Absorbing a book of Italian employees from an acquired EOR

You acquired another provider. Part of the deal is a group of Italian employees you have never run payroll for. The client contracts transfer. The people keep working. Nobody wants a missed payslip.

This is how the first weeks usually go when the work is done well.

Before day one: freeze the facts  

Do not start with systems. Start with a single snapshot of what the seller actually holds for each employee.

Ask for the same set of items every time:

• The signed employment contract and any later amendments.
• The applicable national collective agreement and the level assigned to the role.
• Current gross pay, allowances and benefits, line by line.
• Leave balances, including accrued holiday and permits.
• Accrued severance entitlement.
• Open items: sick leave, parental leave, ongoing disputes, pending expense claims.
• The social security and tax registrations tied to each employer.

If a document is missing, log it. Do not guess. A gap you record on day one is a question. A gap you find at the first payroll is an error.

Early weeks: reconcile, do not migrate  

The temptation is to load everything into your platform and move on. Resist it. First reconcile.

Take the last payslips from the seller and rebuild them in your own engine from the contract data. Compare gross to net, line by line. Differences point to one of three causes: a contract term nobody recorded, a calculation rule your engine handles differently, or a past error.

Each difference needs an owner and a decision. Keep a simple register. Record the employee, the difference, the cause, and who approved the fix.

Pay special attention to severance accruals. This is the balance that moves with the employee and that is hardest to rebuild later. Get the seller to confirm the figure in writing.

Employer change and what it triggers  

How the employees move matters. If the employer changes, the transfer must respect continuity of service. Seniority, accrued rights and the collective agreement carry over. Your contract templates must not quietly reset them.

Check that registrations with the social security and tax authorities are updated for the new employer. Check that insurance cover against workplace accidents continues without a gap. Confirm who files what, and when, during the handover so that both providers do not file, or neither does.

Communicate early and in plain language  

Employees care about three things: will I be paid on time, will my terms change, and who do I call.

Send a short message from the client and from you. Say who the new provider is. Say that pay terms stay the same unless the contract says otherwise. Give one support channel. Write it in Italian and in English.

Do not promise a new portal experience on day one. Promise the payslip and a person who answers.

The first payroll under your name  

Treat the first run as a parallel run. Both sides calculate. Both sides compare. Only then do you release.

A short checklist helps:

• Input cut-off agreed with the seller and the client.
• Variable pay and overtime confirmed by the client in writing.
• Net pay totals compared against the rebuilt payslips.
• Payment file checked against bank details held on record.
• Statutory payments scheduled with the right employer identity.

If a number does not reconcile, hold that employee and release the rest. A late correction to one person is better than a wrong payment to everyone.

Clean up after the first cycle  

Once the first cycle is out, the work changes. You now fix the structural issues the reconciliation exposed.

Standardise contract templates. Align job titles and levels with the collective agreement. Retire spreadsheets the seller used for allowances. Move benefits into your system so they are calculated, not typed.

Then review the client side. Some clients inherit habits from the old provider: late inputs, verbal approvals, special cases. Agree a clear calendar and a single approval route. That protects the next cycle.

What partnership teams should watch  

The commercial team often sees the deal as a transfer of revenue. Operations sees it as a transfer of risk. Both are right.

The risk sits in the data. Employees will not forgive a payroll error because the provider changed. Clients will not either. The speed of the handover matters less than the quality of the first payslip.

Set expectations with the client early. Tell them what you need, when, and what happens if it is late. A clean handover depends on their inputs as much as on yours.

A structured data exchange makes all of this easier. When both providers agree on the fields, the formats and the sign-off steps before the transfer, reconciliation becomes a check instead of a rescue.

Partnership teams can request our data-exchange specification.