How Fusion Accountancy optimises R&D tax processes with WhisperClaims’ software

Fusion Accountancy, the accounting business for Fusion Consulting—a multi-disciplinary consulting firm that offers end-to-end solutions for private individuals and fast-growth businesses, has partnered with WhisperClaims, an R&D tax fintech company, to mitigate time consuming, manual R&D tax claims processes—replacing them with an optimised and streamlined way of completing claims with WhisperClaims’ automated software. 

Fusion Accountancy is the accounting division of Fusion Consulting Group, which is a modern professional services group, providing 360-degree advisory services to private clients and fast-growth businesses, and was established in 2015 by Adam Maurice and Mitch Young. Fusion Accountancy offers its customers internal accounting function requirements; from day-to-day bookkeeping, management accounts, corporation tax and year-end financial statements. 

R&D Specialism 

The accountancy firm also specialises in areas such as R&D tax credits and financial due diligence, which is supported by both Directors’ experience and background. Adam Maurice holds a technical background after owning a large IT services business, and Mitch Young is an experienced tax partner with an accountancy firm career background. 

Adam Maurice, Director, Fusion Accountancy, comments: “R&D is something that I’ve done for many years in my own business, so I learnt a lot about how the process worked. When we set up Fusion, we knew we had to offer R&D tax services by combining our knowledge and skills in both tax and technology, it was a no-brainer.” 

Hours and Days of Manual Processes

However, the manual processes behind R&D tax claims were extremely time-consuming and long-winded, explains Adam: “We were drafting the claims manually every time and it was becoming more and more time consuming, especially bigger claims which we would spend hours, if not days, writing the documents for. It got to the point where we said there has to be a better way of doing this.” 

Fusion Accountancy then came across WhisperClaims, and started working together in May 2021, and has since completed around 25 claims. “We partnered with WhisperClaims because they were very clear on what they are—a R&D tax Fintech company that offers software to help with the claims process, which is exactly what we needed,” says Adam. 

Removing the Complexities 

Commenting on their user experience with WhisperClaims’ software, Adam says: “They’ve done a really good job of removing the manual processes—I don’t know how much easier they could make R&D tax! The app is also constantly being updated, which is really important, and WhisperClaims is very transparent with keeping us up to date with improvements, which is great.”

Building a Community

WhisperClaims has also built a WhatsApp community for its customers to come together and discuss or ask questions on R&D tax. Adam commented: “WhisperClaims has built a network where everyone is trying to help each other, it is extremely useful. Although we may all be competitors, we also deal with the same problems and issues. We recently put a message into the chat to ask if anyone had come across a particular situation we were dealing with, and other users responded with their own experiences and advice.”

HMRC Knocking

Additionally, HMRC is adding a number of new rules and legislation from next April when it comes to R&D tax claims submissions. For example, it will be mandatory to provide technical reports. 

“We’ve always said that for the cowboys who don’t do the report, one day HMRC will come knocking. Fusion Accountancy complies with HMRC’s requirements correctly—which is obviously the right thing to do, but now they’re making it mandatory. Now is the time to remove any potential errors and use technologies like WhisperClaims to support that journey. We are very happy to invest in more R&D tax, we’re very good at it in-house, and are now supported with WhisperClaims’ technology which we’re happy with.” 

Mike Dean, Managing Director, from WhisperClaims concludes: “Having come from the R&D tax consultancy sector ourselves, we totally understand how time-consuming R&D tax reports and processes can take to complete. Time is valuable, and we would rather our customers spend this time on adding real value to their clients, rather than writing reports from scratch. Our platform does the heavy lifting, gives our users confidence that they are building robust claims, and allows them to focus much more on the client relationship”.