ERP Audit Consultant, Australia

Not a financial audit, and not a BAS review

In Australia, several professionals already look at your numbers. A registered company auditor may audit your financial report if your company is required to have one. A tax agent prepares and lodges income tax returns, and a BAS agent or your accountant handles activity statements. Each of them works under their own professional obligations and reaches their own conclusions.

An ERP audit sits beside that work rather than inside it. I do not express an opinion on your accounts, lodge anything with the ATO or decide how GST applies to a transaction. What I examine is the machine that produces the numbers those professionals rely on:

• the way processes are configured compared with how staff actually work;
• the paths that tax, payroll, bank and stock data take into the ledger;
• the permissions people hold and the approval rules in force;
• the apps, connectors and spreadsheets that fill the gaps;
• the reports directors use to run the business.

Where something I find could affect tax or the accounts, I document it with transactions as evidence and hand it to the right advisor to decide. That division keeps the review useful without stepping into work that belongs to a registered professional. The general structure follows my ERP health check service.

Following GST from transaction to BAS

When the BAS has to be rebuilt in a spreadsheet each period, the problem usually starts much earlier, in how GST codes are assigned when transactions are entered. The review follows that path from beginning to end using real transactions.

The output is a list of observations, each with the transactions involved and the question for your advisor. Patterns that may have affected earlier activity statements are flagged plainly. Whether any revision is needed, and how, is a decision for your BAS or tax agent, not for me.

If the business also receives or sends invoices through Peppol, I check how e-invoices enter and leave the ledger and whether staff still re-key them.

Payroll, STP and super: checking the seams

Australian payroll carries more moving parts than most: award interpretation, Single Touch Payroll reporting, superannuation guarantee contributions, PAYG withholding and leave accruals. Whether payroll runs inside the ERP or in a dedicated system, the audit focuses on the seams between payroll and finance, because that is where quiet errors collect.

The questions I work through include:

• Do payroll journals post to the right accounts, sites and cost centers, or does someone re-map them each pay run?
• Do PAYG withholding and super liabilities on the balance sheet clear when payments are made, or do small balances accumulate?
• Are leave provisions in the ledger updated from payroll, or adjusted by hand at year-end?
• Is labor cost reaching jobs or projects correctly, so job margins are reliable?
• Who can change employee bank details, and is that change reviewed?

I do not check award interpretation or pay calculations; that is the job of your payroll provider and, where needed, an employment advisor. What the audit does is show whether the payroll data that reaches the ERP is complete and correctly classified. Findings here often explain why management reports and job costing disagree with what the business expects, and they tend to be cheap to fix once the cause is visible.

Stock, freight and the apps around the ledger

Distance shapes Australian operations. Stock sits in warehouses in different states, much of it imported, and freight is a real share of cost. When an ERP's inventory records drift away from what is physically on the shelf, margins and reorder decisions both suffer.

The stock review looks at adjustment patterns by site, how inter-warehouse transfers are recorded while goods are in transit, how landed costs such as freight, duty and brokerage reach item costs, and whether stocktake results are posted promptly and explained. Sharp or repeated adjustments at one location usually point to a process problem rather than a system fault, and the finding says so.

Around the ledger there is typically a set of connected apps: an ecommerce platform, a job or field service app, an expense tool, a CRM, bank feeds and sometimes an e-invoicing service. I list each one with its owner, what data it sends or receives, how it handles errors and what staff do when it stops syncing. An inventory of spreadsheets used to complete processes sits alongside, because every spreadsheet is a sign of a gap. Integration fixes are covered on my ERP integration page, and warehouse design on ERP for inventory and warehousing.

Access, reporting trust and the results

Two further areas round out the audit. The first is access. I review who can do what, with particular attention to supplier bank detail changes, payment file approval, journal posting and stock write-offs, and I list inactive accounts and shared logins by name. The ERP will also hold personal information about staff and customers; I note where it sits and who can export it, and leave obligations under the Privacy Act to your legal advisor.

The second is reporting. Directors' reports, job margin summaries and stock valuation are traced to the ledger, and anything that needs manual adjustment each month is recorded with its cause.

Results arrive as a prioritized findings list, with a short summary for directors at the front. I walk your team through it before it is finalized, so the conclusions can be tested against what people know. Some findings will be fixed internally, others become a defined piece of work for your partner, and some need a decision from the board. If the system is sound but underused, ERP optimization is the usual next step. If the audit uncovers a project that never properly finished, read about ERP rescue in Australia.

The audit is carried out remotely, with sessions placed in hours that suit your head office whether it sits on the east coast, in Adelaide or in Perth; visits can be arranged. My other services for Australian companies are on ERP consulting in Australia and the Australia hub.