Fraudulent Timesheet – Help and advice required.

[Mich the Tester]

Please Miss, I didn't understand the question.

Please Miss, neither do I.

[OwlHoot]

Fraudulent Timesheet? ...

Get them to sign off every hour you are on site or available, and don't give them any money.

If they demand you take unpaid days off then they're probably in breach of contract with you or your agency. After all, you could be earning money in some other contract.

[pmeswani]

8 weeks left on the contract and i suggest to the agency that everything is going ok and are we going to be looking to renew?

Agency replies positively and starts negotiations with the head of department.

Enter the project manager and team leader with whom had previous good relations, but due to current position on not wanting to provide any dodgy timesheets, the relationship has been strained.

…and received 4 weeks’ notice yesterday, with a removal today (Iron Mountain box, security). Ok so I didn’t help things by accusing the team leader and project manager of screwing me over with a load of txt messages the Monday night.

So job hunting for a new contract after 18mths at the same gig!

Well, you have 2 choices (or even more).

1. Call the police and report the crime and possibly be investaged yourself.
2. Do nothing and possibly be caught up in an investigation as a result of someone else blowing the whistle.

[EternalOptimist]

It's dead simple, I really cant see the problem here.


As a contractor, you usually have deadlines. Sometimes you have to work really hard, sometimes you can take it easy.

If you have work really hard and do a 100 hour week to meet your deadlines, you dont ask for extra money, if you take it easy, you dont ask for less.

If the client asks you to do extra hours, you charge the going rate for the extra hours
If the client asks you to do less hours, you look for another contract.

If the client asks you to work less, but offers to pay in full, thats a retainer

If the client asks you to work less and give him a bung, thats fraud, conspiracy and a criminal matter. Dont even discuss it. It's illegal, it's against my religion. whatever reason you have to give
just dont do it.

I have been approached once in my time as a contractor. I put down my butty, looked him in the eye and said 'no, I dont think so' put my coat on and walked out. I didnt even log off.

I think the idea of being blacklisted by a cabal of corrupt clients is waay overblown. in fact its laughable

[Peoplesoft bloke]

I cannot understand a word the OP says - I don't know where in the UK he was educated - but it was a place I've not been to yet.

What made me laugh though was all that sage advice to save copies of "honest" timesheets as "evidence". Let's just have a look at that again - if you were trying to do a half decent fraud, surely you'd make it look as convincing as possible. Therefore, pretty much any timesheet could be totally honest or totally bogus - but they would look just the same.

[KimberleyChris]

I cannot understand a word the OP says - I don't know where in the UK he was educated - but it was a place I've not been to yet.

What made me laugh though was all that sage advice to save copies of "honest" timesheets as "evidence". Let's just have a look at that again - if you were trying to do a half decent fraud, surely you'd make it look as convincing as possible. Therefore, pretty much any timesheet could be totally honest or totally bogus - but they would look just the same.

Well I'm a professional wordsmith, but I miss the odd key sometimes.

Surely the honest timesheet would be the one with fewest hours on it? You wouldn't fraudulently knock hours off, would you?

[Peoplesoft bloke]

Well I'm a professional wordsmith, but I miss the odd key sometimes.

Surely the honest timesheet would be the one with fewest hours on it? You wouldn't fraudulently knock hours off, would you?

But we aren't talking about an odd few hours are we - we're talking about getting timesheets signed for days and presumably weeks when he wasn't even there.

He isn't missing the odd key - he expresses himself in a vernacular so far from the generality, even allowing for local variation, diversity and so on that he's clearly a dude apart; oh and very difficult to understand too.

[wim121]

Agreed. Leaving is by far the best option,as long as he has a job to go to.

Until then, submit scrupulously honest timesheets. The result may be the same (the boot), but you will not be stood next to the proverbial fan. That, to my mind is the biggest danger...it could blight his career for many years if he has a conviction for 'Conspiracy to Defraud'.

Imagine trying to get a job with a bank, or a security-cleared job with that on your record.

In response to you and all the others here, Im a bit late to this, but I would say to the OP, as well as submitting honest timesheets, print out an event viewer of his work PC. That way, if the tulip hits the fan and the police lay out his timesheets if someone tries to accuse him, he can then say, here is proof of when my work PC was started up and shut down, backing up my submitted hours.

That is what I would do in this situation. One piece of evidence is never enough. You need to be smart and back up that evidence to make it airtight. Saving receipts, like a petrol one on the way home is always good practise for a contractor for expenses, but in this case, can further prove you left work when you said you did.

[EternalOptimist]

In response to you and all the others here, Im a bit late to this, but I would say to the OP, as well as submitting honest timesheets, print out an event viewer of his work PC. That way, if the tulip hits the fan and the police lay out his timesheets if someone tries to accuse him, he can then say, here is proof of when my work PC was started up and shut down, backing up my submitted hours.

That is what I would do in this situation. One piece of evidence is never enough. You need to be smart and back up that evidence to make it airtight. Saving receipts, like a petrol one on the way home is always good practise for a contractor for expenses, but in this case, can further prove you left work when you said you did.

Are you some sort of Prime-Time Idiot ?
An invoice is a declaration that you did the work. Payment is an acceptance that you did the work to an acceptable standard.
Any dispute after that belongs with the legal department.

People who live their life as if they were main players in Smiley or the Bourne conspiracy are just fckng weird.
Dont get into the situation in the first place.

Just say NO.

[wim121]

What are you banging on about? Try to make some sense.

All Im saying is, time sheets are not proof enough. If you know other people fiddle their sheets and it is so widespread that the tulip could hit the fan, protect yourself for minimal further work by keeping supporting evidence to back up the facts that you havent fiddled your hours.

In a company with hundreds fiddling their hours, how does anyone investigating know you've been completely honest based soley on your timesheets only.

Quite simple really. We arent talking about hollywood or any other fantasy in your head, we're talking about covering your own arse. I can tell you've never been arrested or questioned because saying "Im telling you the truth" doesnt work.