Archive for June, 2010

This past weekend, Toronto hosted one of the G20 summits that have been occurring twice a year since 2008. One of the hot topics on the agenda was economic recovery after our recent recession, and due to the European debt crisis that is currently underway.

While there was a divide among attendees about which was better – more stimulus spending to help the economy recover, or more conservative spending and balanced budgets – all countries involved in the G20 summit have agreed to reduce their deficit by half by 2013. By the year 2016, these countries are all hoping to have stabilized their debt loads.

So what does that mean for Canadian businesses?

While nothing official has been announced as to what Canada will be doing to reduce its deficit, Canada was agreeing with the European countries that what is required to reach the goal of cutting back stimulus spending, so we can speculate that stimulus spending will be reduced. And that could mean, unfortunately, that a lot of programs small businesses get assistance from would not be able to provide as much fiscal support as we have become used to.

Of course, we don’t know what will happen for certain yet. But we will definitely be keeping an eye on what is decided about Canadian stimulus spending, and will be keeping you up-to-date with any announcements that are made that could have an effect on the way you run your business.

Along with the other changes that the CRA has been implementing over the past couple years, the Claim Review Manual has been updated. This is the manual that tells the CRA reviewers what processes they need to follow when reviewing an SR&ED claim. This review manual is meant to make the review process more consistent from review to review, and from reviewer to reviewer. It sets out clear guidelines as to what is to happen in a review, and what kind of timeline the reviewer should be following when working on a claim. The manual is also supposed to increase the co-ordination between the technical and financial reviewers, and to increase the communication quality between the reviewer and you (the claimant).

The CRA’s website has laid out the steps to a review, as listed in the CRA Review Manual. A brief overview follows:

1. Preparing and planning:
   • Reviewing your claim
   • Identifying issues with your claim (ie – areas they are unsure can be considered SR&ED)
   • Making first contact with you
2. Conducting a site visit:
   • Preparing for the review (the reviewer will contact you by phone or letter to discuss when the review will happen)
   • Preliminary review work (interviewing any possible staff involved with the SR&ED work, explaining the SR&ED program, etc)
   • On-site review (tour of the facilities, interviewing staff involved in the SR&ED work, reviewing supporting documentation)
   • Request for more information to be sent to the CRA reviewer
   • Communication of preliminary decisions (if possible, the reviewer will let you know what kind of results to expect from your claim submission)
3. Finalizing results:
   • SR&ED review report (prepared by the CRA for you, to allow you to review it and provide any new information if you disagree with their assessment)
   • Finalization of technical and financial reports (these reports will be sent to you by mail, be delivered in a meeting, or discussed over the phone)
   • Dispute resolution (if you disagree with the CRA’s final report)
   • Appeals process

Many people get concerned when looking into the SR&ED program about how safe their trade secrets are. One of the key components of the SR&ED program is that you are faced with technological obstacles that don’t currently have any known methods to solving these problems – and in claiming for the SR&ED program, you’re going to need to cover how you overcame these obstacles. It’s only natural that you are going to be worried that what you worked hard to discover could be easily made known to your competition.

But the reality of the situation is that your trade secrets are safe and are kept completely confidential.

First of all, the CRA only looks as deep as it needs to, in order to discover whether your SR&ED projects qualify for the program – they only looks to see that there are technological obstacles, technological advancement and technical content. It isn’t always necessary for the CRA to look at the exact principles of your projects – when it is necessary, they maintain the strictest of confidentiality. In fact, the CRA has put rules and legislative precautions in place in order to protect your confidentiality.

If you are working with a consultant to prepare your SR&ED claim, your consultant should also maintain the strictest confidentiality with your technologies and intellectual property. If you have any concerns that these may not be the case, a standard non-disclosure agreement should be signed to the respect.

So, it is indeed a myth that your trade secrets aren’t safe when claiming for the SR&ED program, and this should not be a reason why you don’t consider filing for the SR&ED program.

One of our goals in business is always to increase both our productivity and the productivity of our team members. Here are ten tools that can be used to help with increasing productivity through our daily activities:

1. Remember the Milk. This is one of my favourite online tools – I am a natural list maker, so an online application that allows me to create as many lists as I need, while allowing me to access them wherever I am, well! Due dates can be set, priorities made and tasks can be set to repeat as often as needed. Remember the Milk is a great tool to keep on-top of your To-Do list. link.
2. Campaign Monitor. One of the best online tools to assist with sending online campaigns, newsletters, etc., to your clients. Campaign Monitor allows you to see stats of how many people opened your campaign, how long they read your campaign, what links they clicked in your campaign, and whether they forwarded it to a friend. link.
3. Sharepoint Online. One of Microsoft’s online tools, Sharepoint allows you to access, modify, share and create new documents with other users, while still using the Microsoft Office suite (as opposed to an online document editor). link.
4. Google. Google is so much more than just a search engine – there is Google Docs, that allows you to do document sharing; there is Google Calendar, where you can share you calendar with many people; Google Analytics helps you keep a tab on what is happening on your website (how many visitors you get, what keywords bring them there, etc). Google Alerts is one of my favourites, as you get an email whenever a website or blog on the Internet mentions any specified terms (for example, you could get an email whenever someone mentions your company’s name). link.
5. YouSendIt. Those files that you need to send to a customer that are too large in size for your (and their) email server to handle? Instead of mailing them a disc with these files burned on to it, YouSendIt allows you to upload the file to their website, so you just have to send a link where they can download the file to the recipient. link.
6. RescueTime. RescueTime is an online time management application that allows you to track and optimize the time you and your employees spend on each task they are faced with. link.
7. Roboform. A lot of companies have password-protected areas of their websites for their clients. Roboform allows you to easily keep track of your username and password for each of those sites, and automatically fills in those forms with necessary information. link.
8. Replace Text. This program allows you to search and replace strings of text from multiple files at the same time – a much faster way to accomplish this than going through every file that may have that string of text in order to search and replace that text! link.
9. Evernote. Use this program to save your ideas, likes, dislikes, thoughts, etc, and access them again using any computer or mobile device. link.
10. AutoHotkey. Hotkeys are keys on your keyboard that, when hit, will perform a specific action (such as “Ctrl+C” to copy text or images). AutoHotkey allows you to create your own hotkeys to help make processes you do faster. link.

StatsCan reported that for the fourth quarter in a row, the manufacturing sector has seen an increase in profits. The first quarter of this year grew 12.6% higher than what profits were in the previous quarter. The oil and gas sector, and the mining sector, also saw large increases in profits this past quarter. (Source).