Insights

Straight answers, in plain English.

Plain-English guides to the compliance questions Singapore SME owners actually ask — written by practitioners, kept current, free to use.

More guides are on the way. Have a question you want answered in plain English? Tell us — if you're asking, others are too. And when a term needs decoding, the glossary has it in plain English.

Perspectives

Straight from the practice.

Opinions, experiments and firm news.

Perspective

The Language of Business

Accountancy is the study of the language of business, and accountants are its linguists. On what the profession is really for: helping businesses tell their story.

AI in practice

Piloting Our New Coworker

We put agentic AI to work on a real consolidation and full financial statements. What worked, what hit limits, and the washing-machine question.

AI in practice

The Dawn of A New Age

First contact with ChatGPT in 2023 — excitement, fear, and testing whether it could keep the books. The prequel to Piloting Our New Coworker.

Perspective

The Value Opposition

The structural problem at the heart of SMP audit: those who require the assurance are not the ones paying for it.

Perspective

Audit — Pay Matters

Why the audited firm pays its own auditor: the “seller pays” conundrum, through a used-car analogy. The 2017 seed of The Value Opposition.

Firm news

ISCA Accredited Training Organisation

Echtual is now an ATO for Singapore CA Qualification candidates — with the pathways at a glance, including the enhanced ACCA routes.

Perspective

Reflections on Singapore's Accounting Profession

The elephant in the room: how the 2013 designation change left 97% of Chartered Accountants outside the Accountants Act.

Worth a watch

The Secret Sauce

A fantastic primer on the modern banking system and the good a sound one can do for a society.

Perspective

CPA, PA and CA — What's With The Acronyms

Why Singapore no longer has CPAs, what a Public Accountant actually is — and the one thing the confusion proves.