The strange case of disappearing timesheet fraud and increased efficiency in the recruitment back office!

Payroll and timesheets a part of the UK’s fraud mountain

Across the UK, fraud is costing us dear with £144 billion going missing and leading to a total bill reckoned to be up to £193 billion. Most of this is related to procurement scams of one kind or another. However, £12 billion of this was attributed to payroll fraud in all its guises.
Unsavoury as it may be, many agencies are likely to have encountered payroll fraud directly as a result of timesheet tampering. Fraud on a timesheet may take the shape of a falsified entry, where information is invented. Alternatively, it may be the alteration of an existing entry, such as changing one digit to another.
Alterations to timesheets that extend the hours worked, or falsified entries that ‘document’ shifts worked that were not, are serious types of fraud as they are straight-forward attempts to deceive for financial gain.
However, even here there are nuances. Someone fiddling 5 minutes here or 10 minutes there pales by comparison to someone attempting to seek fraudulent remuneration for entire ‘ghost shifts’ that they did not work. Attempts to falsify sign-off by authorised signatories are also very serious cases.
Depending on the specific details that have been incorrectly entered or altered, falsification of timesheet information may equate to dishonesty and theft and be grounds for prosecution. For some it may be no more than a disciplinary offence, but for others it may be gross misconduct and grounds for immediate dismissal.
Factors such as whether it is a one-off event, or whether a specific worker or contractor is a rogue, or whether it is a widespread embedded behaviour across an agency or a specific contract all influence how recruitment agency management handle such cases.

Fighting back against timesheet fraud

The advent of electronic timesheet systems has radically reduced the opportunities for alteration and falsification. Essentially, doing away with paper means that the potential for timesheet fraud is disappearing.
However, even with online timesheet systems accessed through computers and mobile devices, there can be no room for complacency. Determined computer-savvy fraudsters are always going to be looking for opportunities and loopholes to exploit.
To combat this threat there needs to be a policy-led best practice approach to security for users of electronic timesheet systems:

• All contractors and temps should sign a counter fraud declaration stating that information is correct and that should any be discovered to be false it may result in disciplinary action, prosecution and civil recovery proceedings

• All authorisers should sign a counter fraud declaration relating to their role in the process and, that should it be discovered that false information has been authorised, it may result in disciplinary action, prosecution and civil recovery proceedings

• A unique username and password should be used for each individual with which to logon

• All users of electronic timesheet systems should be required to change their password on a regular basis

• When the system has not been used for a specified amount of time, the user should be automatically logged out

• System login should be blocked after three incorrect attempts

• The authoriser should be able to view relevant staff timesheets at any time

• Staff access to the timesheet system should be denied immediately upon termination of an employment contract

Eliminate timesheet fraud and transform back office efficiency with ETZ

Eliminating paper from the timesheet process not only removes the ability to alter and falsify timesheet entries, it also addresses gross inefficiencies in timesheet processing and the potential for human errors such as loss of paper timesheets or transcription errors resulting from miss-keying or misreading handwriting.
ETZ recruitment back office integration and solutions reduce the costs of timesheet processing by up to 85%. When used with policy-led best practice for electronic timesheet systems, ETZ significantly reduces the potential for timesheet fraud. If you want to know more about how we help transform efficiency and all but eliminate the potential for timesheet fraud through falsification and alteration, just get in touch.