WhisperClaims

Edinburgh

What is WhisperClaims?

WhisperClaims take the pain out of preparing R&D tax claims. Designed for business advisors of all kinds, including accountants and R&D tax consultants, it is a cloud-based system capable of producing all of the documentation needed to support an R&D claim within an hour.

 

How does it work?

To prepare a claim, users are led through an easy to understand, responsive question set, probing all of the key areas of a claim to ensure that the end result is robust and defensible.  Users can even invite their clients to sign-in and answer the questions themselves.

Once all of the required questions have been answered, the report is instantly available – no delays for manual preparation or checking! The report is compliant and detailed, containing all of the information needed to justify a claim for R&D tax relief.

 

What are the benefits of using WhisperClaims?

 Our approach is robust and thorough, with users feeding back that they see an improvement in the quality of their claims and the level of service provided to their clients, based on our high quality, repeatable and structured process.

 Most of our users work with us for one or more of the following reasons:

  • Market entry: entering the market for the first time with limited experience of the scheme
  • Creating capacity: looking to scale up operations without recruiting more staff
  • Driving down costs: reducing operating costs through more effective staff utilisation
  • Bringing R&D claims back in house: reducing the use of outside consultants and taking back control of clients’ claims

Some of the main benefits of the system are:

  • Highly structured and quick and easy to work through, yet covering all of the bases required for a solid claim
  • Comprehensive help and support available in the system
  • Backed by specialists with over twenty years of experience of R&D tax

A monthly subscription is charged for access the system to the system, alongside a low capped fee for each report. The price per report is transparently displayed in the user

dashboard; our users know exactly how much they are going to pay, along with the approximate eligible expenditure in the claim, before they download a report.

 

 

Richard, Jen and Mike met when working at a successful Edinburgh-based R&D tax consultancy, founded by Richard in 2008. During Mike’s time as interim Sales Director, he noticed key trends in the R&D tax market, most notably the high number of claimants that were being turned away because their claims were too small to be economically processed by consultants. All three founders felt that automating the process of preparing R&D tax claims would be hugely beneficial to the industry, enabling smaller companies to access support and advisors to expand their offering.

 

While Richard and Jen took time out to polish up their technical skills and gain experience of software development and Agile management, Mike formed Whisperclaims and began gathering feedback on the idea of an automated, cloud-based system for the preparation of R&D tax claims. Meanwhile, through his training at Codeclan, Richard met Rick Henry, our future technical director, and persuaded him to work with us to build the system.

 

Having gained all of the necessary skills and found a great developer, WhisperClaims was up and running! The prototype system was ready for testing within a three months, and a few friendly accountants and consultants were recruited to help us test and refine the system. After only a few weeks of testing, the first claims were prepared and invoiced, and, more importantly, submitted to HMRC.

 

Having validated the concept and process, we set about building a front end and dashboards to create a great user experience. WhisperClaims officially launched in September 2018, and immediately gained traction. Rick Henry became Technical Director in October, and we were awarded ‘Best Use of Innovation’ at the UK Business Tech Awards in November 2018, which was amazing recognition of the hard work we’d put in up to that point.

 

Through 2019, WhisperClaims has gone from strength to strength. Highlights have included expanding our team, with our first additional developer joining in January, our sales coordinator in April and our marketing manager in June. We won ‘Emerging Fintech of the Year’ at the Scottish Accounting and Financial Technology Awards in May, and were shortlisted for two awards at the Scottish Fintech Awards in September. Most excitingly, as of September, we had over forty subscribed customers, from one-man band accountants to top 30 accountancy firms and leading R&D tax consultancies, and were continuing to gain new customers every month.

Mike Dean, Sales and Marketing Director

 

Jen Badger, Operations Director

 

Richard Edwards, Product Director

 

Rick Henry, Technical Director

Overview

  • Funding Stage Self-funded
  • Trading for 1-5 years
  • Employees 6-10
  • Sector Institutional tool
  • Valuation N/A

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