How to remotely prepare R&D tax claims

In these days of increased digitisation, working from home and generally more spread out teams and working practices, it can be difficult to pin down a time when all relevant people are available to meet face to face. In the case of preparing an R&D tax claim, this can be particularly acute given the need for senior members of the management team to be in attendance.

Happily, there are a plethora of specific and less specific digital tools you can take advantage of to make sure that you can remotely deliver the great R&D tax claim service that your clients expect. Here’s our guide on how WhisperClaims can help you to get the best out of your tools and clients and make sure you prepare accurate and robust R&D claims remotely.

Video calling

Tools like Zoom and Skype have made it very easy to have ‘face to face’ meetings from anywhere! In preparing R&D tax claims, this enables you to talk through all of the work done in the claim period and gather as much information as possible in one go. It’s usually possible to record these calls too, so you won’t forget anything that you were told! However, there are some downsides. It’s easy to forget to ask key questions, and it can be difficult to verbally gather accurate information on costs. To mitigate this, you can have the WhisperClaims claim open in the background and enter the information as you go along, but this can lead to a more stilted conversation as you read out all of the options to your client!

Screen share

Rather than read out the questions or risk missing vital information, many of our clients opt to share screens through tools like Zoom. Working this way your client can see the WhisperClaims question set and can give you the exact information you need, while you retain control of the software and enter the answers yourself. This is how we do a lot of our training and demonstration calls, and it can be a great way to gather information. However, it can mean taking up a chunk of yours and your client’s time, and you can only complete as much information as your client has available on the call.

Collaboration

Many of our users prepare R&D tax claims remotely using our collaboration feature. This allows them to invite clients to directly access the system by themselves and answer the technical and costs questions in their own time, saving huge amounts of time. Their answers can then be reviewed remotely, checking that everything they have entered is accurate and in line with the scheme guidelines before downloading the report.

Our users have used this methodology to drive complexity and time out of existing processes, or simply to avoid losing control over the claim by outsourcing to specialists. It’s a win-win for them and their clients as it means an efficient, cost effective service that allows the client to get best value access to this increasingly important tax relief.

Of course, in reality our clients use a combination of all of these methods to deliver the best and most appropriate service to their clients!

However you decide to use WhisperClaims, we’re here to give you support, advice and training to make sure you’re using the app in the best possible way.