Ernst & Young employees in the U.S. were upset Tuesday to discover their paycheck deposits from last Friday had been reversed after a glitch at its payroll processing company ADP.
In some cases, the problems may have led to overdrafts on some EY U.S. employees’ bank accounts. “Our payroll vendor erroneously reversed EY’s July 15 payroll impacting our US employees and we are urgently working with them to correct the error,” said a spokesperson for the firm in an email to Accounting Today. “Late fees, penalties or other charges they may have incurred as a result of this error will be covered.”
ADP confirmed the problem originated in its system. “We can confirm that we experienced an error that caused a payment reversal for a group of U.S. employees of one of our clients,” said a statement from ADP. “We understand the urgency of this issue and our team is working swiftly to resolve this to ensure employees receive their pay as quickly as possible.”
Later in the day, on Tuesday afternoon, an ADP spokesperson said the problem has been resolved: “As an update, we have resolved the error and have completed processing with our banking partners. All transactions are expected to process by end of business day today. Availability of funds is dependent on each employee's personal banking provider.”
The problems affected approximately 55,000 EY employees in the U.S., according to the
Late in the day, after the fix was announced, some employees said they were
still experiencing problems, while some reported they had been paid double.
The payroll glitch comes at a time when EY employees are already nervous about a proposed global split between the firm’s audit and advisory practices. EY global chairman and CEO Carmine Di Sibio has been asking partners since May to consider the proposal, which would need to be approved by a majority of partners and member firms (
The payroll problems occurred during the first month of the EY U.S.'s new chair and managing partner Julie Boland, who recently succeeded Kelly Grier.
