CRM for grant and tax credit consulting firms
A grant or tax credit practice does not run a sales pipeline, it runs a book of claims against filing deadlines. Each claim is an evidence package that must be complete by a fixed date, and the client who has to produce that evidence is the slowest party in the chain. A sales CRM models none of this: it has no deadline that generates work, no checklist that measures completeness, and no memory that this same client files the same claim again next year.
Where the generic CRM breaks:
Won means over. In a sales CRM the engagement letter is the close. In a filing practice it is the start of the only work that matters — collecting evidence, drafting, filing, and surviving review. The CRM goes quiet exactly when the risk begins.
No deadline dimension. A claim has a filing window and the practice has dozens of them running at once. A close date is a forecast; a filing deadline is a cliff. A CRM that treats them the same cannot rank the book by which claim is closest to the edge with the most evidence still missing.
Client tasks are invisible. Most of what blocks a claim is work the client owes you — payroll records, project descriptions, an hour with an engineer. A CRM tracks your team's tasks, not the client's, so the true bottleneck of every file never appears on any list.
No annual recurrence. The same client files the same program every year, and last year's claim is the template for this one. A flat deal list forgets that, so each season starts from zero instead of from what was already collected, decided and defended.
The data model that actually fits:
Claim. One per client per program per year, with its own filing window, evidence checklist and status. This is the unit the whole practice actually manages, and no generic deal object carries a deadline that generates work.
Evidence item. A required document or input with a type, an owner — usually the client — a state and a chase history. Completeness becomes a percentage per claim instead of a feeling.
Deadline board. Every filing window across the book in one view, ranked by days remaining against evidence outstanding. This ranking is the daily work list and it cannot be derived from close dates.
Program definition. The checklist and rules for each program you file, defined once, so a new claim starts populated instead of improvised by whoever opens it.
Claim history. Prior years linked to the current claim — what was filed, what was questioned on review, what was allowed — so amendments and repeat filings start from a record rather than a folder hunt.
Our verdict: A generic CRM is fine for the front of this business — inbound leads, referral tracking, proposals. Keep it there, or keep a spreadsheet there. What has to be built is the claim object with its deadline and evidence checklist, because that is where a missed filing window costs a client their year. That is a focused build around one object and one calendar, not a platform.
Why not just use project management software for claims?
Project tools track your tasks. A claim is mostly blocked by the client's tasks, and it recurs every year against a hard external date. You can bend a project tool toward that, but you lose the program checklists, the year-over-year record and the book-wide deadline ranking, which are the parts that prevent the expensive mistake.
What is the single most valuable thing to add first?
The deadline board. One view of every claim's filing window ranked by outstanding evidence changes how the practice spends its mornings, and it only requires the claim object underneath it. Everything else can come later.
How do you get slow clients to produce evidence?
Structure and escalation. A specific request for a named document with an upload link outperforms a paragraph email, and reminders that tighten as the deadline approaches outperform a consultant remembering to nag. The system does the chasing so the consultant does the consulting.
Does this apply outside SR&ED and Canadian programs?
Yes. Any practice that assembles evidence against a filing date — provincial credits, innovation grants, export funding, film credits — runs on the same claim-and-deadline mechanics. The program checklists differ; the model does not.
Last reviewed 27 August 2026