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How R&D claims work
An R&D claim in Flowstate is one project, for one fiscal year, under one R&D framework. Flowstate finds candidates, drafts the narrative, and costs the claim from the effort actually spent on the project.
Frameworks
A framework is a country's R&D tax relief scheme: when its fiscal year starts, its likely credit rates, and the sections a claim's narrative must cover.
| Framework | Country | Fiscal year starts | Default credit-rate range | Required section |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| UK DSIT Guidelines | United Kingdom | April | 16.2%–27% | Scientific or Technological Uncertainty |
| US IRC §41 | United States | January | 6.5%–10% | Elimination of Uncertainty |
| PT SIFIDE II | Portugal | January | 32.5%–82.5% | Incerteza Tecnológica (sections are in Portuguese) |
| AU R&DTI | Australia | July | 38.5%–43.5% | Core R&D — New Knowledge |
The credit-rate ranges are only used to show a likely return. They aren't tax advice — your adviser confirms the rate that applies to you.
The eligibility scan judges projects against your default framework. When you create a claim yourself, you can choose any framework.
Claims don't come with a submission deadline. Set one on each claim — see Build an R&D claim.
How claims are found
The eligibility scan reads your projects' tickets, pull requests and descriptions, and judges them against your default framework.
- It runs weekly, fortnightly or monthly, whichever you choose, and whenever you select Run scan now.
- It looks at the current fiscal year, and up to three earlier years if you choose. Each year gets its own suggestion.
- It leaves alone any project that already has a claim in progress for that year.
- A suggestion you dismiss only comes back if the project changes.
- A suggestion's spend is an estimate, from the project's effort cost within that fiscal year.
- The people on your Approval Stage are told about new suggestions.
Accepting a suggestion
Accept turns a suggestion into a claim at Draft, and:
- Moves the project onto your R&D cost centre, so its cost shows as R&D rather than CapEx or OpEx on Capitalisation.
- Remembers the project's previous cost centre.
- Starts drafting the narrative.
If the claim is later rejected, the project moves back to its previous cost centre.
Stages
| From | Action | To | Who |
|---|---|---|---|
| Suggested | Accept | Draft | Anyone who can edit claims |
| Suggested | Dismiss | (removed) | Anyone who can delete claims |
| Draft | Submit for review | In Review | Anyone who can edit claims |
| In Review | Approve, Request changes or Reject | Approved, Changes Requested or Rejected | Someone on the Approval Stage |
| Changes Requested | Resubmit for review | In Review | The claim's author |
| Rejected | Back to draft | Draft | Anyone who can edit claims |
| Approved | Mark submitted | Submitted | Someone on the Completion Stage |
| Submitted | Record outcome | Closed | Someone on the Completion Stage |
Set up the stages in Set up R&D claims. Step by step: Approve and submit an R&D claim.
Claims across several years
- There's one claim per project per fiscal year, so a project that runs for three years can have three claims.
- Create R&D Claim always creates a claim for the current fiscal year. For earlier years, let the scan suggest them.
How spend and expected return are worked out
- A claim's spend is the project's effort cost within the claim's dates, split into employees, contractors and AI. It uses the same effort and day rates as Capitalisation, so correcting effort or a salary updates the claim.
- The expected return is that spend multiplied by the framework's credit-rate range, shown as a low–high range.
- For a suggestion, the spend is labelled estimated spend.
How a day of effort becomes cost is on How costs are calculated.