Annual R&D investment in the field of artificial intelligence exceeds RMB 5 million, or annual R&D investment in the field of artificial intelligence exceeds RMB 1 million and accounts for more than 30% of total R&D expenditure (an audit report issued by a qualified third-party institution must be provided, specifying the AI-related detailed items in the report).
This is the original text of Item 2 under "II. Eligible Applicants" in the "Notice on Organizing the Implementation of Policy Fulfillment Work for Artificial Intelligence Large Model Applications (Sixth Batch) (Large Model Special Topic)" posted by the Guangzhou Haizhu District Artificial Intelligence Development Bureau on the district government portal website at 17:32 on November 6, 2026 (pursuant to the "Implementation Rules for Promoting Artificial Intelligence Large Model Applications in Haizhu District, Guangzhou", Hai AI Development Regulation [2026] No. 1). Of the entire notice, this is the sentence I most want the client to read first.
Because it is not a qualification description; it is a sentence that assigns work. Assigned to whom? To three people—finance, IT, and the project manager—and it requires that their data already be under the same set of definitions.
The window is only five days: November 9 to November 13, 2026. The four award categories are national-level filing support projects, scale-up development support projects, model optimization subsidy projects, and incubation space support projects. The notice says "application requirements are detailed in the attachment," and the main text does not list the amount for any category. I want to make this clear first, so that no one uses numbers from the media to piece together a budget.
The denominator is not AI investment; it is total R&D expenditure
The seven qualification criteria follow a 'choose one of seven' rule: holding a generative AI launch filing, algorithm filing, or deep synthesis filing; meeting the R&D investment standard; AI-related operating revenue exceeding 5 million yuan; having 6 or more technical personnel holding AI-related vocational skill level certificates, or such personnel accounting for more than 30% of the enterprise's total employees; having AI-related invention patents, utility model patents, or software copyrights; having circumstances of purchasing intelligent computing power to carry out model training; other circumstances that can prove it is a large model enterprise (Haizhu District Artificial Intelligence Development Bureau, 2026-11-06; the scope is the annual data of a single applicant).
Most enterprises that do not yet have a filing and whose revenue has not yet reached 5 million will naturally fall under Item 2. It appears to be the most lenient criterion: AI R&D investment exceeding 1 million and accounting for more than 30% of total R&D funding.
The problem lies in the six characters “total R&D funding input”.
Take a calculable example: an enterprise’s AI-related R&D investment is 1.2 million yuan, and its total R&D expenditure under the full scope is 5 million yuan, accounting for 24%, which does not meet the standard. There are only two ways to meet the standard—either narrow the scope of total R&D expenditure to within 4 million yuan (120 ÷ 400 = 30%; note that the guideline says “exceeding 30%,” and being exactly at 30% is not safe), or increase AI investment to more than 1.5 million yuan. The former is not an action that can be done by cooking the books with a pen; the latter requires real spending.
What makes this most prone to going wrong is that something else gets mixed into the denominator. The auditor requires 'disclosing AI-related line items in the report,' meaning R&D expenditures on AI and non-AI must be separately presented. If the R&D expense auxiliary ledger is only aggregated by department rather than by project, or if personnel hours, purchased services, and depreciation allocation are all lumped under a single 'R&D expenses' general account, then this requirement cannot be implemented.
When we work on multi-company architecture projects, we are particularly sensitive to this issue. The group has one entity in Pazhou, the R&D center is attached to another legal entity, and intelligent computing power procurement goes through a third one—the applying entity is the Pazhou one, but all three have AI-related personnel input. If you take the group's consolidated R&D investment to calculate "accounting for 30% of total R&D expenditure," the denominator will be rejected on the spot, because the notice requires an independent legal entity and independent accounting. This is a counterexample, not a theoretical risk. Odoo's multi-company (res.company) can precisely delineate such boundaries: each company has its own set of analytic accounts, cross-company expenses go through inter-company documents, and each party's investment is recorded against it, without having to forcibly split it from consolidated statements after the fact.
Four-location binding, and a five-day offline window
The geographical conditions in this notice are written in more detail than most district-level policies. Applicants must simultaneously meet the following: their legally registered or filed address and actual office premises are both within the Pazhou Core Area of the Guangzhou Artificial Intelligence and Digital Economy Pilot Zone and the Haizhu Wetland Innovation Value Circle; their statistical relationship (for enterprises above designated size), tax administration relationship, and social insurance contributions for personnel teams are all in Haizhu District; they operate in good faith with no major safety accidents; and they have sound financial systems, independent legal person status, and independent accounting.
The four “within scope” criteria are cumulative, not a choice of one. The two types we have seen most often in client materials as deviations are using a borrowed address as the actual office address and having social insurance paid by another entity in the group on the company’s behalf. They do not affect operations in normal times, but in the week of filing they are a hard defect.
The material requirements are also rather old-fashioned: each application category must be bound separately into a booklet, with a table of contents page on the first page, printed double-sided on A4 paper, stamped with the official seal and a paging seal, in duplicate, and submitted in person to Windows 4 and 5 on the fifth floor of the Government Service Center, 480 Shiliugang Road, Haizhu District; for the electronic version, name the folder as "application category + applicant entity name", and submit an editable version and a stamped PDF to the designated email address. Policy consultation: 020-28186289 ext. 2002 / 8401, 020-89557032.
Five days, four directions, two paper copies, stamped with an official seal and a straddle seal. If we only start looking for an auditor on Tuesday to issue a statement on the “AI-related detailed items,” Friday will be too late.
An honest qualification must be included here: The main text of the notice does not list the specific amounts for the four reward categories, and the application requirements in the attachment were not obtained this time. In September 2026, at an AI and manufacturing matchmaking event in Haizhu District, the media relayed a set of figures—up to RMB 1 million for first completing national-level generative AI launch filing, up to RMB 1.5 million per year for model inference or training optimization, up to RMB 5 million for application scenario projects that have been reviewed and recognized, and no more than RMB 300,000 per year for OPC enterprises—that was the wording of the event report, not the original text of this notice, nor a clause in the application guidelines. It cannot be used when writing the budget, and do not treat it as "apply and you will get it." If it cannot be found, write that it cannot be found: as of November 9, 2026, the reward standards and amounts for each direction in the attachment to the sixth batch notice have not been obtained from the Haizhu District Government portal website.
What work does this policy turn into at the customer site
Specifically assigned to individuals: the finance manager defines the account subjects and project dimensions of the R&D expense subsidiary ledger, the IT lead verifies the attribution of work hours and expenses, the project manager separates "AI projects" and "non-AI projects" in the ledger, and the auditor uses this ledger to produce a report with line-item details.
Mapping this onto the native structure of Odoo 19 CE + OCA comes down to three places. Projects (project.project) are created as R&D projects; AI projects are tagged separately or use a dedicated analytic account; timesheets (account.analytic.line) and expenses must carry this analytic account and cannot just specify a department; for intelligent computing power procurement and outsourced model services in vendor bills (account.move), the invoice lines must likewise be linked to the same analytic account. That way, when the exported R&D expense details are filtered by analytic account, they are exactly the “AI-related line items,” and auditors no longer need to rely on verbal explanations.
It can be done with zero code, no need to write custom modules. To actually do it, the hard part is the data from the past two years. If the 2025 timesheets didn't fill in the project and the invoice lines weren't linked to analytic accounts, backfilling now is a rework—that's why I said this job was assigned to three people.
One more field detail: in an R&D expense auxiliary ledger, what is most easily missed is not large equipment but labor. Engineers work on both AI models and regular product iterations; if work hours are not split out, AI investment can never be calculated clearly. When we implement this, we usually require timesheets to be filled in by “project × task,” with each task belonging to only one project; in filing season, this rule directly determines whether you can pass review. Using OCA’s project_timesheet_* series of modules, you can link timesheets with analytic accounts without developing it yourself.
Tuesday's accounts, Thursday's seal, Friday's window
Today (November 9), first do the eligibility assessment; don't rush to fill out the forms. Criteria: whether both the registered address and the actual office address are within the Pazhou core area or the area around Haizhu Wetland, and whether the above-scale statistical relationship, tax administration, and team social insurance are all in Haizhu District. If any of the four is not met, do not invest manpower in this round; if met, choose the one of the seven eligibility conditions you are most confident about as the main path, and list the supporting materials.
Finish calculating the denominator for the 30% threshold by November 11, and confirm that the auditor can provide an explanation of the detailed items. The action is: export the applicant entity's (single legal person) total R&D expenditure on a full-scope basis from the R&D expense subsidiary ledger, then filter out the AI-related portion by project dimension and calculate the proportion; if it exceeds RMB 1 million and the proportion exceeds 30%, immediately contact a qualified third-party institution to confirm the time and materials list required to issue an audit report that explains the AI-related detailed items. If the calculated result is 24%, do not try to force it by adjusting the aggregation rules; changing the definition is not as good as switching to another eligibility path.
Complete both paper and electronic submissions by November 13. Decision condition: determine which award category to apply for (bind the four categories separately; do not combine them into one volume). Actions: according to the notice requirements, prepare a table of contents page, A4 double-sided, official seal and seam seal, in duplicate, and deliver to Windows 4 and 5, Fifth Floor, No. 480 Shiliugang Road; at the same time, name the folder according to 'application category + applicant unit name' and send the editable version and stamped PDF to the designated email address. Paper and electronic are two separate tracks; submitting only one does not count as complete.
How many days until the audit report is ready? I should have asked today.
—— Basis: the Sixth Batch Disbursement Notice on the Haizhu District People's Government Portal dated 2026-11-06. Eligibility conditions, timing, and material requirements are cited from Sections "I" to "IV" of the notice's main text. The notice does not list the reward amount, and the attachment was not obtained; amounts paraphrased by the media are not the official website's wording and shall not serve as a basis for application. The example calculation is illustrative only and is not the actual financial data of any enterprise.
