Guide
What R&D records should you keep while the experiment is running?
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Overview
Keep a record of what you tested, what happened and what it cost while the team still remembers the details. Even a failed trial can help explain the work behind an R&D claim.
Give each experiment a home
Six months after a trial, the invoice is easy to find. The harder part is remembering which version failed, who worked on it and why you ran it again. An R&D file is most useful when somebody outside the project can follow both the technical decision and the money that paid for it.
Suppose you’re testing whether a new packaging seal holds at low temperatures. When you start, record what existing research tells you, what remains uncertain and what you predict will happen. Save the test design, dates, measurements and conclusions under the same project reference. A photo of a failed seal means much more alongside the temperature, batch and test conditions.
Use the tools your team already opens every day. A dated lab notebook, version history or issue tracker can all help. Put the technical lead’s explanation beside the result, especially when you change direction. A polished end-of-year summary is much easier to support when the original records still exist.
Link the dollars to the work
If an employee spends Monday testing seals and Tuesday on routine production, record time in a way that shows the split. Link materials to the batch used and supplier charges to the work delivered. For shared costs, keep the allocation method and why it makes sense. A percentage chosen from memory at tax time is hard for anyone else to reproduce.
At month end, pick one test and trace it from the hypothesis through to the payroll and purchase entries.
