Screen a client in five questions
Ask these before anyone spends money on documentation. If the answers are thin, the credit probably is too.
- Do they build their own software with engineers in the United States? Research done substantially outside the US is excluded from Section 41 QRE. Offshore teams don't count toward the wage base.
- How many engineering FTE, and at what fully loaded cost? Those two numbers drive most of the credit for a software company. Send the client to the R&D tax credit calculator; it returns a range and a suggested tier in about 30 seconds, and nothing they type leaves the browser.
- Have they claimed the credit before? Under the Alternative Simplified Credit, a first-time filer with no prior three-year QRE history gets 6 percent of current QRE. With that history, it's 14 percent of QRE above half the three-year average. The calculator shows both ends.
- Does Section G apply to them? Starting tax year 2026, non-exempt filers report QREs per business component on Form 6765 Section G. Clients making the QSB payroll-offset election, and original returns with QREs of $1.5M or less and average gross receipts of $50M or less, are outside the mandate. Who must file Section G walks through it.
- Can they produce the records? A payroll register for the tax year, commit history for the product repos, and invoices for any US engineering contractors. If one of those is missing, find out now, not at filing time.
What to request from the client
This is the same list our own intake form uses. Forward it as is.
- Payroll register. One export from the payroll provider for the tax year, covering every engineering employee with quarterly wage detail. Gusto, Rippling, Justworks, ADP, and Paychex all export this as a single PDF or CSV.
- Contractor invoices. Invoices from US-based engineering contractors for the tax year. PDFs are fine.
- Cloud spend (optional). An annual cost export from AWS Cost Explorer, GCP Billing, or Azure Cost Management, but only if cloud is a real research expense (research-stage workloads, GPU clusters, short-lived test environments). Skip it if the bill is production hosting.
- Commit history. Read-only access to the product repos, or an exported log. The two templates below cover both.
Unbranded GitHub access instructions
Two emails you can send a client as your own. Neither mentions R&D Binder. Replace the bracketed placeholders with your firm's details before sending. Both ask only for commit metadata (dates, authors, messages), never source code.
Option 1: read-only access token (recommended)
The client creates a fine-grained GitHub token with read-only access to repository contents, set to expire in 90 days, and can revoke it at any time.
Subject: One quick step for your R&D credit documentation Hi [CLIENT FIRST NAME], To complete the R&D credit documentation for [TAX YEAR], we need read-only access to your GitHub commit history. No source code is reviewed - only commit metadata (dates, author names, and commit messages). The access is temporary and read-only. You can revoke it at any time in 30 seconds. --- HOW TO CREATE ACCESS (5 minutes, done once) Step 1 - Open GitHub token settings Go to: github.com -> click your profile photo (top right) -> Settings -> Developer settings (bottom of left sidebar) -> Personal access tokens -> Fine-grained tokens -> Generate new token Step 2 - Name and expiration Token name: R&D Documentation [TAX YEAR] Expiration: 90 days Leave "Resource owner" set to your personal account unless your repos live under an organization name - in that case select the org name. Step 3 - Repository access Select "Only select repositories" and choose the repos your engineering team actively commits to for your product. Skip forks, archived repos, and internal tools that are not part of the product. Step 4 - Permissions Open the "Repository permissions" section. Find "Contents" and set it to "Read-only". Leave everything else as "No access". Step 5 - Generate and send Click "Generate token" at the bottom. Copy the token - it starts with github_pat_ and will not be shown again. Reply to this email with the token pasted in. --- SECURITY NOTES - The token grants read-only access to commit history only. It cannot push, delete, or modify anything in your repos. - If you want to confirm what was accessed, GitHub logs all token activity under Settings -> Security log. - To revoke access after we are done: Settings -> Developer settings -> Fine-grained tokens -> find this token -> Delete. Questions? Reply to this email. [CPA FIRM NAME] [CPA CONTACT NAME] [CPA CONTACT EMAIL]
Option 2: commit log export (no access granted)
For clients who won't create a token. They run one git log command per repo and attach the file. No credentials change hands.
Subject: One quick step for your R&D credit documentation
Hi [CLIENT FIRST NAME],
To complete the R&D credit documentation for [TAX YEAR], we need an export of your
GitHub commit history. No source code is included - only commit metadata (dates,
author names, and commit messages).
This takes about two minutes and requires no ongoing access.
---
HOW TO EXPORT YOUR COMMIT HISTORY
You will run one command per repo from your terminal. If your product lives across
multiple repos, repeat the steps for each one.
Step 1 - Open your terminal and navigate to the repo
Mac/Linux: cd /path/to/your/repo
Windows: cd C:\path\to\your\repo
If you are not sure where the repo lives, open it in VS Code, then open
the integrated terminal - it will already be in the right folder.
Step 2 - Run this command (copy and paste exactly)
git log --all --date=short \
--pretty=format:"%H|%ae|%an|%ad|%s" > commits-[REPO NAME]-[TAX YEAR].csv
Replace [REPO NAME] with a short name for the repo (example: commits-api-2024.csv).
Replace [TAX YEAR] with the year being documented (example: 2024).
Windows users: replace the backslash continuation with a single line -
git log --all --date=short --pretty=format:"%H|%ae|%an|%ad|%s" > commits-[REPO NAME]-[TAX YEAR].csv
Step 3 - Locate the file
The CSV will be saved in the same folder as the repo. Open that folder in
Finder (Mac) or File Explorer (Windows) and you will see the file there.
Step 4 - Send the file
Reply to this email and attach the CSV file (or files if multiple repos).
If the files are large, let us know and we will send a secure upload link.
---
WHAT IS IN THE FILE
Each line contains five fields separated by a pipe character (|):
commit hash | author email | author name | date | commit message
Example:
a3f9c12|[email protected]|Jane Smith|2024-03-15|feat: add payment retry logic
No source code, no file contents, no credentials. Only the log of who committed
what and when.
---
Questions? Reply to this email.
[CPA FIRM NAME]
[CPA CONTACT NAME]
[CPA CONTACT EMAIL]
Reference pages to send clients
Plain-language explainers, each citing the statute, regulation, or IRS form it relies on.
- The four-part test, one page per part.
- The 11-question rubric we score every business component against.
- Form 6765 Section G, field by field, with a short answer for each field.
- Who must file Section G, including the QSB and small-dollar exceptions.
- State R&D credits, with rate, refundability, and carryforward for each state.
- Amended returns for 2022 to 2024, covering what is still open after the July 6, 2026 OBBBA window.
- The Section 41 glossary for clients who ask what QRE or ASC means.
See what a finished binder looks like
Two demonstration binders built from public open-source commit history. Share them with a client who wants to know what "documentation" means before they pay for it.
Where R&D Binder fits
If you'd rather not build the binder yourself, we do it from the same records listed above. We produce the documentation; you file Form 6765 and stay the preparer of record. Partner rates are 20 percent off every tier, and white-label binders carry your firm's name and colors instead of ours. The details are on the For CPAs page.