You have just completed filing your SR&ED claim for last year's projects and associated expenses; now you can drop your shoulders and get on to all those other things you need to be doing; that SR&ED job is done for another year !!

Well that is probably not the best approach and one that is very likely to cause you to miss a significant portion of the work you do that is eligible under the SR&ED Tax Credit/Refund program.

Your success and ability at realizing the maximum amount of tax credit or refund you are entitled to is highly dependent on several critical factors; knowing what activities and expenses qualify, identifying all those activities you have undertaken, and documenting them in the way CRA requires them to be documented. The risk and reality is that if you do not do these things on an ongoing basis throughout the year, you inevitably will forget, loose, and for various reasons disqualify yourself just because you left the necessary work to the last minute.

What we have learned from our members and SR&ED experts can significantly improve your effectiveness and efficiency in supporting your SR&ED claim process.

Here are a few ideas:

i) Ensure that key individuals in your organization understand the SR&ED program, what types of activities qualify and what types of expenses can be claimed. This way those employees that are working on claimable projects can let the appropriate people know to track the expenses and project activities.

ii) Make sure you keep the SR&ED program on people's minds; ie keep the focus on eligible activity. One way of doing this is to keep the topic of SR&ED as a standing agenda item on appropriate staff meetings, talk about SR&ED at all hands meetings, etc.

iii) Make sure you have a simple but effective documentation process in place; this can be one of the toughest things to do and may just require some self discipline on the part of the employees.

iv) Don't leave the final preparation of your claims to the last minute; starting earlier to put the final touches on the year's filing will allow time for filling in some of the holes that inevitable show up.

So, yes you are done filing for last year and NOW is the time to get started on preparing for next year.

Don't let this turn into a huge monster, keep it at a manageable level and this way you will have the best possibly claim and the most success in capturing those SR&ED $$$$'s.