ValueAdd - Consulting Services
R&D Consulting
What makes us different at ValueAdd is our core consultancy work. We strive to take a prospective and proactive approach to our clients’ claims, rather than a retrospective approach. What this means is that we use both our knowledge and experience in the industry to work with our clients’ at the beginning of their financial year rather than continuing to look backwards.
With increased compliance and scrutiny by HMRC into this important tax incentive the need for accurate reporting is paramount. We identified that many of our clients had concerns about whether they could accurately assess everything that had happened in the past year or even two years when claiming. They were worried that their claims may not be robust enough to avoid a direct enquiry.
At ValueAdd, we place significant emphasis on ensuring that all the financial and project information that go into our clients’ claims is verifiable and traceable in the event of an investigation by HMRC. This is a necessary part of our claim preparation, but it can cause an administrative burden for our clients if they haven’t tracked R&D activities and financial costs for their qualifying projects.
With this end in mind, we have worked closely with our clients to develop a novel process that ensures that:
- R&D projects will qualify under HMRC’s guidance;
- Clients have evidence of the hours worked on R&D specifically
- Clients have kept the necessary ledgers, and proof of
their consumable items being “used up” or” transformed” in their projects.
How do we do this?
We work with our clients at the start of their financial year to help them understand the guidance that HMRC has given, to ensure they are knowledgeable about what qualifies and doesn’t qualify. We are available when our clients’ face technological uncertainties in their day-to-day activities, and we encourage them to call us in the event of a possible project. By doing this we can use our experience to let them know whether their project is likely to qualify and how they should track its’ progress.
We develop custom expense tracking systems and employee trackers to ensure that the relevant expenditure is captured during their project rather than retrospectively at year-end. We organise quarterly meetings with our clients to assess their projects and keep on top of their document retention and evidences, ensuring that we have the necessary information available when it comes time to submit.
With this process we can take away some of the uncertainty of our clients over their claim submissions. We can also ensure that, in the case of an enquiry, we have the appropriate evidence and documentation to assist HMRC in clearing up any issues or concerns they may have.
We believe in the benefit of the R&D scheme to the UK economy. We oppose any inappropriate claiming of the scheme as it only serves to diminish the support the government is providing to companies who are actually performing Research & Development. We are committed to providing robust and correct claims for companies who are undertaking R&D and we want to work with companies with the same mindset.
That is why we believe in taking a proactive approach to R&D claims. By ensuring that both obtaining evidence of compliance and tracking of expenses are done whilst projects are underway rather than looking backwards. That this will lead to more claims being approved and less need for enquiries from HMRC.