R&D Audit Readiness

Could your R&D claim survive a question?

Most software teams claim R&D tax with evidence they rebuild from memory at year end. AusIndustry and the ATO have changed what they expect to see. Take the 10-point check and find out where your claim stands, before EOFY.

Start the check (2 minutes)

The stakes

The standard of proof has shifted

The standard of proof has shifted from reasonable estimate to contemporaneous evidence. A claim that looked fine three years ago can now trigger review, and a failed review means clawbacks plus penalties on money already spent. The evidence to defend the claim usually exists. It is just never captured as a record while the work happens.

  1. 1When you claim R&D, can you link the work back to specific commits and tickets, or is it grouped by project?

  2. 2How confident are you that nothing routine (bug fixes, maintenance, BAU) is sitting inside your R&D claim?

  3. 3The evidence behind your claim, when was it actually written down?

  4. 4Could you state, for each claimed project, the specific technical uncertainty you were trying to resolve?

  5. 5When you split engineering time between R&D and non-R&D, where does that split come from?

  6. 6For contractors and third parties, can you show the same evidence trail you hold for staff?

  7. 7Could you show an assessor that the work created new knowledge, not just something new to your company?

  8. 8How granular are your Jira tickets, fine enough to isolate the experimental work?

  9. 9How visible is your spend on AI engineering tools (coding assistants, inference, AI seats), and can you attribute it to the work it supported?

  10. 10If an assessor asked for one source that ties your claim together, could you point to it?

The fix

A continuous evidence layer

The evidence of what your team built already exists. It lives in Jira, in your commits, and in your AI tools. A continuous evidence layer reads those signals and turns them into a defensible record as the work happens. No timesheets. No surveys. Nothing new for your engineers to do.

EngLedger

EngLedger is that layer

EngLedger is that layer. It reads the signals already inside Jira, Git, and your engineering AI tools and turns them into an audit-ready ledger automatically. The same record serves R&D substantiation, AASB 138 software capitalisation, APRA AI governance, and AI cost intelligence. Four jobs, one evidence trail.

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Prefer to read first?

Download the full 10-point R&D Audit Readiness Checklist