Overpayments and offset forms
An overpayment is when an employee receives more pay than they are entitled to. This can happen because of a processing error that wasn't identified in the checking process, or a late or incorrect notification of a change e.g. to employment status, leave without pay or a change in hours.
The best ways to reduce the risk of overpayment are to enter payroll instructions as you go, and to carefully check EdPay and SUE reports for errors as soon as they are available. These will allow time for errors to be corrected before the pay run.
Avoid overpayments
You can reduce the risk of an overpayment in the following ways:
- don't duplicate information that you have sent to the Education Payroll Service Centre. See Manage tickets
- enter leave without pay before the employee goes on leave and check carefully that the dates are correct
- terminate jobs early in the pay period the employee is due to leave
Employees lapsed jobs will be automatically terminated two pay periods after the employee's job end date. Terminate jobs online in EdPay or via a NOVO6 form.
Check SUE reports carefully
Always check your SUE reports as soon as they are available in EdPay to identify overpayments. See Cut-off times for pay instructions.
If an overpayment goes through
1. Send an EP31 form outlining details of the overpayment
- Write Overpayment (employee name, MOE number) in the subject line.
- Provide any relevant ticket numbers or transaction details on the EP31.
- Provide as much detail as possible to assist the payroll advisor.
2. Your payroll advisor may contact you to request further information and discuss options. They will let you know if you need to take any action to prevent any further overpayments.
3. Your payroll advisor may request an offset form signed by the employee, or they might refer this to a specialist team to recover the funds
4. The overpayment support team will contact both the employee and the school about the recovery of the overpayment.
Information for employees who have received an overpayment
Employees can read the information about resolving the overpayment and will need to sign the appropriate authority to deduct overpayment form:
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