay etc. accumulated under the old company.

Outsourced Payroll Services Team Opinion:

We would always suggest you seek legal advice but will offer our opinions where we can.

Your holiday pay and week in hand is owed to you by your previous employer not your present employer and therefore you need to make enquiries with your previous employer as to what his final payments to you where and how they are broken down.

If you have not received your week in hand and holiday pay you are entitled as effectively your new employer by making you work a month in hand has indicated that this is new employment.

However you do need to check whether the new employer accepted all holiday liabilities and work in hand when purchasing the business.

As for your rights and holidays, assuming you were receiving the statutory amounts, nothing has changed as they are still your statutory rights, no matter who employs you.