The Company
MainStreet is a platform that helps startups identify and claim tax credits and government incentives. In its first two years, the company helped more than 1,000 startups claim $80 million in benefits.
The platform is built to remove the paperwork burden from the process. MainStreet connects directly with payroll systems like Gusto, Justworks, QuickBooks, and ADP, then scans for available federal, state, and local tax credits. When a match is found, clients can receive part of the benefit immediately as a no-interest cash advance.
The Challenge
Claiming government tax credits is a document-heavy process. Programs like the R&D Tax Credit, Work Opportunity Tax Credit, and Small Business Health Care Tax Credit all require forms to be completed, downloaded, and submitted to the appropriate agency.
Before adopting Anvil's PDF Fill API, MainStreet handled PDF completion manually for every customer and every credit application. That process took hours per client and created a major operational bottleneck. Without a reliable way to automate form filling across a growing library of government PDFs, scaling the business was much harder than it needed to be.
“Anvil’s PDF filling API has saved us thousands of hours and dollars in operational effort required for PDF data entry. The API documentation was straightforward and easy to develop against, and we were able to stand up a prototype in just a couple of hours of work. After using Anvil for all our PDF-based form entry, we’ve been able to exponentially increase our number of clients in the last year.”
The Solution
MainStreet used Anvil's PDF Filling API to build an automated workflow for completing tax credit paperwork.
The team templated required government forms and mapped each blank field to the right data source inside MainStreet’s system. Anvil’s field setup made it easy to define field types and assign Field Aliases, creating a standardized way to connect database objects to fields across a large PDF library.
Once each template was configured, MainStreet could send data directly into the form through the API and generate completed PDFs without manual entry. That replaced a repetitive operational task with a faster, more scalable system.
The Result
MainStreet reduced tax credit paperwork from hours per client to minutes.
That efficiency gain freed the team to focus less on manual form entry and more on client experience and growth. The new workflow also gave MainStreet a scalable foundation for supporting a much larger customer base without adding the same level of operational overhead.
