Year-End Closing: A Checklist for Singapore SMEs

GST F5 filings and your general ledger tell two different stories if you're not reconciling them regularly — and by year-end, the gap between them is where most of the surprises live. Reconcile GST-reported figures against GL revenue every quarter, not just once a year.

Foreign exchange revaluation is the other quiet culprit. Any foreign-currency balances sitting on your books at year-end need to be revalued at the closing rate — skip it, and your balance sheet is technically wrong even if every individual transaction was recorded correctly.

Run a "ghost hunt" on your fixed asset register: assets that were disposed of, written off, or simply no longer exist but are still depreciating on the books. This is one of the most common audit findings we see, and one of the easiest to fix with a physical verification pass.

Finally, review unbilled revenue and accrued costs together. Work completed but not yet invoiced, and costs incurred but not yet billed by vendors, both need to be accrued — matching revenue and expense to the period they actually belong to, not the period the invoice happens to land in.