We've updated everything about how you enter project details and costs to make sure that you can prepare claims that have all of the required information, in the right format, to fill out HMRC's Additional Information Form, which is mandatory for all claims submitted on or after 8th August 2023. 

To do this, we made some significant changes to the app and how it works, and we've had to remove some functionality, so here's what you need to know before you start preparing your first claim in the new format.

Choosing how to prepare your claim

The first difference you'll notice is that you now have a choice of three ways to prepare your claim. You can now choose to:

• Prepare the costs yourself: if you're happy with how you gather the costs, and are confident that you understand how to present the costs for the AIF, you can chose this option. You are not given any questions about costs, but you will have to describe a certain number of projects.
• Enter the costs from a top-down perspective: This option enables you to continue to prepare the costs the way you always have in WhisperClaims, by entering an overall apportionment for each cost category. You'll need to work out the proportion of the overall expenditure that relates to each project and enter this to enable us to present you with the costs in an AIF-appropriate way. The app makes some assumptions in the background to make this possible, so the costs prepared this way will not be fully accurate. 
• Enter the costs on a project-by-project basis: This option enables you to enter exact apportionments for each project and cost category. Choosing this option allows the app to accurately calculate the cost of each project and route that cost appropriately into SME and RDEC expenditure, and therefore present the costs in a fully accurate way for the AIF. We recommend that you chose this option.

Once you've made your choice in this section and moved on, you will not be able to change your mind. This is because each route is so different that the app is unable to map answers across if the route changes. If you do want to change how you prepare your claim, you'll need to create a new claim and start again. 

Projects, grants and subcontracting

To enable the app to calculate exactly how many and which of your projects you need to describe in detail for HMRC, we've added in a new set of questions about the eligible projects that are being included in the claim. For this section, you need to enter:

• The total number of projects being claimed for;
• Project titles for up to ten of the projects;
• The amount of state aid or non-state aid used for each project;
• Which of these projects was subcontracted to your client by a large company.
  

If the claim includes more than 10 projects, it's best to include the largest, most expensive or most complicated projects in the list, to make sure you only have to describe a minimal number. Don't include any projects that were subcontracted to your client by SMEs, as these projects are not eligible for relief. 

If more than 10 projects are included in the claim, you'll also need to enter details about how many of these projects received grant funding or were subcontracted.

Project-by-project costs

By far the biggest change we've had to make has been introducing project-by-project costs. This means that for each cost category, you will need to enter what proportion of the cost was spent on each project. For example, if you have five projects, you first enter the total or individual staff costs, and then enter an apportionment for each project (and staff member if you've used individual costs). 

As part of this, for projects that have received non-state aid funding or subsidies, you'll be asked to enter how much of the funding was used for each project in each cost category. This enable us to present the costs of grant-funded projects accurately and in the format HMRC require. 

Project descriptions

Once you've entered all of the costs, you'll be presented with your list of projects, this time with the total percentage of the R&D spend that relates to each. This allows you to chose enough projects to make sure that you comply with HMRC's required number of project descriptions:

• If the claim contains up to three projects, all must be described.
• If the claim has more than three projects, a minimum of three and a maximum of ten must be described, covering at least 50% of the eligible expenditure. 

The app will indicate to you when you have selected the right number of projects to fulfil these requirements. 

Additional Information Form output

All of these changes add up to one major change in our output - once you've paid for your claim you'll now see a icon in the download section. This is the AIF output! It's a text file with all of the information you need to fill out the AIF - to use, simply copy and paste the answers across into the AIF. It's all presented in the correct order and format so will make filling out the form quick and straightforward. 

Disabled features

To make all these new features possible, we've had to turn off or remove some others. These are:

• Claim unlocks: we won't be able to unlock claims that were created prior to these updates - unlocking a claim will add the new questions and formats to it, and make one hell of a mess. This only applies to older claims - claims created after the update can be unlocked as ususal.
• Claim duplication: for similar reasons, we have disabled claim duplication for claims created prior to the updates - the app can't map across the inputs from an older claim. This only applies to older claims - claims created after the update can be duplicated as before.