creditARMOR Features

How the features fit together

creditARMOR is a Swanson Reed product for R&D audit readiness, offered by Cost Guru as a white-label product. At its center is a mock audit. Around it sit tools that help you act on what the mock audit finds, keep watching as a claim changes and manage the work across many claims. The features can be thought of in three groups: finding weak spots, fixing them and managing the work.

The descriptions below are limited to what Swanson Reed has provided. Exact capabilities, integrations and terms are proposals until Swanson Reed confirms them, so please treat this as a guide to the idea and not a specification.

Who uses which features

A small business that prepared its own claim might use only the health check and gap finder, once, before filing. A CPA firm with dozens of R&D clients is more likely to use scoring, monitoring and the dashboard, because its challenge is deciding where attention should go. A firm that has received an examination notice will focus on case management and the response assistant. The features are designed so that each can be used on its own.

A worked example (illustrative)

This scenario is invented. A firm loads five client claims. The health check shows that four look reasonable and one has several weaknesses. The firm opens that claim's risk score and gap list, collects better records for two projects and writes clearer descriptions for a third. Monitoring then shows the score improving as records arrive. At the end of the process, the dashboard shows all five claims with their scores, and the firm files them with a record of what was done on each.

What the features do not do

None of the features guarantees that a claim will be accepted or predicts whether it will be examined. They test and organize what is in front of them. They do not provide tax or legal advice and do not replace the judgment of a licensed CPA or enrolled agent. Please read the page on what a mock audit can and cannot tell you before relying on any result.

Each feature in a little more detail

The claim health check is the quickest way in. You load a claim and get a first view of how its records hold up, which tells you whether a deeper look is needed. Risk scoring goes further and turns the findings into a score and a ranked list, so that the most serious weaknesses come first. The documentation gap finder concentrates on records: it points to the project, the person or the cost where evidence is missing, thin or inconsistent.

The audit response assistant is for the moment a question arrives. It helps organize an answer from the records that already exist, and shows where an answer would be weak. Continuous monitoring keeps watching as a claim and its records change, so a score that was good in May does not quietly decay by September. The portfolio risk dashboard is for firms: it shows many clients at once, with their scores and trends. And audit case management tracks the questions, documents and deadlines for a claim that is under examination, in one place.

Using the features responsibly

A score or a list is a prompt for thought, not a verdict. Features that rank or monitor can tempt people to manage to the number. The aim is a better-supported claim, not a better score. If a score improves because a record was found, that is progress. If it improves because a finding was ignored, it is not. A reviewer who reads the findings, not just the figure, keeps the tool useful.