Moving an employee from a client entity to your EOR in Italy: handing over balances and history

A client already employs someone in Italy through its own entity. Now it wants that person on your EOR platform. The contract is easy to draft. The hard part is the history that travels with the employee.

This article covers what must be handed over, who owns each item, and where transfers usually go wrong.

Why the handover matters  

In Italy, an employee’s rights build up over time. Severance accrual, paid leave, seniority and contribution records all belong to the person, not to the employer. If the new employer starts from zero, the employee loses something real. Payroll then has to fix it later, and the fix is rarely clean.

So the transfer is not a new hire with a copy of the old contract. It is a continuation of a record. Your platform needs that record in a form it can load without retyping.

What to collect from the client entity  

Ask for these items before the transfer is agreed, not after.

• Severance accrual (TFR). The balance to date, the revaluation applied, and whether the employee chose a pension fund or left it with the employer. This item carries real money and needs a clear owner.
• Leave balances. Paid leave accrued and not taken, plus the separate hour-based permits that many national contracts grant. Ask for both, in hours and in days.
• Extra monthly payments. Where the national contract provides year-end or summer payments, the accrued portion that is not yet paid.
• Seniority. The original start date and any earlier service the employer recognised. This drives notice periods and some contract rights.
• Contract data. National contract applied, job level, working hours, and any individual agreements on top of it.
• Tax and contribution data. Year-to-date earnings, withholdings, contributions paid, and any adjustments pending at year end.
• Absence history. Sickness, maternity or parental leave, and any ongoing case with the social security institute.
• Benefits and deductions. Company car, meal vouchers, loans, salary garnishments, supplementary health cover.

Who is responsible for what  

Decide this in writing. We see the same gaps again and again.

The client entity is responsible for the accuracy of what it supplies up to the transfer date. It also settles anything it chooses to pay out at exit, such as untaken leave, if that is the agreed route.

The EOR is responsible for loading the data correctly, running payroll from the transfer date, and keeping the record continuous afterwards.

The employee should receive a statement of the balances carried over. Silence here is how disputes start months later.

Two routes, different data needs  

There are broadly two ways to move the person. Which one applies is a legal decision for the client and its advisers, and your platform should support both.

In the first route, the employment continues and the balances move with the contract. The EOR needs the full list above, because it inherits everything.

In the second route, the old employment ends and a new one begins, with the old balances settled at exit. The EOR needs less historic data, but it still needs seniority and year-to-date tax figures, and it must check that the settlement matches the carried-over statement.

In both cases the cut-off date must be exact. A payroll cycle that straddles the transfer is where double payments and missing payments appear.

Where transfers break  

• Balances in the wrong unit. Leave in days from one system and hours from another gives a silent error.
• Severance accrual without its history. A single figure with no revaluation trail cannot be audited.
• Year-to-date tax split badly. If the two employers report different parts of the year, the employee’s annual statement must still add up.
• Seniority reset by default. Many payroll tools set it to the system start date. Override it at load.
• No sign-off. Nobody confirms the opening balances, so the first payslip becomes the first review.

A practical sequence  

First, agree the route and the cut-off date. Second, request the data set in a fixed structure, with units stated. Third, load it into a staging record and compare it to the client’s last payslip. Fourth, send the opening-balance statement to the client and the employee for confirmation. Fifth, run the first payroll from the confirmed figures only.

Keep the source documents with the record. When a question comes up a year later, you can answer from the file instead of asking the client to search for it.

What this means for platform teams  

If you resell or white-label EOR coverage in Italy, the handover is part of your product, not a one-off task. Partners who define the data structure up front onboard transferring employees faster and with fewer corrections. The structure is the same each time, which means it can be automated.

Partnership teams: request the data-exchange specification.