HomeAnnual Return
Preparation and filing of your company's annual return with ACRA, together with the registers and financial statements sitting behind it. It comes as part of the Comply package.
An annual return is a confirmation of what ACRA already believes about your company. Where the registers behind it are wrong, the filing puts that error in writing.
The deadline runs from your financial year end, not from the AGM date or the day the accounts were signed. Seven months reads as generous until the accounts land in month six.
Share transfers, new allotments and changed holdings all belong in the register of members. Founders who moved shares on a handshake tend to find out here, because the return reports what the register says.
Appointments, resignations, changed addresses and changed identification documents go into the register of directors. A director who moved house two years ago and told nobody is a common reason a filing has to be corrected.
Every Singapore company keeps a register of registrable controllers. Working out who controls the company through a holding entity takes longer than founders expect, and the answer belongs on record before the return is lodged.
Where your company has to file financial statements with ACRA in XBRL format, the tagging is done as part of the same piece of work. Figures filed match the accounts laid before members.
Once the record checks out, the return goes to ACRA and the confirmation comes back with an updated business profile. That profile is what a bank, a customer or IRAS looks at to see who runs the company.
Most of the effort goes into the registers, and none of it shows in the finished filing. Working in this order keeps corrections out of your public record.
We take your company profile from ACRA and set it against what you tell us changed during the year. Gaps surface quickly, and a missed share transfer is better found now than halfway through a filing that has already gone in.
About 15 minutes of your timeMembers, directors and controllers are brought current, with the resolutions and transfer documents behind each entry. Where a past change was never documented, we tell you what is missing and what putting it right involves before any of it is charged.
Depends what is missingFinancial statements are completed and, where your company files in XBRL, tagged for ACRA. Members adopt them at the AGM or by written resolution, and that step comes before the return, so the two are sequenced together.
Before the six month markThe annual return is lodged with ACRA and you get the filing confirmation with a fresh business profile. Keep that profile somewhere you find it again, because banks and counterparties ask for it and the copy in your drawer is out of date.
Within seven monthsIt comes as part of the Comply package. The annual return sits in it beside the AGM documents, a named company secretary, registered office and mail scanning, statutory registers, financial statements and XBRL, ECI and Form C-S.
Charging separately for an annual return would be charging you twice, since the registers it reports on are maintained across the year under the same fee. Where historic registers have to be rebuilt from nothing, that work is quoted before it starts.
Quoted for your company
Agreed in writing before we start
Ask about ComplyThe Comply package is quoted for your company before we start. ACRA filing fees are passed on to you at cost.
Within seven months of your financial year end. The AGM, where one is held, falls within six months of the same date, so the two deadlines sit a month apart. Both count from the year end rather than from the date you filed last year, which is where companies with a changed year end slip.
It reports your company's details as ACRA holds them, the officers and the members, and the financial statements where those have to be filed, in XBRL format where that is required. It confirms the record rather than creating it, which is why the registers behind it have to be correct first.
Yes, and the annual return is where it surfaces. The filing reports what the register says, so an undocumented share transfer either goes on file wrong or stops the return. Putting it right means finding the transfer documents and board approvals from the time, and that gets harder the older the gap is.
It depends on the company. Financial statements are filed with ACRA in XBRL format where required, and not every company falls into that group. We confirm which treatment applies to yours against the accounts for the year, rather than preparing XBRL for the sake of it.
No. A private company exempted from holding an AGM still files its annual return with ACRA within seven months of the financial year end. The exemption covers the meeting only. Members still need the financial statements, and the registers still have to be current on the day the return goes in.
Send us your company name and financial year end. We will pull the ACRA profile, tell you what the record says and when the return falls due, before you sign anything with us.
Tell us what you need and we will point you to the right answer, or bring in one of our chartered professionals. Out of hours you get a reply first thing the next working day.