How to Strengthen Evidence for Bigger SR&ED Claims

Reviewed by Logan Hanson, BSc, CPA. Last verified against CRA guidance on August 4, 2026.

Evidence is the quiet lever on the size of your SR&ED claim: strong, contemporaneous records let you support eligible work you’d otherwise leave out. Not because the CRA wants a mountain of paperwork, but because good evidence gives you the confidence to claim work you’d otherwise drop for fear you couldn’t defend it. The best part: for a software team, most of that evidence is already being created. You just have to keep it and point at it. Here’s how to build evidence that makes your claims both bigger and easier to defend.

Key Takeaways: Strengthening Evidence for Bigger SR&ED Claims

• The CRA wants contemporaneous evidence that shows technological uncertainty and systematic investigation, not a formal lab notebook.
• For software teams, the best evidence already exists: commits, pull requests, tickets, benchmarks, design docs and failed branches.
• Strong evidence makes a claim bigger because it lets you confidently support partial time, support work and less-obvious eligible projects.
• Capturing evidence as you go takes minutes, and it beats reconstructing a year from memory near the deadline.
• Keep your SR&ED records for at least six years. A quick review can show where your evidence is thin before it costs you.

What Evidence Does the CRA Actually Want?

The CRA wants contemporaneous records that show you faced technological uncertainty and worked through it systematically. “Contemporaneous” is the key word: evidence created while the work happened, not written up afterward to support a claim. It doesn’t need to be formal. It needs to be real, dated, and tied to the technical work.

The story your evidence should tell is simple: here’s what we didn’t know, here’s what we tried, here’s what happened, here’s what we changed. If your records show that loop, they’re doing their job.

What Counts as Strong SR&ED Evidence?

Strong evidence is the ordinary output of your development process, kept and dated. For a software team, that usually means:

• Commit history and pull requests, especially where they show attempts and course corrections.
• Issue tickets and their comments, where the problem and the debate are recorded.
• Design docs, architecture notes and RFCs that lay out the uncertainty and the options.
• Benchmarks, test results and profiling data that show what you measured.
• Failed branches and abandoned spikes, which document the approaches you tried that didn’t work.
• Stand-up notes, Slack threads and meeting notes where the technical problem was worked out.

Notice that failed work is some of your best evidence. It’s strong evidence that the outcome was genuinely uncertain, which is the exact thing the CRA is testing for.

How Do You Capture Evidence Without Slowing Your Team Down?

You capture it by adding tiny habits to the workflow you already have, not by starting a documentation project. The goal is a light, dated trail, not an essay.

• Add a one-line “why” to tickets that involve real uncertainty: what’s unknown and what you’re testing.
• Write a couple of sentences at decision points: the approach you picked and the ones you ruled out.
• Don’t delete failed branches and experiments. Tag them so they’re findable.
• Label the tickets or projects that involve R&D so time can be traced later.
• Keep benchmark and test output rather than clearing it.

None of this is heavy. A few minutes a week, spread across the team, produces a far stronger record than a frantic reconstruction ever could.

Why Does Evidence Make a Claim Bigger, Not Just Safer?

Because evidence is what lets you claim the eligible work you’d otherwise leave out. Founders under-claim when they’re unsure they could back it up: the partial-time contributions, the support work, the eligible slice in a project that wasn’t officially “R&D.” With a clear record, you can include that work with confidence instead of dropping it to be safe. Safe under-claiming is still under-claiming.

A Worked Example: Evidence Turns a Cautious Claim into a Full One

Strong evidence often decides how much of a real claim you’re willing to file. Take a CCPC that could defend $250,000 of obvious eligible salaries, for about $87,500 in federal credit before overhead and provincial credits. With a clear record, it can also confidently include:

• $90,000 in partial-time contributions it could now trace to labelled tickets and commits.
• $60,000 of support work, backed by the branches and test harnesses that show it enabled the experiment.

That lifts the base from $250,000 to about $400,000, for roughly $140,000 in federal credit before the prescribed-proxy overhead amount and provincial credits. The work was always eligible. The evidence is what made it claimable with confidence. This is illustrative, so your numbers will differ, and for a qualifying CCPC the enhanced 35% credit is refundable, applies to the first $6 million of qualifying expenditures, phases out with taxable capital, and shares that limit among associated corporations. See our State of SR&ED overview for context.

A Checklist: Evidence to Keep This Year

Start keeping these now and next year’s claim gets both bigger and easier to defend.

• A short note of the technological uncertainty on each R&D ticket or project.
• The approaches you tried and rejected, and why.
• Failed branches, spikes and abandoned experiments, kept and tagged.
• Benchmarks and test results tied to the targets you were chasing.
• A way to trace who worked on the eligible work and roughly how much.
• Records kept for at least six years, in case of a later review.

What Makes SRED.ca Different

SRED.ca charges a flat fee, billed monthly, never a percentage or contingency fee, which usually works out to roughly half the lifetime cost of a percentage-based firm. As far as we know, we’re the only SR&ED provider that publishes its pricing on its website. Because we track your eligible work year-round, the evidence gets captured while it’s fresh, which is exactly what lets you claim the fuller number with confidence. We’re CPA-owned, audit defense is included, and if the CRA approves less than 75% of the filed claim we waive our fees, as set out in our 75% guarantee. If there’s no eligible work in your year, you don’t pay.

Keep the Trail, Claim the Work You Really Did

The evidence for a strong SR&ED claim is mostly already being created by your team. Keep it, date it, tie it to the uncertainty, and you can claim the full extent of your eligible work instead of the cautious slice. If you want to see where your evidence is strong and where it’s thin, grab a free consultation. The CRA’s SR&ED program page explains what your records need to show.

Related reading: why tech firms struggle with SR&ED claims, how to fix SR&ED claim delays, and why an SR&ED refund shrinks under a previous consultant.

FAQs About SR&ED Evidence and Documentation

What if I didn’t keep documentation during the year?

You can often reconstruct a lot from tools you already use: commit history, pull requests, tickets, and release notes all carry dates. It’s weaker than contemporaneous notes written for the purpose, and whether it’s enough depends on how well it documents the uncertainty, the systematic investigation and the advancement. Then fix it going forward by capturing evidence as you work.

Do I need a formal lab notebook or research log?

No. The CRA wants contemporaneous evidence, but it doesn’t dictate the format. For software, your normal development artifacts, kept and dated, are the record. A dedicated log is fine but not required.

How much detail does the CRA want?

Enough to show the technological uncertainty and how you systematically investigated it. You don’t need to document every keystroke. You need records that make clear what was unknown, what you tried, and what you found, tied to the time and the people involved.

Does more evidence actually mean a bigger claim?

Indirectly, yes. Better evidence lets you confidently include eligible work you might otherwise leave out, like partial time and support work, and it makes the whole claim easier to defend. It doesn’t change the rules, but it changes how much of your real eligible work you’re willing to claim.

What’s the best evidence for a software SR&ED claim?

Contemporaneous development artifacts: commits and pull requests, issue tickets, design docs, benchmarks and test results, and the failed branches that document unsuccessful approaches and help show the work was uncertain. They’re strong precisely because they were created while the work happened.

How long should I keep SR&ED records?

Generally at least six years, in line with the CRA’s requirement to keep books and records. A claim can be reviewed after it’s filed, so keeping the underlying evidence protects you if questions come up later.

This article is general information, not tax advice. Tax figures depend on your corporation type, province, and taxation year.

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