After Neo Financial launched in 2019, the team made a decision that helped shape how it would scale.
The young startup began working with Boast to file Scientific Research and Experimental Development (SR&ED) claims for the technical iteration behind its FinTech platform.
Kyla Mireault of Boast believes SR&ED is “a growth strategy hiding in plain sight.”
As the Calgary-based company grew from 20 employees to one of Canada’s fastest-scaling tech firms, so did the complexity of the product. But rather than treat that work as a sunk cost, Neo saw it as a source of recoverable value, and used SR&ED to offset the cost of experimentation.
“We’ve used SR&ED since we started,” said Kris Read, Co-Founder of Neo. “It allows us to hire aggressively, retain specialists, and create the advantage we’ve needed to grow at this pace.”
SR&ED is a federal tax incentive designed to support companies tackling technical uncertainty. It’s something many startups qualify for, without realizing it. According to Kyla Mireault, Director of Client Delivery at Boast, that oversight can be costly.
“If your team is pushing technical boundaries—building, testing, breaking things—you’re likely eligible for SR&ED,” Mireault said. She and her team at Boast believe this tax credit is “a growth strategy hiding in plain sight.”
What most startups miss
Many startups approach SR&ED as a year-end task, filed if there is time and internal capacity. Mireault believes that framing limits its value.
“The amount of time it takes to prepare a claim and the amount of involvement required can be daunting,” said Mireault. “Especially in startup life, every minute is an opportunity to move the business forward.”
According to Mireault, Boast has been working with Neo “since they were a startup.” Since then, the FinTech company quickly grew from a single product to a comprehensive suite of financial products aimed at providing Canadians with more rewarding and user-friendly alternatives to traditional banking.
These products include high-interest savings accounts, credit cards, credit-building secured cards, and mortgages. The company continues to build new products every year, Mireault said, at an unprecedented pace.
“The amount of work they’re doing year over year has increased significantly,” Mireault added.
Yet even with examples like Neo, many startups still assume SR&ED only applies to traditional, lab-based R&D. Mireault said deep engagement with SR&ED is still the exception, not the rule.
But SR&ED’s criteria extend far beyond the lab. Debugging and troubleshooting during software development can qualify, Mireault said, particularly if startups are solving problems with no known solution.
Unsuccessful product iterations may also meet the threshold. “You don’t need to launch or commercialize something for it to qualify,” Mireault added.
Experimenting with new frameworks, developing custom architecture or integrations, and even time spent by founders or early team members solving technical problems can be tracked, and claimed before the startup has a formal R&D department.
“There’s not always a one-to-one correlation between a business need and a technological advancement or uncertainty,” Mireault added. “So just being able to lean on SR&ED consultants to be able to help position the work that you’re doing in the most CRA-friendly way always helps you increase the size of your claim as well as decrease the risk of audit.”
Those claims can add up quickly. Many startups may be leaving hundreds of thousands of dollars in refundable tax credits on the table. These are funds that, according to Mireault, can mean the difference between extending the runway or making cuts.
How the story gets told
Understanding what qualifies for SR&ED is one challenge. Documenting it is another.
Much of the SR&ED program’s complexity lies in its interpretation, Mireault explained. While the financial side of a claim is relatively straightforward—covering salaries, contractor costs, and materials—the technical side requires a narrative.
“The qualitative side is where some of the art comes in,” Mireault said. “We have a very small amount of words to explain a large amount of work, and [we need] to eloquently portray to the CRA that the work that has been done is deemed eligible under the criteria.”
Engaging with startups early in the filing year also allows Boast to offer input during the planning phase, not just after the R&D work is complete. That might involve reviewing development plans, identifying which paths are more likely to qualify, or helping teams track supporting evidence as they go.
Boast also uses AI to automate much of the filing process, and surface patterns in product development work that may qualify for SR&ED. By integrating with tools like GitHub and Jira, the platform can analyze code commits, tickets, and development timelines to identify areas of technical uncertainty.
“If there’s a fork in the road, and going right instead of left would strengthen the SR&ED positioning, we’ll walk them through that,” Mireault added.
Strong claims also require precision. The Canada Revenue Agency audits roughly 20 percent of claims annually, and it’s a process that favours documentation, not improvisation. “Because it’s the government, they always like to kick the tires, so making sure that we’ve prepared something defensible is always important,” Mireault said.
For companies that adopt this approach, SR&ED becomes less of a compliance exercise and more of an operational discipline. The claims become stronger, the process less time-consuming, and the results more predictable.
A deadline with consequences
SR&ED has taken on new weight in a changed funding climate. Venture capital has become harder to access, and many startups are operating with smaller teams and tighter timelines. As a result, some are turning to SR&ED not as a bonus, but as part of their funding model.
“It is rear-view looking,” Mireault noted, but even so, planning ahead can shape how teams staff, structure work, and choose which projects to pursue. “If we’re engaged early, we’re able to bring the right details out of the developers,” she added.
Neo’s early decision to build SR&ED claims into their operations helped them move quickly while recovering capital along the way.
“That funding does allow you to scale faster, especially when you’re in that startup stage and not bringing in a ton of revenue,” Mireault added. “So the faster you can bring talent in house, the faster you can grow and scale.”
For some companies, SR&ED remains a low priority. The filing deadline arrives, and the opportunity passes. But Mireault believes for teams that build a system around it, the program offers something increasingly rare in Canada’s tech sector: a reliable source of capital.
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The next filing deadline for SR&ED is June 30, 2025, and your business could be eligible for over $1 million in refundable tax credits.
Founders who get ahead of it can uncover real, usable capital. Learn more about how Boast can unlock real value from your R&D.