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The process is supposed to capture valueโbut it quietly destroys it
An engineer gets an email: โCan you summarise what you did on the R&D project last year?โ
They open a blank document.
The project is ๏ฌnished. The details are fuzzy. The context is gone.
And now, somehow, theyโre expected to reconstruct months of complex workโaccurately, quickly, and in a format they were never trained to produce.
The uncomfortable reality: the process is backwards
Most R&D claim processes are built around retrospective documentation. The assumption is simple: once the work is done, you can go back, ask the right questions, and reconstruct what happened.
In practice, that assumption breaks down quickly.
People forget details. Projects evolve. Teams change. What felt obvious at the time becomes difficult to explain months later. And the further you get from the work, the more fragmented the picture becomes.
The result isnโt just inefficiencyโitโs loss of accuracy.
Where the time actually goes
On paper, the process looks efficient. A questionnaire is sent, the company ๏ฌlls it out, and the advisor prepares the claim.
In reality, the work is pushed downstream.
A managing director or ๏ฌnance lead receives the request but doesnโt have the technical detail. So they forward it to an engineer. The engineer, now removed from the original context, has to piece together what happened. Questions go back and forth. Clari๏ฌcations are needed. Emails multiply.
What should have been a single, focused conversation becomes a slow, fragmented chain of communication.
And the people doing the hardest workโthe engineers, developers, and operatorsโend up doing the most administrative reconstruction.
You havenโt reduced effort. Youโve redistributed it to your most expensive resource.
The model that creates the problem
This isnโt accidental. Itโs built into how much of the R&D tax advisory industry operates.
Some advisors rely on questionnaires because it allows them to run a high-throughput model. The client does the upfront work, costs stay low, and volume stays high.
Auditors take a different path but arrive at a similar outcome. For them, R&D is often a peripheral activity that introduces risk. The simplest way to manage that risk is to push responsibility back onto the clientโhave them document everything, and keep the process contained.
Both approaches look efficient from the outside. In practice, they shift the burden onto the people least equipped to carry it.
What happens when you do it differently
Now contrast that with a different approach.
Instead of sending questionnaires, a team goes on site. Over two days, they meet directly with the people doing the
workโengineers, operators, developers. Each conversation is focused, structured, and grounded in real context.
In one example, this meant more than ten one-hour sessions with different operators across a single company. No long email chains. No second-hand explanations. Just direct access to the source.
At the start, leadership is briefed. At the end, they receive the outcome. In between, the work happens where the knowledge actually sits.
The difference is immediate. What would have taken weeks of back-and-forth is resolved in days. More importantly, the quality of information is signi๏ฌcantly higher.
Why this matters more than it seems
This isnโt just about saving time. It changes the outcome.
When information is gathered directly from the people doing the work, you capture nuance that would otherwise be lost. You identify qualifying activity that no one thought to include. You avoid over-claiming in areas that donโt stand up to scrutiny.
The claim becomes more complete, more accurate, and more defensible.
And just as importantly, your most valuable people arenโt pulled away from their actual jobs to reconstruct the past. They just need to go to a meeting or two.
The hidden cost no one measures
Thereโs a cost to the traditional process that rarely gets discussed.
Every hour an engineer spends ๏ฌlling out retrospective documentation is an hour theyโre not solving problems, improving systems, or driving innovation. Multiply that across a team, and the opportunity cost becomes signi๏ฌcant.
The irony is that a process designed to capture the value of innovation often ends up slowing it down.
And the companies that ๏ฌx it donโt work harderโthey just stop wasting their best people.
If your team is spending too much time supporting your R&D claim, we should talk.
Adam Bointon is a Technical Director specialising in R&D Tax Credits for SMEs in manufacturing and software sectors. With over 15 yearsโ experience, he works closely with businesses to identify qualifying R&D activities and prepare clear, compliant claims. He combines technical expertise with a strong understanding of economics and finance to support successful outcomes. Adam also contributes to industry webinars and CPD sessions, sharing insights on R&D tax relief and HMRC requirements.
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