On March 6th, 2025, TriNet announced the completion of the sale of its wholly owned subsidiary, TriNet Clarus R+D, to Arvo Tech, a leading provider of tax strategy solutions and employment tax credits for small businesses.

Our process, service standards, and commitment to the success of SMBs remain unchanged – the only difference is that Clarus R+D is now a part of Arvo.

Read the full press release.

Claiming your R&D tax credits just got faster and easier. With our new QuickStart feature, you can take the first step toward valuable tax savings immediately. No waiting, no hassle—just streamlined access to the tools and expertise you need, letting you get back to growing your business.  

Here’s how it works: 

• Quick Eligibility Check: Answer a few questions to see if your business qualifies. 
• Free Credit Estimate: Get a look at the potential value of your savings. 
• Expert Support: Work directly with Clarus R+D tax experts to complete a compliant, defensible R&D study. 

Since our founding, the Clarus R+D platform and team of tax experts have helped businesses secure over $350MM in R&D tax credits. Now, it’s your turn! With AI-supported features including industry-specific example responses, and the ability to directly import financial information from many major payroll providers, it’s never been easier to claim your earned credits while remaining compliant with IRS guidelines.  

With the Spring tax deadlines quickly approaching, there’s no better time to get started. 

Take the first step today and unlock the credits you deserve! 

Find out if you qualify

The Clarus R+D Service Committee has continued to organize events throughout the second half of this year to support our greater Columbus community. 

We’re pleased to highlight some great organizations that we’ve worked with this fall and winter! 

Fall Food Drive 

In the spirit of friendly competition, the Clarus team squared off to see which departments could bring in the most canned goods and nonperishable food items for our neighbors at the Broad Street Food Pantry. In total, we collected 615 items!  

Congrats to our Tech and Tax Expert Teams for bringing in the most items. 

“Supply a Teacher” Nomination 

The Clarus team nominated our neighbors at Yorktown Middle School to receive “supply a teacher” kits from TriNet. 

In total, the program supported over 5,000 students at 6 schools across the country by providing 240 kits filled with school supplies. These kits helped the students and teachers start off the year right, while helping to ease the burden that comes from needing to purchase the supplies with their own money.  Thank you to TriNet for providing this opportunity for us to recognize a deserving school in our community!

We’re thrilled to share that TriNet Clarus R+D has once again been recognized at the annual Best Places to Work Awards, presented by Columbus Business First! The honorees were chosen based on an employee satisfaction survey taken over the summer.

The awards event took place on November 12th, 2024, at the Hyatt Regency in downtown Columbus, Ohio.

There are five separate categories based on company size: micro (10 to 24 employees), small (25 to 49 employees), medium (50 to 99 employees), large (100 to 249 employees) and extra-large (250+ employees). TriNet Clarus R+D is recognized as part of the small category and with all categories being combined, there were a total of 45 companies honored.

This award reflects the dedication of our outstanding team, whose commitment to supporting the SMB community is present in our office every day. Together, we’ve built a workplace grounded in our core values of integrity, resilience, authenticity, and partnership.

We also took home the Most Innovative Video Award for our submission to the event’s Spirit Video Competition! 🏆 🎥

A huge thank you and congratulations to every member of our team for making this achievement possible.

Clarus R+D are excited to share that we have recently renewed our System and Organization Controls (SOC) 2 Type II Certification.  

Becoming SOC 2 compliant requires adhering to a comprehensive set of standards and requirements for safeguarding data, testing the effectiveness of these measures, and ensuring they operate at the highest level. Achieving Type II compliance involves a more extensive audit process, observing how security functions over an extended period rather than relying on reports from a single point in time. 

The SOC 2 audit is one of the most highly recognized standards of information security compliance globally. Developed by the American Institute of CPAs (AICPA), it allows a third-party auditor to validate a service company’s internal controls related to information security. 

We obtained our audited renewal and SOC 2 Report by partnering with Johanson Group, who reviewed our internal controls and critical areas of our business including policies, procedures, firewall configurations, change management, security responses, and more. Through this partnership, we are also able to demonstrate and monitor how we adhere to these standards 365 days a year, not just during the audit window.  

Achieving SOC 2 certification involves meeting a very high standard and requires a lot of dedication and effort. Congrats to our software and tech teams on once again earning this significant achievement! It’s another example of our commitment to the security and protection of client data.  

The Clarus R+D Service Committee plans events throughout the year to get our colleagues involved in projects that support our city and community. At the beginning of the year, the committee meets to plan out initiatives and goals.  

We’re excited to share the great organizations that we’ve worked with so far! 

Franklinton Farms 

Since 2022, the Clarus team has regularly volunteered at Franklinton Farms, a local non-profit urban farm whose mission is to grow and share healthy food options while building a sustainable, inclusive community. Franklinton Farms grows and harvests their own fruits and vegetables right here in Columbus, Ohio, and then distributes them via a variety of methods to those in the community who would otherwise be without fresh produce. In addition, they offer educational opportunities such as composting training, gardening tips, and an apprenticeship program.  In areas where fresh produce is scarce, these services make a significant impact on food security and the well-being of residents of all ages. 

Throughout this spring, groups of Clarus colleagues have spent time volunteering at Franklinton Farms, located just a few blocks from our new office space. Our teams weeded gardens and vegetable beds, moved mulch, and set up irrigation systems to prepare for the upcoming growing seasons.  

If you’re in the Columbus area or are interested in learning more about Franklinton Farm’s mission, check out their website for more detail:  franklintonfarms.org 

Holy Family Soup Kitchen 

In March, the Clarus team prepared over 230 PB&J sandwiches to be delivered to our neighbors at Holy Family Soup Kitchen. Holy Family offers a variety of services to those in need, including providing food and clothing. Their dedication to serving our local area extends beyond meeting physical needs, and in addition to providing essential items they also offer a warm and welcoming environment where individuals and families can find support and community. 

To learn more about their mission, services, and ways to support, visit their website: holyfamilycolumbus.org 

Many businesses have moved from having servers located in their office, to putting the server offsite in a data center, to utilizing a server within a cloud service provider, similar to Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure. Going serverless altogether is the next natural step in that evolution. In serverless computing, the custom software that you decide to run is packaged into a software container which hosts both the executable code and the operating system. That virtual container is run on one or more servers that you do not need to manage, which is truly the ideal state of cloud computing.

From a business infrastructure standpoint, you can scale the computer power up or down by simple configuration, and only pay for what you use. The containerization of your infrastructure provides another layer of security protections. The ability to define your infrastructure in code allows for more rapid iteration cycles when developing new capabilities.

At TriNet Clarus R+D, we used a cloud service provider’s container repository to store the containers of executable code when developing the latest features for our research and development (R&D) tax credit platform. The containers were then published to the cloud service provider’s container repository, which created a new server cluster each time, drained the users from the old cluster to the new cluster, and then teared down the old cluster. Amazingly, this rolling deployment process can take place while users are still logged in and working in the platform.

Using the mentioned advanced development techniques, exciting new features are rolling out in the TriNet Clarus R+D platform. We’re committed to providing a platform that helps make the process of claiming the R&D tax credit easy and efficient, and these new enhancements will greatly benefit small to medium-size businesses who claim the tax credit by using the TriNet Clarus R+D platform.

AI-Powered Tool for Determining Qualifying R&D Activity and Expenses

One of the most exciting updates is the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) tools to assist clients with the four-part test, which is a crucial aspect of claiming the R&D tax credit. This test determines qualifying activities and expenses for the tax credit. The AI-powered tool makes it simple to enter information into the platform, which helps generate example responses based on the that information. These AI-generated examples will serve as a foundation for crafting unique answers tailored to your specific R&D activities, and they also greatly reduce the amount of time it takes for you to complete the study.

Importing Contractors and Employees

We’re also simplifying the process of adding contractors and employees to the expenses section in our platform. You can now directly import this information from your payroll providers’ platform. This feature helps to ensure the secure access of payroll and contractor data from your preferred payroll platform, and helps to streamline the entire process.

Streamlined Fit-for-Purpose

Our fit-for-purpose workflows are another major enhancement added to the TriNet Clarus R+D platform. You can now add projects with a simple click, directly from a list of commonly qualifying R&D activities specific to your industry. This fit-for-purpose feature will help save time and effort when identifying and including your R&D projects and maximize your tax credits by suggesting activities that you may not have realized qualify for the tax credit.

Advanced Input Checking

To further streamline your experience, our platform now offers advanced input checking. This feature will help identify unqualified activities in your expense descriptions. It highlights words and activities that may not meet the R&D tax credit criteria and provides an explanation message explaining the reasoning. This proactive feature aims to help save you time by notifying you before the TriNet Clarus tax experts review your work, so that you know to adjust your answers in real-time.

Take a look at how going serverless can enhance your computer infrastructure and use the TriNet Clarus R+D Platform to help claim your tax credit for the innovative work that you do.

Clarus R+D is recognized for the second year in a row as one of the Best Places to Work in Central Ohio!

The award, presented by Columbus Business First, recognizes local companies in the Columbus, OH area who are committed to fostering a positive, collaborative environment for their employees.

Clarus’ selection as an honoree was based on results from an employee survey that all Clarus colleagues completed. The survey covered employee satisfaction, fostering a positive workplace environment, opportunities for service projects and community-building events, benefits and overall happiness.

This award would not be possible without our incredible team, who work day in and day out to serve the SMB community. It’s also a reflection of the culture we’ve built together – one of integrity, resilience, authenticity, and partnership.

Thank you and congratulations to all of our colleagues on this achievement!

Clarus R+D is excited to announce that we are certified SOC 2 (type II) compliant with Vanta. 

Becoming SOC 2 compliant involves adhering to a complex set of standards and requirements pertaining to how a company safeguards data, as well as testing the effectiveness of those measures and ensuring they are performing at the highest level. Being type II compliant involves a more thorough audit process to observe how security functions operate over a longer period of time, instead of an audit done from reports taken at a specific moment in time.

Clarus underwent a 12-month, full 365 day observation, and passed the examination with zero exceptions. This is an extremely high standard that requires a lot of hard work and dedication to meet. Congrats to our software and tech teams on this significant achievement! 

At Clarus R+D, we are committed to the security and protection of client data. Our R&D tax credit platform is built directly from the IRS Audit Technique Guide to provide defensible and complete R&D studies.

It’s been a busy year at Clarus R+D, and we are honored to have been recognized with several awards throughout 2022. Congratulations to our team for receiving these significant honors, and thank you for your commitment to making the R&D tax credit more accessible to businesses across the country.

Best Places to Work

Clarus R+D is proud to have placed fifth in our category at the 2022 Best Places to Work Awards, presented by Columbus Business First. The nominees for this event were selected based on results from workplace satisfaction surveys completed by their employees. Nominees must also demonstrate strong cultures, values, and missions.

We strive to be a people-first organization and believe that creating a positive, engaging environment translates to success for both our colleagues and clients. We are so grateful to our entire team for making us one of the Best Places to Work!

Fast 50

Clarus R+D placed second at the annual Fast 50 awards. This event honors the companies in the Columbus region who have posted the best growth rates from 2019 through 2021. 

This award is a direct result of our entire team, whose tireless efforts in serving the SMB community have resulted in over $200M in credits claimed to date!

Inno BizTech Fire Awards

Clarus R+D was honored at the Inno BizTech Fire Awards, an annual program recognizing companies that are driving innovation in technology.

Our R&D tax credit platform is built by experts and is derived from IRS guidelines to ensure compliant and defensible studies, all while saving time and eliminating stress.We’re committed to using this technology-based solution to get money back into the hands of other hardworking innovators across the country.

Congrats to our team on this great achievement!