Non-repayable grants for software: a purchase, or the project's result

Here software serves the company's operation: a management system, a CRM, an online store, an automation, licences and their configuration. The host programme sets the line ceiling, and that ceiling can be far below the price of a custom solution. Checking the per-category ceiling before choosing the solution avoids the classic situation in which a company signs with a supplier and only then discovers that the eligible budget covers something else.

The categories are written separately because they behave differently: development or licence, configuration, migration of legacy data, integrations with existing systems, user training and, where the guide allows it, maintenance during implementation. Recurring costs after implementation usually fall outside the eligible budget. VAT treatment also differs from programme to programme and must be read before comparing offers.

POCIDIF Action 2.1 does not finance a company's internal digitalization but the development of an innovative product, service or application the beneficiary takes to market. Applicants must have authorised, at the submission date, CAEN codes from the call's mandatory list, which covers software publishing and programming as well as the manufacture of electronic components and equipment. The call allocation is EUR 48,813,278 from ERDF and the state budget, and the maximum implementation period is 24 months, extendable but no later than 31 December 2029.

At the end, results are demonstrated rather than intentions: one innovative product delivered and three proofs of commercialisation, which can be concluded contracts or invoices. The guide explicitly excludes proforma invoices and agreements. Investment performance is added, which must exceed 0.5 and is measured at the end of the three-year durability period as the ratio between revenue from the product and its development costs. These requirements change how the product is designed, not only how the file is written.

On POCIDIF projects with a software result, a hardware share above 20% of the project's total eligible value scores zero on the budget criterion, per the grid in the approved guide. The same grid penalises an imprecise budget: costs declared ineligible at evaluation above 15% of those requested mean zero points, between 10% and 15% mean five points, and below 10% mean ten points. A clean budget is not administrative elegance; it is score.

Price justification requires at least two dated and signed offers for each eligible cost, together with market studies or price analyses; screenshots from the official websites of companies in the field are also accepted if they carry the offer date and identify the company. Evaluators check price reasonableness independently against the market. There is also a structural penalty: costs where accommodation offers are suspected between the applicant and the bidders, or with the entity that produced the submission documentation, are declared ineligible and the sub-criterion scores zero.

One budget line few anticipate: the technical audit. The guide requires the technical audit report to be produced by an auditor holding an internationally recognised professional certification in IT audit or information security, such as CISA, CISM or CISSP, issued by an accredited body. The audit covers application security, security-level testing and data protection. Budget it from the start, not at the second clarification request.

The technical offer: functional scope by module, architecture and integrations, migrated data, user roles, acceptance criteria, warranty and a staged delivery schedule. The budget: the same elements with a price on each, using the category names from the call's guide rather than a structure of your own. The draft contract: conditional on obtaining the funding, with deadlines aligned to the project's implementation period.

At settlement the standard set is an acceptance report per stage, the invoice, the activity report and proof of operation — screenshots, test access, logs. Whoever builds that set as they go has nothing to recover at the end of the project.

We publish indicative bands because a defensible budget needs a dated, public market anchor. A small automation sits indicatively between EUR 3,000 and 10,000, a business application between EUR 15,000 and 60,000, and a complex platform starts indicatively at EUR 60,000. For web applications the usual band is EUR 5,000–15,000 for a simple application, EUR 15,000–50,000 with integrations and above EUR 50,000 at high volumes.

The figures remain indicative and move with the number of connected systems, the roles and approval flows, the reports and the migration of legacy data. The firm estimate comes in writing after an analysis call, and the full bands live in our public price guides, which can be used as a dated source of comparison.

We do not write funding applications, we do not submit files and we do not promise approval. We do not assess your company's eligibility and we do not confirm that a cost qualifies — that stays with the official guide and the evaluator. We issue no accommodation offers, and the reason is not only ethical: the guide explicitly penalises offers suspected of being formal.

The limit that costs us: on innovation projects we cannot be contracted as the entire technical team, because outsourcing all technical activities is not permitted and at least 20% of the aid allocated to the core activity must go to the beneficiary's own staff. We say so before the offer, even when it means a smaller contract.