Capturing Research Tax Credits with Lotus Notes

In 2005, 17,700 companies claimed $6,600,000,000 dollars in R&D tax credits*. Ensure that your organization is capturing its due R&D credits with integrated solutions for project management, time and expense reporting, purchasing and business intelligence.

Note: This article discusses the capture of research and development tax credits using Lotus Notes. For a discussion of this process with 100% Web based solutions, see this page.

For organizations utilizing Lotus Notes, Tracker Suite facilitates the capture of research tax credits with integrated solutions for project management, time and expense reporting, purchasing and business intelligence.

Organizations may claim R&D (Research and Development) tax credits if their current R&D is increased from historic base levels and outstrips revenue growth. R&D tax credits may be claimed by a wide array of organizations, ranging from biotechnology companies to manufacturers.

Tracker Suite facilitates the efforts of organizations to claim these tax credits by providing a highly structured project management environment with integrated time and expense reporting, purchasing and business intelligence generation. In a similar fashion, it can be utilized by organizations in managing internal software projects under SOP 98-1 guidelines.

Managing R&D Projects

Project Tracker offers an end-to-end project lifecycle for managing projects from requisition to completion, providing a central location for project materials including tasks, documents, status reports, milestones, budgets and personnel.

• Project portfolio management capabilities for tracking multiple R&D projects.
• Utilize milestone dashboards to track projects.
• Store documentation and files supporting the project's R&D qualification, including narratives, meeting minutes, emails and IP agreements with contractors.
• Assign R&D account codes to qualifying tasks.

Accounting R&D Activities and Expenditures

Project Tracker integrates with Time Tracker, Expense Tracker and Purchase Tracker, allowing users to charge time and expenditures against projects, utilizing account codes for R&D items. Purchase Tracker includes a General Ledger section for segregating items used in research and development.

Tracking Potential R&D Credits

The data from the various Tracker Suite modules is pushed to the Tracker Data Warehouse. The Tracker Data Warehouse serves as a single point of access for business intelligence, receiving data from the Tracker Suite modules as well as legacy HR and Accounting databases.

Using the Tracker Data Warehouse, organizations can compare current revenue and R&D activities against historic base levels to determine the potential for research tax credits. The real-time posting capabilities of the Tracker Data Warehouse also make it possible for organizations to generate immediate reports on the progress and costs of their R&D projects.

For organizations, particularly bio-technology and pharmaceutical companies, that are also seeking to improve their ability to track and control deviation in R&D projects, the Tracker Data Warehouse can deliver a variety of reports, including Planned vs. Actual R&D, Project Trends and Project History Graphs.

* From "Supporting innovation and economic growth: The broad impact of the R&D credit in 2005". Prepared by Ernst & Young LLP. April 2008.