Advice needed for van tracker

[Andy OH]

Chaps, asking on behalf of my son who recently lost his job. He was working for a small air conditioning firm and was given a company van to attend the various sites he worked at which was fitted with a tracker.

He joined them in July this year and has just received his final payslip and payment of which quite a few deductions were made. The company have said that he worked less than the contracted 10 hours per day as they have checked the tracker log from the tracker fitted to the van. We asked to see the calculation for the deduction and I found they had deducted an extra 50 hours pay over a 6 week period as the figures were added up incorrectly on their schedule. Regardless of whether my son was being lazy or not the schedule was clearly added up wrong and an extra 50 hours was deducted.

Even though he was paid monthly, from the last Friday of the month to the next last Friday in the month and he has been paid monthly since end July the boss of the company is now going to check the tracker log from the day he started and deduct hours accordingly from what extra my son is due. The extra pay due is the first week’s pay which was withheld as is normal and the extra 50 hours that were incorrectly deducted.

The help I need is, can they do this retrospectively from when he started, third week in July, his contract stated he was paid an annual salary, paid on a monthly basis calculated on an hourly rate, he was not on a zero hours contract and as far as I can see was not paid hourly as the owner of the company is now claiming. As I’ve said my son was paid on the last Friday of the month for July, August, September and October and there was no mention of checking the tracker for these pay dates in each of these four months.

Any help would be appreciated as my son is owed quite a bit due to their incorrect calculations and that they forgot they withheld his first week’s salary. Also they have already issued his P45 based on their incorrect figures, can this be amended.

Sorry for the long post and various issues but any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Andy

Edited by Andy OH on Monday 4th December 08:26

[anonymous-user]

As an employer with a fleet of tracked vehicles I can possibly give a little insight.

All tracking software should be able to run reports going back at least 12 months and you should be able to request an Excel report of this data. You could then go through and check that the deductions are correct.

I recently had an employee who queried a mileage deduction and after printing out the report and looking into the data in more detail I discovered he owed me a lot more private mileage than I had deducted and this led me to look further back and I then found he was clocking in for time he hadn't worked (starting late, finishing early, going off site, sat in the van idling etc). I forget how the HR lady worded these offences, something like 'theft of employers time'.

He was dismissed as looking back over 3 months I was owed in excess of 40 hours, I'm not suggesting your son was doing the same, but the reports may not go the way you would hope.