Many businesses in their second, third or fourth year of claiming the R&D Tax Incentive (RDTI) share a similar frustration: just how much time and effort goes into preparing the claim.
Technical teams are pulled away from their day-to-day work, while finance spends time chasing expenditure and supporting information. Add up that effort across the business, and the work involved in preparing the claim can start to overshadow the financial outcome.
For some businesses, that raises questions about whether the return is worth the effort of claiming at all. Others simply accept it as part of the RDTI process and carry on doing things the same way each year.
But it doesn’t need to be this burdensome. A few changes to how you approach your claim can streamline the process and significantly reduce the time required from your team.
Where Is All That Time Going?
Preparing an RDTI claim requires input from different parts of the business, and that’s often where the workload starts to add up.
Your technical people need to work through the eligibility criteria and determine which projects and activities qualify as R&D. When multiple people are involved, different interpretations of what qualifies can lead to a narrow or incomplete view of the R&D happening across the business.
At the same time, finance needs to identify the relevant expenditure and pull together the supporting documentation.
What makes this harder is that much of the work often happens months after the R&D took place. Technical teams are trying to recall the detail of old projects, while finance is chasing records and information that may be difficult to find, or may not exist at all.
The further you get from the work itself, the more time it takes to piece everything together and the easier it is for eligible R&D to be overlooked.
So, how can you make the process easier on your team? Here are three practical changes we recommend.
Tip 1: Keep Good Records Throughout the Year
Good record keeping doesn’t mean asking your technical team to fill out detailed timesheets every day. Adding more admin defeats the purpose.
What matters is having a simple, consistent way to capture R&D activity and expenditure while it’s still fresh. For many businesses, a monthly or quarterly check-in is enough to record the projects worked on, what happened and the relevant costs.
That way, when it comes time to prepare your claim, you already have a reliable record to work from rather than asking your team to piece together months-old projects from memory.
The goal isn’t more record keeping. It’s better record keeping, at the right time.
Tip 2: Give the Process Clear Ownership
An RDTI claim will naturally require input from different people across the business. But there should be one or two key people responsible for coordinating the process and bringing everything together.
When ownership is spread across too many people, things can quickly become fragmented. Eligibility may be interpreted differently, information gets captured inconsistently, and it becomes harder to keep track of what’s been done and what’s still needed.
Clear ownership helps avoid this. It gives your team a consistent point of contact, keeps the process moving throughout the year, and means technical and finance people can be brought in when their input is actually needed.
The result is less back and forth, less chasing, and a more coordinated claim process.
Tip 3: Start Early
Leaving your RDTI claim until the last minute puts unnecessary pressure on everyone involved.
Starting earlier gives you more time to identify the relevant R&D, work through any questions around eligibility, and make sure the financial information and supporting documentation you need are available.
It also means you can involve your technical and finance teams while the work is still relatively fresh, rather than asking them to drop what they’re doing to revisit projects from months ago.
The earlier you start, the easier it is to spread the workload, deal with issues as they come up, and avoid the last-minute scramble.
Reducing the RDTI Workload on Your Team
Whether you manage your RDTI claim internally or are supported by your accountant or an advisor, some input from your technical and finance teams will always be needed. They’re the people who understand the R&D and the numbers behind it.
But there’s a difference between providing the right input at the right time and carrying the burden of preparing the claim.
If your technical team is spending hours working through eligibility, finance is chasing records from months ago, or key people are being pulled into repeated rounds of questions and follow-ups, it may be time to look at whether there’s a more efficient way to manage your claim.
At Swell, our model is designed to take as much of that burden off your team as possible. We manage the RDTI process end to end, bringing the right people in when their input is needed and being clear about what we need from them. We also manage liaison with IRD and MBIE, including responding to any requests for information.
If your current RDTI process is taking more of your team’s time than it should, get in touch. We’re happy to have a chat about how you’re currently approaching your claim.
