Things are a little different with our training options. While we have some courses available as one-off purchases, most of our courses and resources are accessed via membership to our training and support platform. If you’re questioning why we would do that and what makes our R&D training so different, this article will answer all that!

What is The R&D Community membership?

The R&D Community provides training and support for R&D advisors – accountants and consultants – who want to grow a profitable, ethical and competitive R&D service.

We have a large training academy that includes courses on claim preparation, industry specifics, and the R&D scheme itself. We support our members with an R&D helpline. And we offer hands-on help with eligibility conversations, enquiry defence, reviewing their claims and other tasks.

We believe that standards in the R&D tax relief market should be higher. We’re doing everything we can to help advisors who offer an R&D service that prioritises quality and compliance.

If you’re thinking of joining our membership, we’ll address any questions you might have below. The decision is ultimately yours, but we want to make sure you have all the information you need before you make this commitment.

Is The R&D Community worth the money?

Our membership packages are structured to make them affordable for all types of R&D practitioners – whether specialists who work on claims full time, or accountants who provide a range of other services too.

HMRC’s combative approach to enquiries is draining many R&D companies of time and resources, and cautious SMEs are re-thinking whether or not it’s worth claiming in the first place.

In this environment, having well-trained staff with a consistent understanding of the scheme’s rules is essential to avoiding enquiries and putting forward strong claims.

Membership costs a mere 2% of an annual salary* and provides access to a complete training and support resource for your team.

We think that’s excellent value for money!

Our goal is to help you build a more profitable, and competitive R&D service. Taking training:

• means your sales team will be better able to qualify leads, so you’ll avoid spending time on risky claims.
• speeds up the on-ramp for new staff, so they can contribute more value to your team more quickly.
• helps you avoid costly enquiries by increasing the quality and consistency of the claims you’re preparing.

(* Based on a team of 4 staff who earn an average of £60k p.a. on a corporate membership at £300+VAT per month.)

How much time will you spend on R&D tax relief training?

A key part of the membership is of course the training academy. Most of our members dive right into the courses as soon as they join.

Our carefully structured training courses are made up of a sequence of short videos – most of them less than 5 minutes. These alternate with assessment questions to make sure you learn something from each video.

If you want, you can do our courses in the bite-sized pieces of time you might otherwise waste deleting junk emails or scrolling through LinkedIn. Or you can set aside an hour at a time to work through courses in larger chunks. However it fits into your schedule, the training is fully flexible and available 24/7.

It also means we’ve completely cut the fluff, so every minute of training will teach you something valuable. Yes, you can learn a lot just by getting stuck in and working on a claim! But since HMRC don’t provide feedback on submitted claims, there’s no way of knowing whether you’re getting it right every time. Our training is structured around key learning points and is consolidated by assessments, so you always know you’re making progress.

Is it worth joining if you’re an experienced R&D advisor?

If you already know what you’re doing with your R&D claims, that’s fantastic! If you have the skills and experience needed to handle your current clients, then why would you invest in a membership based on a training academy?

We built The R&D Community to serve all kinds of R&D advisors, which means even if you have plenty of experience, we still have something to offer.

First, our support services are incredibly useful if you’re looking for a second opinion on something you don’t see often. If we don’t have a video which answers your unique question, our Helpline means we can always provide the information you need on a specific case.

Second, you can use our training to develop your team. If you want to have someone else help you prepare claims, you can train them yourself – or save a load of time and effort by putting them through our training courses or Certification programme. For example, if you have a salesperson on your team, you can put them through our courses on Eligibility and Screening. With a better understanding of the rules, they can do a better job of screening leads and save you time talking to SMEs that don’t have any eligible work.

Third, you can keep up to date with developments in the industry through our monthly webinars, our lively WhatsApp community, and our frequent updates to our Knowledge Bank of videos on case law and other nuanced topics.

And finally, it gives you the opportunity to prove that you’re invested in improving standards across the industry – like we are. We have a directory of all our members so your potential clients can see that you’re investing in training, committed to high standards, and even earning a Certification in R&D. Plus, we use our collective voice to talk to HMRC about improving the scheme for your benefit.

Is it worth it if you don’t have much capacity to take training right now?

While taking our structured training courses is usually the main reason people join, there are so many other benefits to membership that it may be worth joining now anyway, even if you can’t get stuck into the training straight away.

Not all of our members spend hours each month taking training – instead they make use of our support and Helpline services, and use our WhatsApp community to keep abreast of changes and updates from their peers.

As a member you’ll get a discounted rate on Claim Support, and up to 10 helpline enquiries per month at no extra cost. This alone is well worth the membership fee if you need to create a little breathing room without having to hire and train new staff.

And inside our WhatsApp community, you’ll be able to ask and answer questions from peers about what they’re seeing and doing in the world of R&D tax relief.

Beyond that, membership is a way to make yourself, and your commitment to quality, more visible to clients. As HMRC are increasing their scrutiny of R&D claims, more SMEs are starting to realise that quality matters more than price. Using our Claim Check service, for example, increases your confidence that claims are fully compliant by giving you an impartial perspective on the claim.

Finally, if you do decide to hire additional staff to your team, membership can dramatically reduce their onboarding time. You’ll need to spend less time training them yourself, and as they combine their knowledge from our training with the assignments you give them, they’ll add value to your team far quicker than before.

Can we provide the level of support and expertise you need?

If you’re interested in our R&D Helpline and Claim Support service, you may be wondering what the limitations are on your access to both of those.

Our Helpline service is free to members, and includes up to 10 requests per month for Corporate members. This covers any question or query our team can answer in 20-30 minutes. Tasks which require more research, or which involve looking at materials you’ve prepared would fall under Claim Support.

There’s no limit on the amount of Claim Support you can request each month, although it is subject to availability. It costs £195+VAT per hour for members, and we can work quickly to your deadlines.

If you want to know how it looks in practice, we put together a case study with one of our members about a recent enquiry that we helped them to handle.

What other support do we offer?

As well as the Helpline and Claim Support services, we also offer two other services to support you. All members are invited to join a closed WhatsApp community, where you can ask questions and get inside information on R&D and HMRC. This is a great place to get additional support and find out how others in the business are tackling a specific issue.

We also offer live training webinars to our members on topical matters. For example, when HMRC updated the Additional Information Form in September 2023, we immediately held a webinar for members to discuss the changes and how to work with them. If you have specific topics you would like us to cover in these sessions, we welcome suggestions and ideas from our members.

Is it worth committing to a single training academy?

Having done a lot of research into our competition, we’re confident that we offer the most detailed and nuanced training on R&D tax relief available anywhere. Other providers offer half day workshops and online webinars, but don’t provide a detailed or comprehensive programme that covers the legislation and guidance in detail.

If you’re curious about our training quality, you can try one of our courses – An Advisor’s Essential Guide to the Merged R&D Scheme – completely for free! We also have a few courses available to purchase outside of membership, so you can dip your toe before making a longer term commitment.

For some large companies, a monthly subscription doesn’t fit with internal procurement rules, which can be a barrier. If this is you and you’re looking to train a large team, we’d be very happy to discuss alternatives. Simply send us a few details about your needs and we’ll arrange a time to chat.

You can also be reassured that we won’t tie you into any long contracts. After an initial 3-month commitment, our membership is on a month-to-month basis. So if you sign up and discover it’s not the right fit, you can easily give notice to cancel. We’re pretty sure our membership is so great that you won’t want to – but it’s an option if you need it.

How to join

If you do want to join The R&D Community, you can choose a package and buy membership right away – there’s no waiting for the doors to open, you can start today! Membership rates start at £200+VAT per month for single users and £250+VAT per month for small teams.

Any questions we haven’t answered?

These are the most common questions we have heard about our membership – but we may not have covered everything! If you have a question we didn’t answer, you can send us an email and we’ll get back to you right away.