SERVICE · SINGAPORE
Books that are closed every month, not rescued at year-end.
Every transaction pulled from your bank feed, matched, categorised and reconciled — every month, not once a year. Our agents do the matching; your accountant clears the exceptions and signs off the close, so the numbers you see are ones you can act on.
Facts checked on 12 September 2026
WHAT THIS COVERS
The work, in plain terms.
Bookkeeping is not the least important part of running a company's finances — it is the foundation every other filing sits on. Your GST return is only as accurate as the transactions behind it. Your corporate tax computation starts from the same ledger. Your management accounts are a summary of the same entries. If the bookkeeping is wrong, late or simply missing, everything built on top of it inherits the problem, without anyone noticing until a deadline forces the issue.
The alternative is the year-end catch-up: twelve months of bank statements, receipts and invoices handed to an accountant in a folder (physical or digital) a few weeks before the tax deadline, to be reconstructed from scratch. This is expensive in ways that are easy to underestimate. Transactions get miscategorised because nobody remembers what a payment from eight months ago was for. GST input tax gets missed because the tax invoice was not kept, or claimed wrongly because nobody checked it at the time. You spend the entire year making decisions — pricing, hiring, spending — with no reliable view of your actual position, because the only complete picture arrives once a year, after the fact. And accountants charge more to untangle a year of backlog than they would to keep pace with it monthly, because untangling is genuinely harder work than maintaining.
Synergy Accounting runs bookkeeping as a continuous process rather than an annual event. We connect directly to your bank feeds inside Xero or QuickBooks Online, so transactions arrive daily rather than being reconstructed from statements months later. AI agents do the volume work — pulling and categorising transactions, matching them against invoices and receipts, chasing you for anything missing — every single day. Your named senior accountant reviews the reconciliation monthly, clears the exceptions the agents could not resolve on their own, and closes the month properly, with accruals and adjustments handled before the books are called final. The result is a set of books that stays close to current, so GST, tax and management accounts can simply draw on it rather than waiting for it.
WHO IT'S FOR
Built for SMEs like these.
The owner-run Pte Ltd whose books are months behind
You are the director, you are busy running the business, and the books have quietly slipped three, six or nine months behind. You know it needs sorting before the next GST return or tax filing is due, and you would rather it not get that far behind again.
The business moving off spreadsheets
Your bookkeeping today is a spreadsheet, a shoebox of receipts, or both. You are ready for proper accounting software with a bank feed, but you do not want to be the one learning it, entering it and reconciling it every week on top of everything else you do.
The company changing accountants after a messy handover
Your previous accountant or bookkeeper left gaps — unreconciled months, uncategorised transactions, a chart of accounts nobody explained — and you need someone to take over the file, clean it up, and keep it clean without a repeat of the same problem in a year's time.
THE SINGAPORE RULES
What the regulator expects.
Bookkeeping in Singapore is not simply good practice — it is a legal obligation on the company and its directors, with specific requirements on what must be kept, for how long, and to what standard. These requirements sit under the Income Tax Act, the Companies Act and the accounting standards issued by the Accounting Standards Council, and they apply whether the books are kept by a bookkeeper, an accountant, software, or some combination of the three.
The rules matter because they are the first thing checked if IRAS or ACRA ever has a question about your company. Good bookkeeping is not just tidy — it is the evidence that every figure in your tax return, GST filing and financial statements is real, supportable and correctly treated. Getting the underlying rules right from the start is far cheaper than reconstructing compliant records after the fact.
| Requirement | What applies |
|---|---|
| Record retention | Accounting records and source documents must be kept for five years under both the Income Tax Act and the Companies Act, kept in Singapore, and in English, or with a translation. |
| Source documents | Invoices, receipts, bank statements and contracts must exist behind every entry in the books. A transaction with no supporting document is a transaction IRAS can disallow on review. |
| Accounting standards | Financial statements must follow Singapore Financial Reporting Standards; qualifying small companies may instead use the simplified SFRS for Small Entities, which reduces disclosure without changing the underlying bookkeeping discipline required. |
| Financial year end | Chosen at incorporation, and drives every downstream deadline — the corporate tax filing date, the ACRA annual return, and when GST periods align to your accounts. |
| GST-registered businesses | A valid tax invoice, showing the supplier's GST registration number and the tax charged, is required to claim input tax. Without one, the claim can be disallowed even if the purchase itself was genuine and business-related. |
| Foreign currency transactions | Recorded at the exchange rate on the transaction date, with foreign currency balances retranslated at the prevailing rate at each financial year end so the accounts reflect a consistent reporting currency. |
| Directors' duty | Section 199 of the Companies Act requires every company to keep accounting records that sufficiently explain its transactions and financial position, and that enable true and fair financial statements to be prepared and audited. |
IRAS can request the underlying records behind any figure during a review or audit, not just the return itself. Records that cannot be produced mean deductions get disallowed and input tax claims get reversed — even where the original transaction was entirely legitimate.
HOW WE HANDLE IT
Step by step, every period.
- 01
Onboard and connect
We set up or tidy your chart of accounts, connect live bank and card feeds inside Xero or QuickBooks Online, and migrate any existing records. If you are moving off spreadsheets or from another provider, this is where the backlog gets absorbed rather than left for you to explain later.
- 02
Daily capture
Each day, an agent pulls new bank and card transactions and proposes a category and match against existing invoices or receipts, drawing on your history so recurring suppliers and customers are recognised automatically rather than guessed at fresh each time.
- 03
Chasing
Where a transaction has no supporting document — a payment with no invoice, an expense with no receipt — the agent asks you directly, by WhatsApp or email, at the time it happens rather than in a batch months later, when nobody remembers what it was for.
- 04
Monthly reconciliation
The agent matches every transaction to your bank statement and produces an exceptions list: anything unmatched, duplicated, or uncertain in its categorisation, so nothing is quietly left half-resolved from one month to the next.
- 05
Accountant review
Your accountant works through the exceptions, decides how each is treated, and makes the adjustments a system cannot: accruals for costs incurred but not yet billed, prepayments spread across the right periods, and depreciation on fixed assets.
- 06
Month-end close and handover
The month is formally closed and the reconciled books feed straight into your GST return, tax computation and management accounts — no separate reconstruction, no re-entering the same figures for a different purpose.
AGENTS + ACCOUNTANT
Who does what.
Bookkeeping is, at its core, a volume problem wearing a judgement problem's clothing. Every transaction needs to be pulled, matched and categorised — hundreds of them a month even in a modest business — and that repetitive matching is exactly what agents do quickly, consistently and without getting tired on a Friday afternoon. What agents cannot do is decide how an unusual transaction should be treated, whether an accrual is needed, or whether a client's chart of accounts genuinely reflects how their business works. That is where your named accountant steps in: reviewing the exceptions the agents flag, making the calls that require experience and context, and taking responsibility for the close. You get books that are both current and correct, with one person accountable for the result rather than a black box producing numbers nobody checked.
- Pull bank and card transactions daily
- Categorise and match them to invoices and receipts
- Chase you for anything missing, on WhatsApp or email
- Reviews the reconciliation and clears exceptions
- Makes the judgement calls — accruals, prepayments, adjustments
WHAT GOES WRONG WITHOUT IT
The expensive mistakes.
Year-end catch-up
Waiting until tax or GST season to reconstruct a year of transactions leads to errors: miscategorised expenses, missed input tax claims, and no reliable numbers to make decisions on for the eleven months before the catch-up happens. The fix costs more than staying current would have.
Mixing personal and business spending
Paying business expenses from a personal account, or the reverse, blurs which transactions belong in the company's books at all. It makes reconciliation slower, muddies what is genuinely deductible, and is one of the first things IRAS questions in a review.
Unreconciled bank balances
If the books are not actually matched against the bank statement, a duplicate payment, a missed refund or an unauthorised transaction can sit unnoticed for months. Reconciliation is the control that catches these — skipping it removes the control, not just the paperwork.
Uncategorised transactions dumped in 'general expenses'
Everything that is not immediately obvious gets parked in a catch-all category to deal with later, and later does not come. The result is financial statements and tax computations built on categories that do not reflect what actually happened.
Lost receipts
No supporting document behind a transaction means the expense can be disallowed for tax purposes and any GST on it cannot be claimed as input tax — turning a legitimate cost into money the business simply loses, on top of the deduction it should have had.
WHAT YOU RECEIVE
Reconciled books you can rely on, closed every month.
- Reconciled books, closed every month, not once a year
- Every transaction categorised and matched to a supporting document
- Receipt and invoice chasing done for you, as transactions happen
- A monthly exceptions list, reviewed and cleared by your accountant
- A fixed asset register maintained and kept current
- A clean handover of reconciled books into GST, corporate tax and management accounts
INCLUDED IN YOUR PACKAGE
Included from the Essentials package.
For smaller SMEs that need their books and filings handled properly. Every package is a fixed monthly fee with a named accountant on your file — see what each one includes and choose the right starting point.
Common questions.
Which software do you use, and do I need to switch?
We work in Xero and QuickBooks Online. If you already use one of these, we connect to it and take over from where you are. If you are on spreadsheets or a system we do not support, we will recommend the better fit for your business and handle the migration, including bringing across your transaction history.
What if I am months behind already?
This happens, and it is exactly what onboarding is built to absorb. We work through the backlog systematically — gathering the statements and documents needed, reconciling month by month, and clearing exceptions as we go — rather than treating it as a single overwhelming task.
How do you get my receipts and invoices?
When a transaction has no supporting document, an agent contacts you directly by WhatsApp or email, at the time it happens, asking for the specific receipt or invoice needed. This is faster than logging into an app or portal, because it meets you in a channel you are already using, rather than asking you to learn a new one.
Do I still need to do anything each month?
Very little. You occasionally respond to a request for a missing document or a decision on an unusual transaction. The daily capture, matching and reconciliation happen without you doing anything, and your accountant handles the accruals and adjustments a system cannot make on its own.
Can you work with my existing accountant for year-end?
Yes. You can use us for monthly bookkeeping and keep a separate accountant for year-end statutory work, at least initially. We hand over reconciled books, a maintained fixed asset register and clear working papers, which makes year-end considerably faster and cheaper to produce.
How do you handle multiple currencies?
Foreign currency transactions are recorded at the exchange rate on the transaction date, and any foreign currency balances are retranslated at the prevailing rate at your financial year end, in line with Singapore accounting standards. This is set up correctly during onboarding, before any transactions are processed.
Is my bank data safe?
We connect through read-only bank feeds built into Xero and QuickBooks Online — we can see transactions but cannot move money or make payments from your account. Client data is handled in line with the Personal Data Protection Act, and access is limited to the agents and the accountant working on your file.
Need this handled?
Tell us where the current process stands. We'll recommend a practical scope and clear next step.