A day in the life of our QA team

Life at ForrestBrown is an exciting blend. On one hand, our focus is absolute: R&D tax credits. But on the other hand, the businesses, people, sectors and situations we work with are incredibly diverse.

We have to apply our skills in a dizzying array of situations. It makes for a challenging, dynamic work where no two days are ever the same. This is especially true for our QA (quality assurance) team!

ForrestBrown is the UK’s largest specialist R&D tax credit consultancy. Our office is constantly abuzz with industry: tax teams, legal experts, operations teams work in sync to deliver excellent service. And the QA team is what underpins all of this work.

QA plays a pivotal role in shaping and delivering our technical know-how while curating R&D tax knowledge to support our clients and the ForrestBrown team at large. QA’s primary role is identifying and managing risks in our clients’ claims and maintaining technical excellence while using their expertise to explain complex tax legislation in plain, digestible English.

All of ForrestBrown depends on them to help us grow solutions and ensure everything we do meets (and beats!) industry standards.

In this blog, we’ll look at what makes our QA-ers special, sharing what they love about working at ForrestBrown, as well as how the job helps them grow personally and professionally.

On a daily basis, the QA team get stuck into complex technical subjects. At the same time, our QA-ers work across the entire business with people ranging from our tax managers and legal experts or even directly with our clients.

QA is involved at every step of our process, poring over the details of claims and ensuring everything we do conforms to regulation and is effectively maximised. In the very rare event that an enquiry is opened into a claim prepared by ForrestBrown, QA works with our enquiry support team to answer any questions HMRC might have.

ForrestBrown’s people don’t work in siloes. Our QA team isn’t kept in some dark corner of the office. Our QA-ers to join us in sourcing new business leads, attend kick-offs, jump on project calls and develop insights alongside our delivery teams.

QA is the beating heart of our learning and development programme. Alongside their day jobs, our QA team helps educate the entire business (not only the tax people!) about our work and the R&D tax credit system.

One example is Texcellence Talks, pioneered by Rebecca, a member of the QA team.  This is our internal newsletter focusing on industry and current trends. The newsletter emphasises technical points for the team to focus on, helping to keep standards high.

The centrepiece of QA’s key educational role, however, is the Learning Lab. The Learning Lab is where we lead valuable training sessions for the rest of the business. The programme covers everything ForrestBrowners need to know and culminates in an oral assessment. All of it led by QA.

Our QA team is, above all, is passionate about the quality of our claims. So naturally, as a QA-er, you need to be comfortable explaining complex technical subjects to our colleagues as well as our clients.

You also need to have a solid understanding of how to balance risk and commerciality. We want to meet regulations and keep our clients happy. We also expect you to take pride in coaching and guiding others and provide feedback on how we can do what we do even better in QA. ForrestBrown has a pretty unique culture, and we’re here to progress your learning and development as much as we can!

Discover more about where you could fit in at ForrestBrown, or if you think you’re made for our QA team – find out more and apply today.