Westlock Insights
KNOWLEDGE & INSIGHTS
Explore topics, frameworks, and practical guidance
Short, technical notes on the merged scheme, defensible methodologies, and evidence expectations, written for CFOs, founders, and technical leads who want clarity without the noise.
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Merged scheme & compliance
How to frame qualifying activity, align AIF disclosures, and keep claims clear and consistent as HMRC processes evolve.
Claim methodology & cost categories
Practical guidance on apportionments, subcontractors, EPWs, overseas restrictions, and how to evidence assumptions properly.
Sector insights
Eligibility patterns and evidence expectations across Software & IT, MarTech, Engineering, Life Sciences, and more.
First merged-scheme claim: the 8 things to get right
A practical checklist to keep your narrative, AIF, and cost logic aligned, and reduce avoidable processing queries.
Presenting the credit in accounts & tax comp
Common processing delays and how to avoid them when recognising the credit and reflecting it in the computation.
Subcontractors, EPWs & overseas work: what trips claims up
Where claims commonly fail: contractual position, who bears risk, evidence gaps, and overseas restrictions.
AIF completion: common errors & clean fixes
How to keep disclosures consistent with the report, the computation, and your underlying methodology.
HMRC processing trends: what we’re seeing
Practical observations on processing timeframes, query patterns, and where clarity speeds things up.
Evidence packs: what “good” looks like
The artefacts that make a claim easier to process: architecture notes, test results, change logs, and technical rationale.
Software eligibility: beyond the myths
Where HMRC draws the line in practice, and how to describe genuine technical uncertainty without over-claiming.
MarTech claims: separating signal from noise
What tends to qualify in attribution, automation, data pipelines, and experimentation, and what tends not to.
Engineering: prototyping boundaries & iteration
How to evidence iterative development, test failures, standards constraints, and the advance achieved.
Life Sciences: evidence expectations in practice
Translating complex R&D into a defensible narrative: hypothesis, trials, constraints, and outcomes.
Apportionments: what is defensible?
Building a simple, auditable logic that matches how work is actually done, without reverse-engineering from spend.
Staying enquiry-ready (without the drama)
Simple habits that keep your claim clear: tidy records, consistent language, and evidence you can retrieve quickly.