AUSTIN, Texas — The city of Austin is working to recover $1.4 million after a system error caused the city to overpay hundreds of employees.
A city spokesperson told KVUE on Friday that the error in the city’s payroll system caused 675 employees to be overpaid for their March 13 paychecks. According to a report from KVUE’s media partners at the Austin American-Statesman, the malfunction led to each week being treated as its own pay period, with some employees getting paid double their normal check amount.
The city spokesperson said that during routine updates, a non-required data field was left blank on a spreadsheet used to update job descriptions, which was uploaded to the city’s payroll system. The system overrode existing data with the field that had been left blank, which was a marker that determined whether a position was eligible or not for overtime pay…