Grant Discovery

Non-dilutive money is the cheapest money you will raise

Grants and incentives do not cost equity. They cost attention, deadlines and evidence - which is exactly what gets lost while you are raising.

Start free — no card Run a free Reality Check

Grant discovery is on the paid plans. Reality Check and the guides are free.

Eligibility first

matched against what the company actually is, not a list of every grant in Australia

Deadlines that bite

the R&D registration deadline is absolute - ten months after year end, no extensions

Evidence as you go

records kept at the time, which is the part auditors actually test

Guides included

the R&D Tax Incentive and ESIC written up in full, free to read

The problem

Most founders find out too late

The R&D Tax Incentive is usually the largest non-dilutive funding available to a loss-making Australian company, and it is refundable - paid as cash. Registration closes ten months after the income year ends and there are no extensions. Miss it and the whole year is gone, however good the work was.

Grants are the same shape: eligible, until the window closed or the contemporaneous records were never written.

What this replaces

A browser tab of grant websites, checked when someone remembers
Finding out a round closed last month
Reconstructing R&D records at tax time, from memory
Paying a consultant to tell you what you were eligible for

How it works

Matched, tracked, evidenced

Three things, in that order, because the second two are where the money is actually lost.

Matched to the company

Eligibility assessed against the company's own sector, stage and activity rather than returning every grant in the country.

What each one requires

Each opportunity carries what it needs and when it closes, so the work is visible before the deadline rather than after.

Evidence kept at the time

Supporting records filed as the work happens. For R&D in particular, a record written at the time is worth more than a better one written later.

The R&D line drawn properly

Writing a complex feature with known techniques is engineering. Testing a hypothesis whose outcome a competent professional could not have predicted is R&D. The guide draws that line with examples.

ESIC, with the trap flagged

The early stage innovation company concession is valuable and narrow, and the guide covers the timing problem that catches companies using convertible notes.

Feeds the raise

What a company has won is a fact investors care about, and it sits with everything else rather than in a separate folder.

Questions

What founders ask

What is the R&D Tax Incentive worth?

For a company with aggregated turnover under $20 million it is refundable at the company tax rate plus an 18.5% premium - 43.5% for a base rate entity - and paid as cash rather than credited against profits the company does not have. The minimum eligible spend is $20,000 unless the work goes through a registered Research Service Provider.

When is the R&D registration deadline?

Ten months after the end of the income year - 30 April for a 30 June year end. The deadline is absolute and there are no extensions.

Are the guides free?

Yes. The guides to the R&D Tax Incentive, the ESIC concession and the rest are free to read with no account.

Does CatenaHQ apply for grants on my behalf?

No. It finds what you are eligible for, tracks what each one needs and keeps the evidence. The application is yours, and anything with tax consequences should go past your adviser.