We meet you every quarter, or more often if the work calls for it, to understand your R&D while it is under way and collect the evidence as it is created. We also advise on the decisions that change a claim and keep an estimate of the credit as it builds. It is for companies whose R&D runs through the year and who would rather have the claim prepared alongside the work, and it is available to every client as part of the standard engagement, at no extra fee.
The difference shows at the year end. By then the claim is largely built, from notes of the work made while it was happening, rather than reconstructed afterwards.
What happens each quarter?
Each visit leaves you with five things: a written account of the qualifying work in the claim’s own terms, the evidence identified and kept, advice on decisions that affect the claim, the claim notification position checked, and an updated estimate of the credit. The timing is agreed with you at the start: quarterly by default, and more often while, say, a contract is being negotiated or a grant application is going in.
- The work, described in the claim’s own terms. For each piece of work we record, with the people doing it, the baseline in the field when it began, the advance sought, the scientific or technological uncertainty in the way, and how it is being resolved. The Additional Information Form asks for the knowledge “that existed when the project began”, and a dated note written at the start answers that directly.
- Evidence captured as it is created. Design notes, test results (including the ones that failed), meeting notes and where staff time went are identified while they are current, so the cost apportionment rests on something recorded in the quarter. Nothing has to be written for HMRC: the job is to find and keep what your team already produces.
- Guidance while decisions can still be made. Several choices during the year change a claim. They include whether a contract puts the R&D with you or with the other party, how a grant affects the costs, whether overseas contractor costs qualify, how the PAYE cap bites, and whether the company is near the 30% intensity line for ERIS. For a contract, the test is whether it was “intended or contemplated”, when the contract was made, that R&D of that sort would be undertaken. We raise each one as it comes up, not after the year has closed on it.
- Claim notification inside its window. A first-time claimant, or a company that has not claimed in the three years ending with the notification deadline, must notify HMRC within six months of the end of the period of account. The window opens on the first day of the period, so where claim notification applies, we check it at the first visit, so the notification can go in during the year, while the window is open.
- A running estimate of the credit. It is built on the qualifying costs identified so far and on stated assumptions about the scheme, the year’s profit or loss, R&D intensity and the PAYE cap, and it moves as the costs and the scheme position firm up. It is a reasonable figure for a budget or a board paper provided its assumptions travel with it, not one to commit to a lender or a cash-flow plan before the year has closed and the claim has been prepared.
Who comes in?
A qualified adviser from the team that prepares your claim. The adviser who works with you each quarter is the one who prepares your claim, and every claim is signed off by a chartered adviser before it reaches HMRC.
That continuity matters for the evidence as much as for convenience. Your claim is prepared by someone who followed the work while it happened and heard your competent professionals describe it while it was live. What we do sets out who does the work and who signs it off.
What does it cost?
Nothing on top of the standard fee. The quarterly work is part of the standard engagement, available to every client at no extra fee. The fee for the engagement is agreed in writing before any work starts, on the same basis whether you take up the visits or come to us after the year end. How our fees work explains that basis and everything the fee covers.
Why record the work at the time?
Because HMRC says claims are more likely to be right when the company knows at the time that its work may qualify. Its guidance states that claims “are more likely to be correct if the company is aware at the time that the work it is doing may qualify for tax relief”. It calls it “good practice to keep relevant records from the beginning of the project”, and says that if HMRC checks a claim, “the process is likely to be quicker and simpler if you have good written records”.
Recent tribunal decisions look for the same thing. In Beer Express, reports prepared on the company’s behalf were given no weight, being unsupported by “a competent professional with contemporaneous involvement in the projects or documentary evidence in support” (paragraph 99). In Flame Tree Publishing, staff-time percentages agreed afterwards with an adviser who had not been involved, and no time recording behind them, gave “no evidential basis” for the staff costs (paragraph 73).
In Tills Plus, the tribunal preferred the contract and invoices made at the time to a technical report written later (paragraphs 149 to 160), and the claim failed on what those documents showed. Documents made at the time fix what the work actually was. First-tier Tribunal decisions bind only the parties to them; each of these has its own entry in our case-law register.
None of this makes records a condition of relief, and no record turns work that is not R&D into R&D. What records made at the time do is leave a company better placed to answer HMRC’s questions if a check is opened.
Do we have to keep records?
Not for R&D specifically. HMRC’s own manual, at CIRD80550, says “there is no record keeping requirement specifically for the purposes of claiming R&D relief”; the duty that applies is the general one, to keep the records needed for a correct and complete company tax return. HMRC also says it does not expect companies “to create unnecessary records or spend money on expensive systems”. What records you need sets out what does most of the work.
What happens at the year end?
The claim is finished rather than started. Once the accounts are final, the costs identified during the year are reconciled to them, and the estimate gives way to the figure the claim supports, which can come out lower as well as higher. The technical narrative is completed from the quarterly notes and checked with your team, and we file the Additional Information Form and the corporation tax return containing the claim as HMRC-registered tax agents. Relief is claimed through that return, and a loss-making company can take the credit as a payment. Enquiry support is included as standard.
What if we would rather claim at the year end?
Then we prepare the claim after the year end, on the same fee basis and with the same sign-off. HMRC’s own guidance accepts that a company may recognise qualifying work only after it has begun or finished, and a claim prepared that way is a claim like any other. How we work sets out that sequence, and you can start the quarterly visits at any point, including part-way through a year.
How do we start?
With a conversation, which costs nothing and commits you to nothing. We talk through the R&D you have running or planned, whether a claim notification is due and how often a visit would be useful, and the arrangement is confirmed in writing, with the rest of the engagement, before any work starts. Call 0330 223 4 223 or send us a message.
Sources
- GfC3 part 5: recommended approach to claims and record keeping — HMRC’s guidance, updated 23 January 2025: claims are more likely to be correct where the company knew at the time that the work might qualify; records from the beginning of the work are good practice; a check is likely to be quicker and simpler with good written records; no expectation of unnecessary records; qualifying work can be identified after it has begun or finished.
- CIRD80550: examining a claim: records — no record-keeping requirement specific to R&D relief; the general company tax requirement applies.
- FA 1998 Sch 18 para 21 — the duty to keep the records needed for a correct and complete return.
- SI 2023/813, Schedule 2 — what the Additional Information Form must describe for each project, including the knowledge that existed when it began.
- CTA 2009 s1142A — the claim notification period, which begins with the first day of the period of account.
- CTA 2009 s1133 — contracted-out R&D: whether R&D of that sort was intended or contemplated when the contract was entered into.
- Beer Express Ltd v HMRC, [2026] UKFTT 672 (TC), paragraph 99; Flame Tree Publishing Ltd v HMRC, [2024] UKFTT 349 (TC), paragraph 73; Tills Plus Ltd v HMRC, [2024] UKFTT 614 (TC), paragraphs 149 to 160 — First-tier Tribunal decisions, binding only on their parties.
CIRD80550 is indexed on our CIRD reference index, with HMRC’s own title for it, a line on what it says and the date HMRC last revised it.
Written by Matthew Jones ACA CTA. Last reviewed September 2026.
