SME Packages — Digital reimburses up to 70% of the eligible costs of an expert project priced inside the €3,000–25,000 band. Your company carries the balance, and carries the whole invoice until the reimbursement lands.
Fit 4 Digital is the step before it: a digital-maturity assessment fixed at €5,000 and covered in full by a grant of the same amount, ending in a costed action plan. If you searched for Fit4Digital Packages and landed in a maze of renamed schemes, the SME Packages are what that programme is called today.
| Fit 4 Digital | SME Packages — Digital | |
|---|---|---|
| What it produces | a digital-maturity assessment and a costed plan of action | the improvement the plan called for, delivered by an expert |
| What the aid is | fixed at €5,000, covered in full by a grant of the same amount | up to 70% of the project's eligible costs |
| What your company carries | nothing for the diagnosis itself | the balance, and the whole invoice until reimbursement |
| Prices it applies to | the assessment, at that fixed price | eligible project costs in the €3,000–25,000 band |
| Where you go in | Luxinnovation's platform, then the Ministry of the Economy | pre-analysis at the House of Entrepreneurship or eHandwierk, then the Ministry |
The rename, untangled
Luxembourg's digitalisation aid has worn more than one label, and search results still mix them. Fit 4 Digital is the diagnosis: an accredited consultant evaluates how the company actually runs and produces a costed plan. Fit4Digital Packages was the implementation aid attached to it. That scheme now runs as the SME Packages, of which Digital is one, and each package publishes its own terms on its own page.
The distinction does more work than it looks. The aid rate and the project band on this page are the ones published for the Digital package, in its official terms. A figure quoted for one package in the family is not automatically the figure for another. Learn that before the expert quotes, not after.
Fit 4 Digital: the diagnosis your company does not pay for
Per the official programme page, an accredited consultant spends structured time inside the business: how orders come in, how quotes go out, what gets retyped at every stage. The consultant also looks at IT infrastructure, cybersecurity and software. The assessment is fixed at €5,000 and covered in full by a grant of the same amount, so the diagnosis reaches you already paid for. What arrives at the end is not an opinion but a costed list.
Eligibility matcher
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Answer a few questions about your company, your sector and your plans. The matcher shows the programmes worth applying for and the ones to skip. No email needed.
Check eligibility- Choose a consultant and file through Luxinnovation's platform, before accepting any quote. The sequencing rule below applies here too.
- Luxinnovation confirms eligibility, and the file goes on to the Ministry of the Economy.
- The consultant works: interviews, findings, a draft report.
- Luxinnovation validates the report, you approve it, and the Ministry processes the payment.
Implementing the plan is optional, but it is written to be implemented: every action carries a price. That implementation can itself become an aid application, which is why this is the place to start.
What the aid covers, and what it is a percentage of
The aid is up to 70% of eligible costs, and the €3,000–25,000 band is the band of eligible project costs. Those two words are where budgets go wrong. The percentage does not attach to whatever the expert's invoice happens to total. Which costs qualify is settled on your file, and settling it is the job of the pre-analysis.
| Your project's price | What the published band says | What to do about it | What you finance up front |
|---|---|---|---|
| Below the €3,000–25,000 band | it sits under the scheme's entry point | fund it yourself, or wait until the work is worth an expert | all of it |
| Inside the band | up to 70% of eligible costs is reimbursable | budget the balance and the timing gap | the whole invoice |
| Above the ceiling | the band stops describing your project there | ask the adviser whether the aid stops at the ceiling or the project is scoped into the band; assume neither | the whole invoice, plus everything outside the funded scope |
Scoping a first phase inside the band is a normal conversation with the adviser, and the right way to handle an ambition that outgrew the scheme. Slicing one signed engagement into artificial pieces on your own initiative is not. Scoping happens in the open, before the offer is signed.
The sequence, and where the time actually goes
Almost every avoidable problem with this aid is an ordering problem. How long each step takes depends on the adviser's calendar and the Ministry's queue rather than on anything you control, so plan the sequence rather than the dates.
| Step | Who moves | What should already be true | Where the time actually goes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Scope the project | you | you can say in a sentence what is different afterwards | rewriting that sentence until it is testable |
| Get the expert's offer | the expert | the scope is written down, so the offer is priced not estimated | a quote that never becomes firm |
| Pre-analysis | the adviser, with you | nothing is signed, nothing has started | the adviser's calendar |
| Submission | the adviser, with you | the file and its annexes are complete | annexes nobody asked the expert for |
| Decision | the Ministry of the Economy | the file went in before the project did | out of your hands |
| Do the work | you and the expert | the decision is in hand | the project |
| Reimbursement | the Ministry | the package is delivered and paid | the gap you pre-financed |
Those middle rows are where files quietly die. The adviser who fills in the application with you is also the first person to read the project's logic, and a founder who arrives with a theme instead of an outcome leaves with homework rather than a submission. That costs a full scheduling cycle. The companies that move fastest have the annexes ready, starting with the expert's offer, before anyone asks for them.
Why the order matters
Aid is designed to change a decision rather than to reimburse one already taken. Check the order you do things in against the scheme's own conditions before you commit.
That single idea explains the discipline. The engagement letter signed last week, the consultant already onboarded, the relaunch already half-built: each of them is evidence that the decision was made without the aid. The application belongs between we know what we want and we have committed to it. Define the project, get the offer, go to the pre-analysis, submit, and start once the decision is in hand.
The waiting is planning time. It is when the plan gets specific, and a specific plan is what the file is made of. Our funding application mistakes guide covers the same trap across the other instruments.
The money arrives last
Reimbursement means what it says. Your company pays the expert and the package is delivered before any reimbursement is made.
The band is measured excluding VAT. A project priced at the top of the €3,000–25,000 band therefore needs that sum plus the VAT available up front, and only later does the cost come down to the balance. Delivery and the payment cycle sit between those two moments.
That float is the most common reason a well-designed package stalls halfway: the company budgeted for its share and not for the gap. Where cash is tight, the honest fix is a smaller first project inside the band rather than a larger one you cannot carry.
Who the scheme is built for
The design target is the established SME rather than the day-one startup. A craft business digitising quotes and scheduling. A retailer building out e-commerce. A service firm buying its first serious security review, or a small manufacturer that has never had outside eyes on a process.
The common thread is a company that already trades and can name a specific thing it wants to be better at. And since the scheme is written around SMEs, size is likelier to exclude a large company than a small one.
Pre-revenue and still building the product? The startup instruments, Fit 4 Start and the Young Innovative Enterprise aid among them, are built around a different company, and the funding reference maps where each sits. The conditions the scheme tests are published on the official page and are checked against your file at the pre-analysis.
The questions founders actually ask
My project costs more than the band's ceiling. What then? Raise it at the pre-analysis rather than deciding alone. Whether the aid stops at the ceiling or the project has to be scoped into the band is a question about your file. Do not split a signed engagement to make it fit.
Can the assessment and the package use the same consultant? The Fit 4 Digital report is validated by Luxinnovation independently of the consultant who wrote it, which is what stops the diagnosis becoming a sales document. For the implementation, choose the expert for the problem. Sometimes that is the same firm, and the validated report keeps everyone honest about why.
Can we skip the assessment if we already know what we need? Yes. It is an entry point, not a toll gate. The trade-off is giving up a fully covered, independently validated diagnosis whose costed plan is the easiest raw material an application can be built from.
Does this affect other aid we might apply for? Possibly, which is why it belongs on the table early. If other instruments are in play — R&D and innovation aid, or investment aid — say so at the pre-analysis, so the applications get sequenced rather than collide.
What to do next, in order
- Write the outcome first. "After this project we can do X" beats naming a theme, and everything else gets tested against that sentence.
- Book the Fit 4 Digital assessment if you have no costed plan yet. It is fixed at €5,000 and covered in full, so the only thing it costs you is honesty during the visit.
- Get a real offer from the expert, priced against the written scope, before anything is signed.
- Take it to the pre-analysis at the House of Entrepreneurship or eHandwierk, with the open questions written down.
- Arrive complete. The meeting moves fastest when the scope, the offer and the application file and its annexes are assembled beforehand, so the conversation is about the project rather than about what is missing.