Why some federal employees might not get paid Thursday

Got a happy hour planned Thursday night with a federal employee? Bring your wallet. Federal workers due to get paid on Thursday could see delays in the money being credited to their accounts.

The Bureau of Fiscal Services, an arm of the U.S. Treasury, has sent an alert to banks about a payroll processing problem involving savings credit codes being used for checking accounts and checking credit codes for savings accounts.

David Glaser, vice president at National Capital Bank in Washington, confirmed his bank got notice of the problem and said the same snag occurred last week. He said when a direct deposit arrives with an incorrect transaction code the deposit does not automatically post to a customer’s account.

Last week the bank was able to manually change the codes for about two dozen of its federal employee customers. Glaser was not sure how many customers could be impacted in the second round.

And what about bigger banks with thousands or tens of thousands of customers on the federal payroll?

According to a report today by bankersonline.com, which obtained a copy of the alert, the Bureau said: “To mitigate the impact of this problem on payees, the U.S. Department of the Treasury is requesting, to the extent possible, that financial institutions identify and post these transactions to the appropriate checking or savings account.”

I’ve reached out to the Fiscal Services Bureau for comment. The agency was created two years ago with the consolidation of the Bureau of the Public Debt and the Financial Management Service.

The new bureau operates the federal government’s collections and deposit systems, overseeing a daily cash flow of over $89 billion.

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