ERP Audit Consultant, France

Neither the commissaire aux comptes nor the expert-comptable

In France the word audit is closely tied to the statutory auditor, the commissaire aux comptes, whose role is defined by law and who audits the annual accounts of the companies that must appoint one. The expert-comptable, for its part, keeps or reviews the books and often prepares tax returns. An ERP audit is a different exercise. It asks whether the configuration and daily use of your system still fit the way the company operates, and whether the data it produces stands up to scrutiny.

The request typically comes at a turning point. A newly appointed finance director needs to know what she or he has inherited. The integrator that delivered the project has moved on. The e-invoicing reform forces a look at master data and invoice flows. Or management simply notices that month-end keeps getting longer and nobody trusts the margin report.

I review the system remotely through walkthroughs with key users, configuration and data exports and samples of real entries. Findings are written as cause, business effect and recommended action. Anything bearing on tax, labor law or personal data is handed over as an open question to the professional entitled to answer it. My ERP health check service explains the underlying method; below are the points where French practice changes the emphasis.

The FEC as a diagnostic tool

The fichier des écritures comptables is the standardized export of accounting entries that the tax administration can request during an inspection. Whether your file meets the formal requirements is for your expert-comptable to judge. For an audit, though, producing a trial FEC is one of the most efficient ways to see the state of a French ledger, because it exposes everything at once.

When I read a trial file, I look for warning signs rather than compliance: entries without a document reference or document date, journals used for purposes they were not designed for, gaps or restarts in sequential numbering, manual entries concentrated at period end, accounts created outside the logic of the chart and customer or supplier sub-accounts that do not match master data. I also note how long the export takes to produce and whether someone has to correct it by hand before it leaves the building.

Each pattern points back to a cause in configuration, data or practice. A journal misused for bank charges may come from a missing bank rule; entries without references may come from an interface that posts summaries. The findings go to your expert-comptable with the evidence attached, and the agreed fixes go into the plan. If the platform is Odoo, my Odoo Accounting page for France covers the field-level checks in more depth.

Readiness for structured invoicing and e-reporting

Under the French reform, invoices between businesses are to travel in structured electronic form via approved platforms, and certain transaction and payment data is to be reported to the tax administration. Your expert-comptable is the right person to confirm the scope and timing for your company. An audit can show how far your current system is from what that change will demand.

I look at the data and flows that structured invoicing depends on:

• Customer and supplier records: are company identifiers present and correct, and are French and foreign customers clearly distinguished?
• Invoice content: do layouts and data carry the mentions your accountant specifies, and do credit notes refer to the invoices they correct?
• Difficult cases: invoices with several VAT rates, deposits, partial deliveries and mixed goods and services.
• The route: whether your ERP already connects to an approved platform, through what kind of connector, and who owns rejected or returned invoices.
• Incoming invoices: how supplier invoices would enter the system and be matched to orders and receipts.

The result is a readiness list ranked by effort and risk, which you can hand to your integrator or platform provider. It does not decide your obligations; it shows what work stands between your system and the reform. Where the gaps are mostly in data and process, my ERP optimization page describes how they are usually closed.

Lettrage, TVA settings and the payroll handoff

Lettrage, matching invoices with the payments that settle them, is a good measure of how well a French ledger is maintained. I age the unmatched items on customer and supplier accounts and trace a sample to understand why they remain open: open items migrated as balances, partial payments, payments received without a reference, or matching rules nobody set up. Each cause has a different fix, and some of them free hours of finance time every month.

TVA settings come next. Service businesses often account for VAT on receipts rather than on invoicing, and many companies also deal with intra-EU acquisitions, imports and reverse charge. I prepare a pack of tax codes, sample entries and return mappings so your expert-comptable can confirm the setup or ask for changes. The judgment remains theirs.

Payroll is usually run by a payroll provider or by the accounting firm, which also handles the social declarations. Only the resulting journals reach the ERP, so my review covers their import route, the fit of accounts and analytical axes, who reviews them and who can read salary data in the system. The provider's own work stays outside the audit. Where interfaces with banks, a webshop or a CRM are involved, I record how failures are noticed and how much rekeying happens, because each manual step is a place where errors enter.

User rights, the CSE question, data and licenses

Access rights are reviewed against the duties a French company would expect to keep apart: maintaining supplier bank details, approving invoices, issuing payment files, posting manual entries and changing prices or credit limits. Each clash, inactive account or shared login appears in the findings alongside the change that would remove it. I also check whether posted entries can be altered or deleted, and by whom, which is a question your expert-comptable will care about.

Two further topics are recorded but not decided. First, if your company has a CSE and the system logs user activity or offers reports that could show individual output, management may need to consider whether staff representatives should be informed or consulted; that is for HR and your lawyer. Second, under GDPR and French guidance from the CNIL, retention periods and access to employee and customer data are decisions for your data protection contact. I document what the system holds, who can see it and how long it stays.

Licenses close the review: departed users, oversized licenses and modules never used. The report opens with an overall assessment, ranks findings by risk and effort, and groups questions for your expert-comptable, lawyer and data protection contact. The presentation takes place by video call, and a visit can be arranged if it adds something. If the system turns out to be a project still in difficulty, the ERP rescue page for France explains the next step. See also my ERP consultant page for France and the France overview.