ERP Audit Consultant, New Zealand

A system review, not an audit of your accounts

Some New Zealand companies have their financial statements audited because of their size, ownership or sector. Many others work with a chartered accountant who prepares annual accounts and tax returns without a formal audit. Either way, that work concerns the accounts. An ERP audit concerns the system that produces the data behind them, and the two should not be confused.

The questions an ERP audit answers are operational:

• Does the way the system is set up still fit how the business sells, buys, stocks and pays people?
• Where does data get keyed twice, moved by spreadsheet or fixed by hand?
• Can the figures in the monthly report and the GST return be traced back to transactions?
• Who can change what, and would anyone notice?
• Are you paying for apps and seats nobody uses?

None of this gives an opinion on your accounts, and nothing in the report should be presented to a bank or an investor as assurance. What it does give is an honest view of where the system helps, where it gets in the way and what to do about it. If your accountant or auditor has raised concerns about controls or record-keeping, the review gives you a practical way to respond. The underlying approach is my ERP health check.

GST setup and the path to the return

When GST returns take longer than they should, the cause is rarely the return itself. It sits in how GST is applied when transactions are created, across the ledger and every app that feeds it. I follow sample transactions from source to return to see where things go astray.

Points I typically examine include:

• Default GST treatment on customers, suppliers and items, and whether zero-rated exports and exempt supplies are coded consistently.
• How imports are recorded, including GST charged at the border on goods brought into the country.
• Whether apps such as ecommerce, point of sale or expense tools pass GST correctly or post totals that need adjusting.
• Manual journals that touch GST accounts, who posts them and whether they are reviewed.
• Whether the GST report agrees with the ledger and with what was filed with Inland Revenue.

Every observation lists example transactions and what your accountant needs to decide. If a pattern may have affected past returns, I say so plainly, and your accountant decides whether anything needs correcting.

Where the business sends or receives e-invoices through Peppol, I also check whether incoming invoices land in the ledger cleanly or still get re-keyed. For broader requirements on that front, see the ERP business analyst page for New Zealand.

Payroll, leave and payday filing connections

Payroll in New Zealand usually runs through a dedicated provider that handles payday filing with Inland Revenue, KiwiSaver deductions and leave. The ERP sees the result as a journal, and sometimes as employee or timesheet data passed back and forth. Leave calculations carry their own legal complexity in New Zealand, which is one more reason to keep a close eye on the data flowing between payroll and finance.

The audit does not check pay calculations or entitlements; those sit with your payroll provider and, if questions arise, a specialist in employment law. What it does check is the hand-off:

• whether payroll journals post to the right accounts, departments and jobs;
• whether PAYE, KiwiSaver and leave liability accounts reconcile from one month to the next;
• whether timesheet or job hours entered in one system match those paid in the other;
• who can change employee bank accounts, and whether that change is checked.

Findings here explain many puzzling reports: job margins that look too good, wage costs landing in the wrong department, or a leave provision that only gets corrected at year-end. They are often among the cheapest problems to fix once the cause is visible. Where hours flow from a job management app, the review also shows whether labor cost reaches each job promptly enough to support quoting and pricing decisions.

Apps, integrations and entities across the Tasman

A New Zealand business can easily end up with a long list of connected apps, each chosen for a good reason at the time. Over the years, connectors are added, owners leave and nobody remembers which app is the master for customers, products or prices. The audit builds a single map:

• each app, what it does and who owns it;
• what data it sends to the ledger or ERP and what it receives;
• how failures surface, if they surface at all;
• what staff do by hand when a sync stops;
• which spreadsheets exist to bridge gaps between apps.

That map often shows that two apps are doing overlapping jobs, that a connector is posting summarized entries that make drill-down impossible, or that a single person holds the knowledge needed to keep everything running. Each of these is a finding with a recommended change.

If the group also has an Australian company, the review extends to how both entities are set up: separate GST and payroll arrangements, currency handling between NZD and AUD, intercompany charges and how consolidated figures are produced. Tax questions for each country go to the relevant advisor. When the map suggests the business has outgrown a collection of apps, the findings feed directly into a decision about a broader ERP. Integration fixes are described under ERP integration.

Controls, reports and the results you receive

Small finance teams cannot always separate duties the way a large company would. One person may enter supplier bills, set up new suppliers and prepare the payment batch. That is a normal situation, not a failing, but it needs sensible compensating checks: an owner reviewing new suppliers and bank detail changes, a second approval on payment batches, or a regular report of manual journals. The audit identifies the real risk points and suggests checks that fit the size of your team. Personal information held in the system is noted, with obligations under the Privacy Act left to your legal advisor.

Reports come last. The figures owners and the bank rely on, such as margin, stock value, debtors and cash, are traced to source, and anything that needs adjustment every month is recorded with its cause.

The results arrive as an ordered action list with a short summary at the top, discussed on a video call before it is finalized. A healthy system that staff underuse points toward ERP optimization as the follow-on. If the review shows a project that never really settled after go-live, see ERP rescue in New Zealand.

The audit is delivered remotely, with live sessions in your afternoon, when the working days overlap, and recorded walkthroughs for the rest. Visits are possible by arrangement. For the full range of advisory work, see my New Zealand ERP consulting or the New Zealand overview.