ERP Audit Consultant, Italy

A system review, not a revisione

In Italy the word audit quickly suggests the revisore or the board of statutory auditors, so I am precise about what this is. An ERP audit looks at how the software is configured, controlled and used: whether it reflects the way the company sells, buys, produces and collects today, whether its controls prevent obvious errors, and whether management can rely on its reports. It does not certify accounts, give an opinion on financial statements or decide tax treatment. Those remain with your revisore, your commercialista and your tax advisor.

Italian owners tend to ask for this kind of review at turning points:

• A generational handover, when the new management wants to know what it has inherited.
• A private equity investor or foreign parent asking whether the system can support group reporting.
• A software house proposing an expensive upgrade or a move to its newer product.
• A long-serving administrator about to retire, taking undocumented knowledge with them.

The review combines interviews, walkthroughs of real tasks and read-only inspection of configuration and transactions. Findings are tested with the people concerned before they reach the report, so nobody is surprised at the readout. My general ERP health check page explains the underlying method in more depth.

Is anyone watching the exchange system notifications?

Electronic invoicing through the Sistema di Interscambio works on notifications: a file is accepted and delivered, rejected, or accepted but not delivered to the recipient directly. In a system that has run for years, the question is less whether the flow exists and more whether anyone acts on what comes back. I take samples across a few months and trace them:

• Rejected outgoing invoices: were they corrected and resent, and does the numbering still hold?
• Invoices that could not be delivered directly: was the customer informed, and is the recipient code or PEC address now fixed in the customer master?
• Incoming supplier files: was each one registered in the ledger, or are some still sitting in the intermediary's portal?
• Document types used for reverse charge, self-billing and foreign purchases: are they applied consistently?

The output is a list of observations, not a compliance opinion. Where a pattern touches tax treatment, such as how integration documents for foreign purchases are produced, I write it as a question for your commercialista, who decides what is correct and whether anything needs regularizing. Where the cause is in the system, such as a missing alert or an incomplete customer field, it goes into the fix list. For the background on how this flow should work in a new system, see my Italian implementation page.

Preservation, collections and the files beside the ERP

Digital preservation is easy to forget because nothing visible breaks when it fails. I check whether invoices and their notifications actually reach the preservation service, whether a gap opened when the intermediary or software version changed, and whether finance can retrieve an old invoice with its receipts when asked. Retention periods and the preservation contract itself are matters for your commercialista and the provider; the audit shows whether the trail is complete.

Collections come next. Many Italian companies still rely on bank receipt collections, and the ERP should present them to the bank, record the outcome and bring unpaid returns back as open items with their charges. I trace a sample of due dates through that cycle and compare the ERP's aged receivables with whatever list the credit controller really uses.

Then the side files. Typical candidates include:

• Agent commission calculations kept in a spreadsheet because the system rules were never finished.
• Material at outside workshops tracked by email rather than as stock at a third-party location.
• A margin report rebuilt each month from exports because the cost data in the ERP is not trusted.

Each side file is recorded with its owner and the reason it exists. Most point to a configuration or master data fix rather than a new system, which is where ERP optimization takes over.

Super-users, supplier access and segregation of duties

Owner-led companies often grant broad rights for convenience. The owner and the head of administration can do everything, the software house keeps a permanent remote connection, and the warehouse shares one login. Over time that makes it hard to know who changed a price, a customer's bank details or a posted document.

I export users and roles and test them against duties your management agrees should be separate:

Access to payroll and personal data gets particular attention because of GDPR. I note which roles can see salary journals, employee records and customer contact data, and leave legal interpretation to your data protection advisor.

The same export shows license usage. Users billed but inactive, modules carried in the annual maintenance fee but never used, and seats shared by several people are listed so you can discuss them with the software house on facts.

Payroll journal, customizations and the report you receive

Payroll in most Italian companies stays with the labor consultant, who sends a journal each month. I check how it reaches the ERP, which accounts and cost centers it hits, who imports it and whether anyone reconciles it to the payroll summary. Contribution and withholding questions stay with the labor consultant.

The customization inventory is often the most useful part for owners. Each custom object gets a line: what it does, who asked for it, whether it is used, whether it is documented and how it would behave in an upgrade. Some can be retired; others protect a real way of working and should be kept deliberately.

The report then brings everything together: a summary for the owners, findings ranked by business risk, a separate list of questions for the commercialista and labor consultant, and a suggested order of work. I present it in a remote readout where the people involved can question it. The work runs online in the Italian morning; the owners can ask for an in-person meeting by arrangement.

If the findings show a deeper problem than tuning can solve, the Italian ERP rescue page describes what happens next. If the conclusion is that the software has reached its limit, my ERP selection work in Italy starts from the audit evidence. The Italy hub and my ERP consultant page for Italy cover the rest.