How to choose someone to run your incentive claims

We do this work, so read the following knowing that. What follows is the set of questions we would want a client to ask us, which is a more useful thing to publish than a description of ourselves.

The decision matters more than most founders assume, for two reasons that have nothing to do with fees.

What you are actually handing over

Claims are filed through the Ministry's Support Management System. To let someone file for you, they are authorised inside that system in your company's name. Authorisation can go to an owner, a partner, an employee or an independent external consultant.

That is a grant of access to a government platform, made in your name, covering your company's data. It is closer to a bank mandate than to a service agreement, and it deserves the same treatment: know who holds it, know how to revoke it, and know what happens to it if you change advisor.

The liability does not travel with the file

The second reason is the one that decides how much care is warranted.

Article 47 of the Decision directs its sanctions at the beneficiary, the cooperating organisation and the organiser. Support found to have been received excessively, unduly or unjustly is recovered from the company that received it, through the tax offices, under Law 6183.

An advisor who prepares a defective claim has caused you a problem. They have not absorbed it. Your contract might give you a claim against them, and that is worth having, but the Ministry's route runs to your company. If the company has since been wound up, it runs to the people who ran it.

So the question to hold in mind is not how much someone charges. It is how much you would mind if they were wrong.

Questions that separate people quickly

What will you refuse to claim for us? This is the most informative question available. Someone who has run real claims has a list: costs paid personally, invoices in a founder's name, spending outside a supported category, anything already supported under other legislation. An advisor who answers that everything is claimable has either not read Article 47 or is not planning to be there in three years.

Who certifies the file, and are they independent of you? The application summary is signed and stamped by a sworn financial advisor. Understand who that is, what they cost, and whether they work for the same firm that prepared the claim.

How do you handle the six-month windows? Each payment carries its own deadline. A missed window is unrecoverable, and it is the failure most easily caused by an advisor with too many clients and no system.

What happens to our documentation if we leave? Records outlive engagements, and you may need them years later. Establish where they live and in what form you get them back.

Have you claimed for a company like ours? A studio's cost base looks nothing like a consultancy's. Someone whose experience is entirely in trade fairs will not have opinions about app store commissions or user acquisition.

On fee structures

Three shapes are common, and the useful question is what each one is paying for rather than which is cheapest.

A fixed fee buys a defined scope. It is easy to compare between firms and it tells you nothing about whether anything gets recovered.

A percentage of what is recovered ties the fee to the outcome. The advisor is paid when you are paid, which means they carry part of the risk that a claim does not land.

A monthly retainer covers the standing work, which is the part people underestimate. A Turkish entity has obligations every month whether or not a claim is filed that month: the bookkeeping, the filings, the registered address, a director in place. That work does not pause between claims, and an entity that lapses on it is an entity whose claims start failing on evidence.

The two are often combined. That combination is worth understanding before you read it as double charging. The retainer keeps the entity compliant and claimable. The success fee is what the advisor earns for actually recovering money, and it is nothing if nothing is recovered.

We work that way: a monthly retainer that covers the minimum compliance set-up, meaning the registered office, a director and the monthly bookkeeping, plus a percentage of what we recover for you. That is a disclosure rather than an argument. What matters when you compare firms is knowing exactly which costs the retainer absorbs and which it does not, because that is where quotes differ most and where they are hardest to compare.

What no advisor can fix

No advisor can retrofit a payment trail. If user acquisition went through a founder's personal card, the money is not recoverable and nobody can make it so. If invoices carry the wrong entity name, the same applies.

The decisions that determine how much you can claim are made months before anyone files anything, and they are made by you. Paying from the company account covers the one that matters most, and what claiming takes month to month covers the rhythm an advisor is fitting into.

Get those right and a competent advisor makes the process efficient. Get them wrong and the best advisor in Türkiye is working with nothing.