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 · AI in practice

What Good Looks Like

A forced website migration, an AI coworker called Fable 5, and why knowing what good looks like decides whether AI produces good work — or AI slop.

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.