OC Consulting is the practice of Dott. Olindo Cervi, economist and IT systems specialist, open in Bologna since January 2012. It sits between two worlds that rarely speak to each other: the settled methods of Italian administration, and the tooling now reshaping them, artificial intelligence included. This page says who the firm is, what it specialises in, and just as plainly what it is not.
Dott. Olindo Cervi is an economist who spent years in information technology at IBM before opening this practice. Read as a biography that is merely unusual. Read as a qualification for the work that arrives here now, it is close to the whole point, because the Italian administration a client has to deal with in 2026 is not the one the textbooks describe. It is a set of interlocking systems: invoices moving as structured files through the exchange system of the Agenzia delle Entrate, filings transmitted telematically, taxpayer positions held in portals reachable only with the right credentials, records pre-filled by the authority before anyone has confirmed they are correct.
An office that knows the obligation but not the machinery spends its days retyping figures between systems and loses hours to errors that were introduced by the copying itself. A supplier that knows the machinery but has never had to file anything automates whatever is easiest to automate, which is rarely the thing that costs the client money. Holding both at once is not a marketing position. It is what determines whether the answer you get is the correct one or merely a confident one.
For a foreign client the practical consequence is narrow and useful. The same office reads the Italian document, works out what it does to your position, files what has to be filed, and then builds the small procedure that stops the same question returning next year in a slightly different envelope.
The practice describes itself as a bridge between the old world of administration and the new one, artificial intelligence included, and that description has to survive contact with actual work. In practice it means three specialisms, each of which turns out to be partly an information problem once you are inside it. A collection position is a dating exercise over documents nobody has assembled. An accounting year is a flow of data that has to arrive in the right form on fixed dates. An automation project is an accounting duty written down precisely enough that part of it can be handed over safely.
Assessment notices, collection folders, instalment plans and time limits. What is still enforceable, what has lapsed, what can be negotiated and what should simply be paid before it grows.
Bookkeeping and its review, closings, financial statements and the Italian returns owed by residents and non residents alike, including the property and VAT positions that come with them.
The repetitive half of administration handed to a supervised procedure, built from duties the firm has had to discharge itself and therefore aware of where a machine must stop.
The practice opened in January 2012 and has been run from Bologna ever since. What it does has shifted over those years, mostly because the obligations themselves moved from paper into systems, and because the clients moved as well: a base that began locally is now substantially foreign, people and companies whose interests are in Italy and whose lives are not.
The office is in Piazza Malpighi, in the centre of Bologna, and it works by appointment only. That is not exclusivity, it is preparation. An appointment means the file has been read before you sit down and the hour belongs to your questions rather than to somebody looking for a folder.
Piazza Malpighi 7, 40123 Bologna (BO), Italy. By appointment only, Monday to Friday, 8:30 to 12:30 and 15:00 to 19:00. Closed on Saturday and Sunday.
+39 379 1013938 during office hours. Outside them, writing works better, and a document attached to the message works better still.
Dott. Olindo Cervi operates through C&B Consulting SRLS, same address, tax code and VAT number 04872540408. Invoices and engagement letters carry that name.
For matters that need a lawyer, the firm works with the law office of Avv. Paola Monaldi, Corso della Repubblica 79, 47121 Forlì (FC), engaged by the client directly and separately.
The work is concentrated on people and companies who deal with Italy from outside it, and on Italian businesses with foreign owners who want their administration to stop consuming a day a week. What those situations share is not their subject matter but their shape: an obligation exists, nothing has told the person it applies to them, and the documents that would settle the question are written in a register that does not translate comfortably.
It is equally useful to say who this office is not for, because a mismatched engagement wastes a year of somebody's attention before anyone admits it.
Rental income, IMU and waste tax, the return that a property produces even when it stays empty, and the taxation of a sale.
Codice fiscale, partita IVA, the choice of tax regime and the social contributions that follow it, which are often the larger number.
Direct VAT registration or a fiscal representative, electronic invoicing duties, periodic filings and the reporting attached to them.
The succession filing, the cadastral transfer, the frozen account and the property that cannot be sold until the paperwork catches up.
Assessment notices and collection folders that have been arriving for years, often to an address the person no longer uses.
The ordinary accounting year, run properly, with the repetitive part progressively handed to a procedure somebody still supervises.
If what is wanted is a name at the bottom of figures prepared elsewhere and never examined, this is the wrong office.
Files where the answer has already been decided and the documents are expected to arrange themselves around it are declined, politely and early.
Where a matter is fundamentally legal, it needs a lawyer first. We will say so and work alongside one rather than around one.
A large international group with continuous statutory audit requirements is better served elsewhere, and being told that early is worth more than being accepted.
This is an economics and accounting practice. It is not a member of the Italian association of chartered accountants and it does not hold itself out as one, in any language, on any page of this site. The correct description of Dott. Cervi is economist and IT systems specialist, and it is used everywhere precisely because a vaguer word would be more convenient.
The firm also provides no legal representation. It does not give legal advice, draft pleadings, file with a court or appear before an authority. What it produces is economic and accounting analysis that a lawyer then uses, and keeping that line visible is what makes the analysis usable when it has to be read by somebody who was not in the room.
Neither of those limits narrows the ordinary work by much, and stating them costs nothing that is worth having. A client who knows exactly what an office can and cannot do never discovers the boundary at the worst possible moment, which is the week a deadline falls.
The description used throughout, including in Italian and Russian. No claim to an enrolment, a licence or a professional register is made anywhere.
Economic and accounting analysis is the product. The legal work belongs to the lawyer you engage, and the two engagements are stated separately in writing.
You are told at the start, not halfway through, and the matter is passed to somebody who holds it rather than reshaped until it appears to fit.
Where a tool is genuinely needed we name it and say what it costs. Official duties and third party fees are passed on at cost.
No, and it is worth saying directly. The firm is an economics and accounting practice. Dott. Cervi is an economist and IT systems specialist, he is not a member of the Italian association of chartered accountants and he does not hold himself out as one. In daily terms this changes very little: bookkeeping, closings, returns, VAT positions, collection matters, economic analysis and automation are all carried out here. Where a statutory role requires an enrolment the firm does not hold, you are told at the outset and the matter goes to somebody who holds it, rather than being quietly stretched to fit.
Because Italian administration became software and then nobody told the taxpayers. Invoices travel as structured files through the exchange system, filings are telematic, positions live in portals, and a growing share of what an office does consists of moving data correctly between systems that were never designed to speak to each other. A practice that understands the obligation but not the machinery carrying it spends its time retyping, and a supplier that understands the machinery but not the obligation automates the wrong thing.
That depends on the year, and the honest answer is given before an engagement rather than during it. The firm is small on purpose, because continuity on a file is the thing foreign clients most often lack. A recurring accounting year, a group of Italian obligations for a non resident owner, a collection position or an automation project are all comfortably within it. A matter that would need more hands than exist here is refused, and we say why.
Avv. Paola Monaldi is engaged by you directly and separately, and only when a matter genuinely needs a lawyer: a challenge to be filed, a proceeding to be defended, an act to be served. Our part remains the economic and accounting analysis that the legal work rests on. You are told before anyone is involved what each role is, so that nothing is billed twice and nobody assumes the other side is handling it.
The obligations moved from paper to systems, which is the single biggest change: electronic invoicing, telematic filings, pre-filled returns and taxpayer positions visible in portals. The client base changed as well, from local to substantially foreign, which is why these pages exist in three languages. What has not changed is the unit of work, which is still one file, read from its documents, by the person who will have to explain it.
The order of work, the perimeter, the calendar and how an engagement ends.
The work done alongside a lawyer, and the line kept between the two roles.
Piazza Malpighi by appointment, and remote work for everyone else.
Whether the firm is the right one for your situation is usually settled by a single document and ten lines of context. If it is not the right one, you will be told that too. The first reading carries no obligation and no fee.