Hundreds of City of Austin employees overpaid in error, totaling $1.4M

AUSTIN, Texas - The city of Austin says hundreds of its employees were overpaid earlier this month to the tune of $1.4 million in total.

The issue? A blank data field on a spreadsheet uploaded to the City's payroll system.

What we know:

A City of Austin spokesperson told FOX 7 Austin that about 675 employees were overpaid on their March 13 paychecks.

On March 12, Austin's Human Resources staff told those employees they were overpaid in error.

The city says that during a routine update, a "non-required data field" was left blank on a spreadsheet being used to update job descriptions. That sheet was uploaded to Workday, which the city uses to manage things like employee benefits, compensation, payroll and recruiting.

The Workday system then overrode existing data, which was used to determine a position's overtime exemption status, with that blank field, giving it conflicting information. This resulted in the system treating each week in the two-week pay period as separate weeks and employees were paid up to twice their normal amount on their March 13 paycheck.

What's next:

The city says its Human Resources staff are working on a repayment plan to allow impacted employees to return those funds over a specified period of time.