Restaurant app cost: ordering, click & collect and loyalty
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Key takeaways
- The Crédit d’Impôt Innovation (CII, France’s innovation tax credit) can cover a significant share of the design costs of a new product.
- Developing a standard app is not eligible: eligibility rests on novelty and technical uncertainty.
- The Jeune Entreprise Innovante (JEI, young innovative company) status reduces social charges on R&D staff.
- Subcontracted expenses are only counted if the provider is approved.
- Document as you go: it is the traceability, not the project, that is audited.
On a digital project, existing French schemes can cover in the order of 20 to 30% of the budget. That is not trivial, and yet half the companies we work with do not make use of them — either through lack of awareness or for fear of an audit.
Here is an honest overview, including what is not eligible.
A useful warning: we are a development studio, not a tax firm. This article gives benchmarks for knowing which questions to ask and of whom. The structures, the applicable rates and the eligibility of your project must be validated by your chartered accountant (expert-comptable) or a specialist adviser — the parameters change from one finance act to the next.
What is eligible, and what is not
This is the most misunderstood point, and the one that leads to tax reassessments.
What is not eligible: developing a mobile app, even a long, complex or expensive one. Integrating existing building blocks. Reproducing a feature that exists elsewhere. Redoing your website. The fact that it is difficult for your team is not enough.
What can be: the part of the project where you are trying to solve a problem whose solution is neither known nor documented. An original algorithm, a level of performance that no solution on the market reaches, an approach that required trials, failures and measurements.
The question is therefore not “is my project innovative” in the commercial sense, but “was my team faced with a technical uncertainty that it had to resolve through an experimental approach”. It is a technical criterion, not a marketing one.
The main schemes
| Scheme | What it targets | Points to watch |
|---|---|---|
| Crédit d’Impôt Recherche (CIR, research tax credit) | Research and development work | Demanding eligibility criterion, solid technical file required |
| Crédit d’Impôt Innovation (CII, innovation tax credit) | Design of prototypes of new products, reserved for SMEs | The most relevant for a new digital product |
| Jeune Entreprise Innovante (JEI, young innovative company) | Reduction of social charges on R&D staff | Conditions on age, ownership and R&D spending |
| Bpifrance (French public investment bank) | Grants, repayable advances, loans | Longer processing, to be anticipated before the start |
| Regional aid | Digitalisation, innovation, first development | Less well known, less competitive, often combinable |
The Crédit d’Impôt Innovation is the one that best fits a genuinely new app or platform project. The CIR targets more fundamental work and assumes a genuine research approach.
The point everyone misses: subcontracting
If you have an agency develop your product, the expenses only enter the base if the provider is approved under the scheme concerned.
It is a question to ask at the tender stage, not after signing. A non-approved provider does not make your project ineligible — the part carried out in-house is still counted — but the subcontracted part, often the majority, falls out of the calculation.
Two useful checks before signing:
- is the approval valid for the financial year concerned;
- are the invoices detailed enough to distinguish the experimental part from routine development.
20–30%Of the budget of an eligible project, coverable by existing schemes
3 yearsUsual period for keeping supporting documents, to plan for
1 hrThe regional meeting that almost always turns up an overlooked aid
What to document, as you go
The audit is not about how good the project is but about traceability. What is systematically requested:
- The initial state of the art: what existed, why it did not meet the need. Two pages, written at the start.
- The technical barrier: the precise problem to be solved, and why its solution was not obvious.
- The trial log: what was attempted, what failed, what was measured. Failures count as much as successes — they prove the experimental approach.
- Time spent: who, on what, for how long. A monthly record is enough, provided it exists.
Reconstructing these elements two years later is painful and fragile. Keeping them as you go costs an hour a month.
A simple method, in four steps
- Before starting, list the parts of the project that involve real technical uncertainty. If the list is empty, do not put together a file: better to ask for nothing than to submit a fragile one.
- Check your provider’s approval and have it written into the contract.
- Open the technical log on day one: state of the art, barriers identified, trials, measurements.
- Have the structure validated by your chartered accountant before the first filing, and keep everything for the applicable retention period.
A tax credit file is not written: it is collected. The difference between a solid file and a risky one is a log kept during the project rather than a story written afterwards.
And if the project is not eligible?
This is the most frequent case, and it is not a problem. Regional digitalisation aid, honour loans and sector-specific schemes do not require an innovative character and are often more accessible.
Above all, never build a financing plan assuming the aid is secured. A project that is only viable with a grant not yet obtained is a project to be trimmed — the exercise described in our article on MVP scope is for precisely that.
Sources
- Crédit d'impôt recherche (CIR) (in French) — Service Public Entreprendre
- Crédit d'impôt innovation (CII) (in French) — Service Public Entreprendre
- Jeune entreprise innovante (JEI), de croissance (JEC), universitaire… (in French) — Service Public Entreprendre
- Bourse French Tech (in French) — Bpifrance
