belsimple is a purpose-built time tracking tool for Belgian R&D teams. It helps you track time spent on research and development activities so your company can claim the government incentives it’s entitled to — and defend them during an audit by the FPS Finance (FOD Financiën / SPF Finances).
What belsimple is for
The Belgian federal government offers a withholding tax exemption for companies that employ researchers working on eligible R&D activities. To claim this exemption, companies must demonstrate — with a defensible audit trail required for review by the FPS Finance — how their R&D staff spend their time.
Similarly, organisations that receive regional R&D grants — from VLAIO (Flanders), SPW Recherche (Wallonia), or Innoviris (Brussels) — need to report progress on funded work packages and account for the time their teams invest.
belsimple exists to make both of these reporting obligations as simple as possible.
What belsimple is not
belsimple is not a general-purpose time tracker. It doesn’t have billing rates, client invoicing, project budgets, or Gantt charts. If you’re a law firm tracking billable hours or a consultancy managing client projects, there are better tools for that.
belsimple does one thing well: it gives your R&D team a clean, minimal way to log time against classified activities, and it gives your managers the reports they need for tax filings and grant reporting.
How it works
- Managers set up the structure — create tasks that represent your R&D activities, and configure classifications (like Frascati R&D categories) that map to reporting requirements.
- Team members log time — either one entry at a time or using the weekly timesheet grid. Each time entry is automatically tagged with the classifications that apply to that task.
- Managers generate reports — export spreadsheets with time broken down by classification, by user, and by raw entry. These reports are designed to support your tax filing or grant progress report.
Everything is audit-logged. Every change is recorded and exportable — exactly what you need if your filing is ever reviewed.
Roles in belsimple
- Employee — creates tasks, logs time against them, and manages favourites for quick access to frequently used tasks.
- Manager — everything an employee can do, plus: invite and manage users, manage classifications, review team entries, generate reports, upload documents, and configure SSO.
Choose a section from the menu to learn more about how to use belsimple for your role.