How Elderon prepares a claim
A claim moves through four steps, in order, and every figure that comes out the other end can be traced back to a document, a ledger line or a timesheet. This is what each step does and what the adviser receives at the end.
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Start from the project
A claim starts with the R&D project. In R&D Scoping, a few words about the work become a project: the description is written out in full and the lead is picked from the company's people, both ready to edit. Briefs, technical designs, experiment logs and other supporting documents are attached as the project is scoped, and cost and time records come in through their own importers.
Step one: scope
Scoping works through the nine AusIndustry registration fields. AI drafts each answer from the project description, its documents and a search of published research, in the technical terms an assessor expects, and every field links to the section of the Act it answers. A gate-by-gate assessment then tests the core activity requirements and the exclusions. Each field records whether it was drafted by AI and when it was accepted, and the sources it cites stay linked.
Step two: sort
Expense files open in the normal CSV importer: columns are detected, the rows are staged, and the GST treatment is settled before anything is committed. Each line is classified into one of eighteen spend categories and an R&D cost type with a confidence score. Lines the model is not confident about wait in a review queue until a reviewer approves or rejects them, with a note recording why. Learned categorisation rules apply the reviewer's decisions to future imports from the same vendor.
Timesheet files open in the timesheet importer: columns detected, people resolved against the staff list with their hourly rates, project codes matched to projects, then a review before import. Entries are approved by a reviewer, and only on approval do they become labour cost on the project.
Step three: calculate
Tax Season brings the committed, claimable, ex-GST expenditure for the financial year together by entity and by project and applies the offset rate for the entity's aggregated turnover and R&D intensity. Consolidated groups are handled at the head company. Readiness blockers list anything that would stop a claim: an entity without an ABN or turnover, a project without a hypothesis or an assessment, expenses without a project, uploaded files not yet placed.
Step four: prepare the pack
The evidence documents are generated from the project's scoping, its attached documents and its committed expenditure, and each cites the sections of Division 355 it relies on. The export is one archive: per project, the scoping fields with their AI provenance, the assessment, the generated documents and the attached evidence files; per entity, the schedule with the calculation. The adviser reviews it, approves the claim in the platform with their name and the time recorded, and lodges.
What stays with the adviser
Judgement and lodgement. Elderon prepares and organises; it does not decide eligibility on anyone's behalf and it does not lodge. Every AI output is marked as advisory, and the platform is built so that a reviewer can see, for any figure, where it came from and who signed off on it.