Support/Releases/Effort Units and T661 Line 207 (CRDC Field of Research)
Effort Units and T661 Line 207 (CRDC Field of Research)
Aug 5, 2026
Two updates in this release: clearer language around how work is measured on a claim, and support for a new CRA field on Form T661 Part 2.
Why we changed “hours” to Effort Units
In SREDr, numbers next to evidence and employees used to be labelled hours. That was confusing for most clients.
When people see “hours,” they usually think of a timesheet—someone recording that they spent 3 hours on Tuesday on a ticket. That is not how SREDr builds these numbers.
SREDr estimates how much work is connected to each piece of evidence using simple, consistent rules. Those estimates are then used to show how much of someone’s work looks SR&ED-eligible versus not. Calling that “hours” made clients assume the figures were literal clock time, which led to the wrong questions and unnecessary second-guessing.
So we renamed the label to Effort Units.
Think of effort units like points on a project board: they are a fair way to compare relative amounts of work, not a stopwatch. As long as the same rules are applied across the claim, and eligible work is separated from non-eligible work in a clear way, that is what CRA cares about for this kind of allocation.
How Effort Units are measured
SREDr assigns effort units when evidence is gathered. The exact rule depends on the source:
| Source | How effort is assigned (defaults) |
|---|---|
| Jira, Linear, Monday, Asana | Prefer real time tracking when the tool provides it. Otherwise SREDr adds a standard amount for the ticket/task (8 effort units by default) and for each comment (1 by default). Subtasks in Jira/Linear also get the ticket amount. |
| Confluence | Each page revision gets 1 effort unit by default (uses the comment setting). |
| GitHub / Bitbucket | Effort is estimated from the size of daily code changes for each person (not “1 commit = 1 hour”). There are daily caps so a busy day cannot grow without limit. |
| File uploads | Each evidence item from an uploaded file gets 1 effort unit by default. |
You can change the ticket and comment defaults under Settings → Worklog Settings. Those settings apply when SREDr has to estimate effort for tickets and comments.
Where you will see Effort Units:
- Financials — totals and eligible effort for each employee
- Evidence — effort tied to each evidence item and its worklogs
- Exported financial CSVs
Numbers already saved on older claims are not rewritten. New gathers use the Effort Units label and the updated file-upload default of 1.
T661 Line 207 — CRDC Field of Research
CRA added Line 207 to Form T661 Part 2. For each project, you now enter a Canada Research and Development Classification (CRDC) field of research code.
What to enter: a short code that starts with RDF and has five digits after it—for example, RDF10203 for programming languages and software engineering. This tells Statistics Canada the main research area for the project. It is separate from Line 206 (field of science), and the two codes do not have to match.
In SREDr:
- Open the claim Writeup tab and select a project.
- Find CRDC Field of Research Code (Line 207) between Line 206 and the continuation questions (Lines 208 / 210).
- Enter the code yourself, or let claim writing fill it in automatically when the submission is generated (alongside Line 206).
You can copy the code from the writeup view when you are filling the official form. Use only the five-digit Class codes CRA asks for—not longer subclass codes.
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