What It's Like to Work With Strata's Full-Service Tier, From Your Side of the Table

TL;DR

• Full-Service is our signature experience: a dedicated team builds, maximizes, and stands behind your credit, so your people can keep doing their real jobs.
• The fee is 25% of the credit, with a deposit to begin and the balance before delivery. You get a dedicated client success rep, an R&D specialist CPA with Big Four experience, a 25+ page methodology memo, and audit support.
• It fits owners and CFOs who want every defensible dollar with barely a lift from their team. Self-Serve and Enterprise are there if another path suits you better.

The question behind the question

When an owner or CFO wonders whether an R&D credit study is worth it, the hesitation often isn't "do we qualify?" It's "who is going to do all this work?" A study can sound like a project that swallows a month of your finance and engineering teams' time.

Full-Service exists for exactly that worry. Strata offers three ways to work together: Self-Serve, Full-Service, and Enterprise. Every one ends in the same place, a filing-ready study your CPA files with the return. What differs is how much of the journey you carry and how much we carry for you. With Full-Service, that is most of it, which is why it is the tier most owners and CFOs choose.

A quick word on the credit

The federal research credit under IRC Section 41 rewards businesses that invest in developing or improving products, processes, software, or techniques. Activities are evaluated under Treasury Regulation 1.41-4, and the credit is claimed on Form 6765. Whether a company can claim it depends on the specific activities, documentation, and facts. That is why the team beside you matters: a credit is only as strong as the study behind it.

What you get with Full-Service

Think of it as a dedicated team assigned to your claim. According to our service tier sheet, Full-Service includes:

• Your own dedicated client success rep. One friendly point of contact who knows your engagement, so you never have to re-explain your business.
• An R&D specialist CPA with Big Four experience. Specialist review is built into the engagement instead of being something you arrange on your own.
• Data collection and calculation, personalized to your business. The work is shaped around you, not squeezed through a generic template.
• Strategic guidance to maximize every dollar. The goal is the maximum defensible credit, which means looking carefully at what your business may be entitled to and documenting it properly.
• The complete 25+ page methodology memo. It explains how your credit was determined, in a form designed to support the claim.
• Audit support. If questions come up about the study, you have a team that already knows it well.

You pass the finished package to your CPA, who files the return. Your CPA stays your CPA, and you hand them a study that is ready to file.

What your part looks like

Your role is simple: share the information about your business that only you can provide, and be available when our specialists have questions. Most of the work sits with us, and your time commitment is modest. Your dedicated rep is there to keep it that way.

We are not going to hand you a step-by-step checklist here, because what matters for your planning is the outcome. This should not eat your team's month.

As for timing, a typical engagement runs roughly 4 to 8 weeks, depending on the specific activities, documentation, and how quickly information comes together. Starting early simply gives your team more room to fit things around its own calendar.

How payment works

Full-Service is 25% of the credit, with a deposit to begin and the balance before delivery. Because the fee is tied to the size of the credit, it is easy to weigh against what the credit is worth to your business. And you can see what your credit may look like before committing to anything, since our first conversation is a no-cost one.

Who Full-Service is made for

Full-Service tends to be a great fit if:

• You are an owner or CFO who wants every defensible dollar.
• You would rather your engineers, project managers, and finance staff stay focused on their day jobs.
• You like the idea of a specialist CPA and a long-form methodology memo standing behind your claim.

Other paths may suit you better, and that is perfectly fine. If you know your numbers cold and want the fastest, friendliest route to a filed credit, Self-Serve is built for that. If you have $1M+ in annual R&D spend or multiple entities and would rather the engagement come to you, Enterprise delivers Full-Service in person, shaped around you. Not sure where you land? That is what the review below is for.

One example of what a full engagement can surface: Graphite Connect, a SaaS client, identified more than $1.1M in credits. Individual results vary, and every claim depends on the company's own facts.

Let's find your fit

Fifteen minutes is all it takes. We will size your credit, answer your questions, and point you down the right path, starting with a $0 initial assessment. Request your 15-minute review at stratataxgroup.com/contact.

This post is for informational purposes only and does not constitute tax or legal advice. Consult a qualified tax professional regarding your specific circumstances.