Payroll glitch shortchanges county workers

By MARIAN DOZIER Web-posted: 12:43 a.m. May 13, 2000

A software upgrade in Palm Beach County's payroll system caused a bit of a problem this week: 1,800 employees got shorted in their paychecks on Thursday.

The cut averaged about $40 each and workers will get it on Monday by way of a special check run, but it surely gave John Dame and his staff in the Finance Department a big headache.

"It's not unusual for a payroll system this size to have isolated problems," said Dame, chief deputy clerk in charge of finance. "But not something like this." It happened because a staff member working with the new software thought the program was in test mode, when it was active and in production. So when one category of federal withholding tax was inadvertently increased from 15 percent to 20 percent, it stuck, Dame said.

Forty employees got too much money in their checks because their dependent-care deductions weren't made. Their May 26 paychecks will reflect the missed deductions. The errors were discovered when the checks were cut on Wednesday night, but it was too late to do anything about it; checks had to be picked up by county departments on Thursday morning for Friday distribution.

Circuit Clerk Dorothy Wilken sent a letter of apology to affected employees on Wednesday. The county has a $7.3 million biweekly gross payroll for its 5,000 employees. Dame said the department didn't receive any calls of complaint, except for one woman upset that the smaller checks won't be funneled through direct deposit.

"We said we're sorry it happened," a weary-sounding Dame said. Meanwhile, Dame said the department is working with the county's Information System Services to figure out how to segregate the two modes to avoid more problems.

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/daily/detail/0,1136,31500000000112150,00.html

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), May 14, 2000