SR&ED documentation checklist
The technical and financial evidence worth organizing before claim preparation begins.
Last reviewed July 15, 2026 · General information, not tax or legal advice
Technical project records
Contemporaneous records help show what the team knew, tried and learned at each stage of the work.
- Project plans, technical requirements and architecture decisions
- Experiment logs, test results, prototypes and failed approaches
- Issue trackers, pull requests, design reviews and engineering notes
- Meeting notes, emails and internal discussions about technical alternatives
- Dated photos, lab records, simulations and performance results where relevant
People and time
Identify who performed or directly supported the experimental work and how their time can be connected to eligible activities. Reconstructing time after the fact is less reliable than regular, project-level records.
Financial support
The financial claim should be traceable to the same projects described in the technical narrative.
- Payroll and role information for participating employees
- Contractor agreements, invoices and descriptions of work performed
- Materials consumed or transformed during eligible experimentation
- Project cost allocations and reconciliations to the accounting records
Before the interviews
Create a one-page timeline for each candidate project: the starting uncertainty, key approaches tested, major observations and the outcome. This keeps interviews focused on the technical facts rather than trying to remember the entire year at once.