WBSO administration for startups

What the WBSO asks of you administratively

Once RVO has approved your application and issued the S&O declaration, three obligations start running. They're not heavy, but they are unforgiving: they're tied to fixed periods.

• Record R&D hours within ten working days of the work being done, per person and per project.
• Keep a project administration showing what was developed and which technical problems you tackled, updated within two months after each quarter.
• File the mandatory notification of hours actually spent by 31 March of the following calendar year.

What we take over, and what stays with you

Let's be honest about the split, because a firm that claims to take all of it off your hands isn't being straight with you: nobody can record your hours or write your technical documentation for you. That sits with you and your team, because only you know what was built.

• We process the payroll tax reduction in your monthly payroll filing.
• We file the annual notification with RVO.
• We make sure the financial side of your S&O file matches your bookkeeping.
• We actively remind you of the recording deadlines, so the ten-working-day window and the quarterly deadline never pass unnoticed.
• Not ours: the application itself, the technical project documentation, and advice on whether a project qualifies. That's the work of an R&D grant adviser, and we'll say so rather than guess.

How the reduction lands in your payroll filing

The WBSO benefit for a company with staff is a reduction on the payroll tax you remit. Your S&O declaration states an amount, and you spread it over the payroll periods in the declaration's window. So instead of receiving money, you remit less each month.

That has one practical consequence worth knowing: the benefit only materialises if the reduction is actually applied in the filings, on time and in the right periods. That's exactly the step that gets forgotten when the payroll administration and the WBSO file sit with two different parties.

What happens at an RVO check

RVO checks on a sample basis. If your administration turns out to be incomplete or updated too late, a correction on your S&O declaration follows, and in some cases a fine on top of that correction. The benefit you had on paper then evaporates anyway.

Most of those corrections aren't caused by fraud but by drift: hours recorded a month later, a project administration nobody kept up during a busy quarter. Guarding the deadlines is therefore the cheapest insurance there is.

What it costs

There's no separate advisory track for this. Processing the reduction in your payroll filing, the notification to RVO and guarding the deadlines are part of the administration we do for you. Payroll itself always costs 20 euros per employee per month, payslips and the payroll tax return included.