ERP Business Analyst, Ireland

Requirements for Irish VAT, listings and Revenue reporting

Irish companies file VAT returns with Revenue online and, when they sell goods or services to businesses elsewhere in the EU, generally report those sales in a separate listing as well. An ERP only produces correct returns and listings if each transaction carries the right tax code from the moment it is entered, so I treat tax as a requirements topic rather than a configuration detail left for later.

Working from the treatments your tax advisor has confirmed, I write one requirement per scenario: domestic sales at each rate you charge, zero-rated and exempt supplies, sales of goods and services to EU businesses, imports, and purchases where you self-account. Each requirement states what the invoice must show, which return or listing it feeds and how a tester will check it. I never decide a treatment myself; that remains your advisor's call.

The same discipline applies to electronic invoicing. Irish public bodies already accept structured electronic invoices, and EU policy points toward more structured invoicing and digital reporting for trade between businesses. I record the ability to issue and receive structured invoices as a requirement with a priority you choose, so the platform decision does not overlook it. My ERP requirements gathering page explains the method in more detail.

Construction, RCT and project-based businesses

Irish contractors in construction, and in the few other sectors covered by Relevant Contracts Tax, carry obligations a generic ERP template will not cover. A principal contractor typically notifies Revenue about relevant contracts and payments to subcontractors and then applies the deduction Revenue authorizes. Your tax advisor determines whether RCT covers your contracts and how. I then make sure the system and the process around it support whatever they confirm.

In the BRD that becomes a set of specific statements: subcontractor records hold the data the RCT process needs, a payment run cannot release money to a subcontractor before the notification step has happened, deductions post to the correct accounts, and a report reconciles what was paid, deducted and notified. Where the ERP will not handle the Revenue interaction directly, I document the hand-off to whichever RCT tool or service you use.

Project-based businesses also need job costing that finance trusts: budgets, commitments, labor and subcontract costs by project, and valuations or stage billing that follow the contract. I map that flow with the quantity surveyors and the finance team in the same session, because their versions of a project rarely match. The ERP process mapping service describes how those workshops run.

Goods crossing to Northern Ireland, Great Britain and the EU

Trade across the island and the Irish Sea raises requirements that are easy to miss in a vendor demo. Goods moving between Ireland and Great Britain involve customs formalities, Northern Ireland follows its own post-Brexit arrangements for goods, and services are treated differently again. Your customs broker and tax advisor set the rules; I make sure each scenario becomes a written requirement with test data attached.

Typical items in an Irish BRD include customer and supplier records holding the identifiers your advisor says each scenario needs, sales orders carrying commodity codes, country of origin and Incoterms where customs data is required, landed cost allocation for imports from Great Britain, and price lists maintained separately in euro and sterling. I also record how customs declarations are prepared today, whether by a broker, a freight forwarder or in-house, and what data the ERP must pass to them.

Each item is scored against every shortlisted platform in the fit-gap matrix, because the answers can differ: one system may cover landed cost as standard while another needs an extension or a specialist add-on. Seeing those differences in one table makes the decision clearer than any brochure. The Odoo and Dynamics 365 pages for Ireland cover platform-specific checks.

Interviewing Irish teams and the group they report to

In an Irish subsidiary, the people who know the process and the people who approve the budget often sit in different countries. A requirements exercise that only talks to the local finance team misses the parent's consolidation calendar and IT standards; one driven only by head office misses how invoices, stock and collections really work in Ireland. I plan interviews for both groups from the start.

Local sessions cover the day-to-day: who raises orders, how credit is checked, how goods are received, how the month-end checklist runs and which reports the Irish directors rely on. Group sessions cover the mapping between charts of accounts, intercompany charging, reporting deadlines, security rules and any platform standards the parent already holds. Conflicts between the two views go into a decision log with a named owner, rather than being quietly settled in wording nobody re-reads.

Every session runs remotely in English and is booked into the Irish morning, while my afternoon in India leaves room for live work. Draft maps and requirement sections are shared between sessions so reviewers can comment in writing. If you have not yet decided how much outside help you need, the freelance ERP consultant page for Ireland sets out the engagement options, and the Ireland ERP consultant page covers the wider project.