Italian and European measures read against your actual figures before anyone writes a word, so that effort goes only where the requirements are genuinely met. The firm checks the conditions, prepares the file where it fits, and handles the reporting afterwards, which is the stage where most funding is lost.
Public funding is usually sold the wrong way round. A call is published, somebody writes an enthusiastic summary of it, and the applicant is invited to hope. In reality the outcome was largely decided before the call appeared, because the conditions that disqualify an applicant are numbers, and those numbers already sit in the accounts and in the public registers.
So the work starts there. Contribution regularity, size class, sector code, net equity, turnover, aid already received in the last three years: each is checked against the specific measure before anyone writes anything. It takes hours rather than weeks, it is the cheapest part of the exercise, and it decides whether the rest is worth doing.
The second reason to start with the accounts is that they usually need attention anyway. A missing contribution payment, a sector code that no longer describes what the business does, a balance sheet never filed: these block applications, and most of them can be corrected if they are found early. Found during an open call with a closing date, they cannot.
Contribution regularity, size classification, sector code, equity position and aid already received. Five numbers that between them exclude a large share of applicants before anything is written.
A few hours against your last accounts and the text of the measure. Set against a refused application, or a revoked grant, it is not a real expense.
Say it, name the requirement that fails, and say whether it is fixable and by when. A no with a reason is useful. A no without one is a lost month.
Build the file around the figures that were checked, so the application and the accounts say the same thing. Discrepancies between the two are a common ground for exclusion.
Calls differ in their subject and hardly at all in their architecture. Once you have read a few dozen the conditions sort themselves into a small number of families, and knowing the families is what makes a rapid check possible.
Two of them deserve a warning. The de minimis ceiling counts a single undertaking, a wider notion than a single company that pulls in linked and partner companies, so a group can exhaust its ceiling without any individual company noticing. And where a measure is funded through the European recovery instruments, the do no significant harm condition applies to the project itself and must be demonstrated with documents rather than declared in a sentence.
The certificate of regularity with social security and insurance contributions. Checked automatically, checked again at payment, and an irregularity takes time to clear even when it is fixable.
The European ceiling on small aid, currently three hundred thousand euro per single undertaking over a rolling three year period, from every authority combined.
Where the measure draws on the European recovery funds, the project must not significantly harm the environmental objectives, and that has to be shown with technical documentation.
Micro, small or medium is decided by headcount together with turnover or balance sheet total, with linked companies counted in. Many measures are closed to anything larger.
The sector code registered for the activity must match the sectors the call admits. A code that no longer describes the business is a common and avoidable exclusion.
Positive net equity, a company not in difficulty under the European test, sometimes a minimum turnover or a debt to equity threshold. Read straight from the last approved accounts.
The headline percentage of a measure tells you little until you know what form the support takes, because the three common forms behave completely differently in cash terms. A business with a strong tax position and no cash should not be chasing the same measure as a business with cash and no taxable base.
There is also a timing dimension applicants routinely miss. Most grants are paid after the expenditure has been incurred and reported, so the money has to be found first and recovered afterwards. A measure that is perfect on paper and impossible to pre finance is not a good measure for that applicant.
A grant proper. It is not repaid, but it is normally paid against expenditure already made and reported, so it has to be pre financed, and it can be revoked if the report does not hold.
Borrowed money on better terms than the market, through a reduced rate, a public guarantee or both. The benefit is the difference, the principal still comes back, and the credit assessment is still real.
An amount offset against taxes and contributions due. No cash arrives, so it is worth exactly as much as you have to offset against, and its value depends on your own tax position.
Italian public funding is layered and the layers do not coordinate. A region publishes its own calls on its own schedule, the national administration and its agencies run measures open across the country, and European programmes run on multi year cycles with their own language and their own reporting standards. The same project can often be presented to more than one of them, and the cumulation rules then decide what can actually be combined.
Emilia-Romagna, where the firm is based, runs a substantial programme of its own, and regional measures tend to be smaller, faster and more specific than national ones. The consequence is practical: the windows are short, so a business whose accounts are in order can move within days of a call opening, while a business whose accounts are not cannot move at all.
For a foreign owned Italian business the layering is the confusing part, because eligibility attaches to the Italian company and its Italian registrations rather than to the ownership behind it. A company properly registered here, with a current sector code and regular contributions, is generally eligible on the same terms as any other, and foreign shareholding is not by itself an obstacle.
Published by the region, narrower in scope and faster to close. Emilia-Romagna runs its own programme, and proximity means the local practice around it is known rather than guessed.
Measures open across Italy through the ministries and the national agencies. Larger, slower, and more standardised in their documentation.
Directly managed programmes with their own cycles, plus structural funds that reach businesses through the regions. Heavier reporting and frequently a partnership requirement.
Whether two supports can be combined on the same expenditure is set by the measures themselves and by the state aid rules. Checked before the second application, not after.
An award is a conditional result. The money is granted on the basis of what you said you would do, and it stays with you only if you can prove afterwards that you did it, in the way the measure required and inside the time it allowed. This stage, the rendicontazione, is where most of the problems we are called in to repair were created.
The requirements are dull and absolute. Invoices must carry the project identifiers where the measure demands it. Payments must be traceable, which means bank transfers and never cash, made by the beneficiary from the beneficiary's own account. The expenditure must fall inside the eligible window, which often opens later than people assume. The whole set has to be retained and kept separable, because checks arrive years later and the file must be reconstructable by somebody who was not there.
When a report fails, the last instalment is not simply withheld. The grant can be revoked and what has already been received recovered with interest, leaving the business worse off than if it had never applied. That is also why the firm says no to measures that do not fit: an application that cannot succeed wastes your money and occupies the weeks in which a measure that does fit might have been prepared properly.
Your figures against the specific measure, with a written note of what is met, what is not, and what can be fixed before the closing date.
The application built on the same figures the accounts show, with the supporting documents gathered rather than promised.
Eligible dates, traceable payments, correct invoicing and the project identifiers in place from the first document onwards.
The rendicontazione assembled from records kept properly all along, and retained so that a check years later finds a complete set rather than a search.
By checking your own figures against the measure, which takes hours rather than weeks and is the first thing we do. Almost every requirement in an Italian or European call is a number that already exists in your accounts or in a public register: contribution regularity, size, sector code, equity, turnover, aid already received. If one of them fails, no amount of writing will fix it, and you are better off knowing on day one.
It is the European ceiling on small aid that a member state can grant without notifying the Commission first. The limit is currently three hundred thousand euro per single undertaking over a rolling three year period, counting everything received under that regime from every authority. Single undertaking is wider than single company, so linked companies are added together. Exceeding it does not only block the new grant, it can put earlier ones in question.
A grant, a contributo a fondo perduto, is money that does not come back. A subsidised loan is borrowed money at a rate or with a guarantee better than the market would give you, so the benefit is the difference and the principal is still repaid. A tax credit, a credito d'imposta, is an amount offset against taxes and contributions you owe, so it is worth nothing unless you have enough of those to offset against. The right one depends on your cash position, not on the headline percentage.
No, and this is where most problems appear. Reporting, rendicontazione, means proving the money was spent on what it was granted for: invoices bearing the project identifiers, payments made by traceable bank transfer and never in cash, spending completed inside the stated window, and the whole set kept separately so it can be examined years later. A defective report can lead to revocation and repayment with interest, which is worse than never having applied.
Two documents are enough for an honest answer on whether you qualify, which requirement is the weak one and whether it can be fixed in time. The check carries no obligation and no fee.