County employee goof results in two payrolls being issued days apart

What a difference a date makes.
The majority of Grady County employees recently received two paychecks within a matter of days due to an error by Grady County Accounting Manager Donna Johnson.
According to county officials, the payroll that was to have been issued on Friday, Jan. 5, 2018 was incorrectly coded Monday, Jan. 8, 2018, and before the error was discovered by Johnson, the direct deposit for the county payroll had been transmitted to Ameris Bank, where the county’s payroll account is held.
Grady County Clerk Carrie Croy said this week that Johnson did not discover her mistake until she began stuffing the paychecks of the county employees who are not on direct deposit. According to Croy, there are 167 employees on the county’s payroll and 111 of those receive their pay via direct deposit.
Rather than ask those 111 employees to wait until Monday, Jan. 8, to receive their pay, Johnson issued a second payroll through direct deposit so that county employees would have access to their pay on Friday, Jan. 5. Each direct deposit totaled $108,761.41.
“We had to transfer additional money into the county’s payroll account to cover the second payroll so that the funds would be there when both payrolls hit,” the county clerk said.
Johnson notified the local financial institutions of the situation so that county employees who attempted to cash their “paper” checks dated Jan. 8 would be honored on Jan. 5.
“Donna was on the phone for hours trying to work everything out,” Croy said.
The county clerk said that as soon as the second direct deposit was posted to the employee’s account on Jan. 8, it was immediately withdrawn and redeposited into the county’s payroll account.
“Many of our employees could not wait until Monday. They needed to have access to their pay and many have automatic payments that come out on the day they get paid which would have caused their accounts to be overdrawn,” Croy said.
The county pays its staff every two weeks and the payroll is processed and managed by Accounting Manager Johnson, according to the county clerk. According to Croy, this type situation has never happened before.
The payroll error was not discussed by the Grady County Commission during its Jan. 16 public meeting, but according to the county clerk, the members of the board were verbally notified of the situation.
Johnson and Croy are splitting the duties of county administrator while the search for a new administrator takes place. To compensate them, the county is paying each an additional $500 per week.