Documentation

SR&ED Documentation: A Practical Guide for Canadian Companies

What documentation CRA expects for SR&ED claims, what contemporaneous records mean, and how to organize your evidence for a strong, defensible claim.

SREDY.IO · Editorial Team 2026-06-20 6 min read

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What CRA expects for documentation

CRA does not publish a mandatory list of specific documents. Instead, it expects evidence that demonstrates you faced genuine technological uncertainty, conducted systematic investigation, and achieved technological advancement.

Time-tracking records showing who worked on qualifying projects and for how long
Project logs documenting the technical investigation, iterations, and results
Design documents showing rejected approaches and the rationale for choosing the final approach
Test protocols and results demonstrating systematic investigation
Lab notebooks, git commit history, or any contemporaneous record showing the work was done

Contemporaneous vs. reconstructed records

CRA strongly prefers contemporaneous documentation — records created during the R&D work, not reconstructed afterward. Contemporaneous records are more credible and harder to dispute.

The 6-year rule

CRA requires all records supporting an SR&ED claim to be kept for a minimum of 6 years from the end of the tax year in which the claim was filed. This applies to both technical and financial records.

documentation evidence CRA records

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Useful next steps

SR&ED eligibility checklist → Refund estimator → Sample T661 package → Documentation guide →

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