A back-office desk with a printed ruled ledger page, a closed laptop and a pen under louvred morning light

Engagement rhythm

How the engagement runs, month by month

Every due date gets its red line. This page sets out the monthly close rhythm, the working-paper conventions, and the boundary between what we handle and what stays with your own accountant or corporate secretary.

Cut-off

working day each month

The monthly cycle

Every engagement follows one shape

The rhythm below is what a steady-state engagement looks like. The first two months are slower while we learn your transaction patterns and where things live.

01 Cut-off
Source documents arrive by an agreed cut-off, usually the fifth working day. Anything coming in later is posted to the next period unless it is material enough to reopen.
02 Reconcile
Reconciliation and posting happen in the week after cut-off: bank and card, suppliers, debtors, payroll ties, and every client disbursement you flag.
03 Review
Draft figures go through an internal review before anything is issued. That step answers the questions a partner would ask next week, not just this week.
04 Report
The reporting pack goes out by an agreed date, typically within the first two weeks after period end, with a short written note on what moved and why.

2 weeks

Late in, late out — Firms that send documents late get their reports late. That is not a penalty, it is arithmetic, and we flag it when it starts to become a pattern so the underlying process can be fixed.

Source documents

What we need, and when

What arrives each month depends on your scope. The cut-off exists so the close has a defined end, not so anyone can be caught short. Most documents move through a shared folder or a dedicated email address set up during onboarding.

Ledger inputs

Bank and card statements, or the live feeds connected to the platform
Sales invoices grouped by period, plus credit notes if any were issued
Supplier bills and their approval trail

People costs

Payroll inputs: new joiners, leavers, salary changes
CPF and related payroll coordination notes for the period
Expense claims and reimbursement schedules

Client money

Anything involving a client disbursement
Deposits held on behalf of a client
Cross-border items needing conversion notes

Items arriving after the cut-off are posted to the next period unless they are material enough to justify reopening the close. When we do reopen, we say so in writing, and the reopening note goes in the file with the reporting pack. Nothing is slipped in silently.

See what we handle

Working papers

The audit trail behind every figure

Every balance in the reporting pack has a supporting schedule. The point is not bureaucracy. It is that a question asked eleven months later gets answered from a file rather than from memory — and answered by whoever is at the desk that day, not whoever happened to do the work.

A ruled ledger page shot flat-on under louvred daylight, with a pencil tick column at the right edge — Working papers, kept for the question asked eleven months later

Bank reconciliations: Every account, every period, with unreconciled items listed explicitly.
Debtors and creditors: Ageing listings with the reasoning where a balance is unusual.
Fixed assets: Additions, disposals, and depreciation movements for the period.
Accruals and prepayments: Maintained as a rolling schedule rather than rebuilt each period.
GST control account: A reconciliation between the ledger and the GST return prepared by whoever files it.

Who owns what

Where our scope stops

Most of the friction between a firm and its accountant comes from unclear boundaries, not from bad work. Who handles the GST filing, who chases the overdue invoice, who calls the corporate secretary when the annual return is due. These are the two responsibilities we deliberately leave with other professionals — and coordinate around, rather than absorb.

Stays with your accountant

Tax computation and statutory accounts

If you have an accountant handling your corporate tax computation, your annual return, or your GST submissions, they keep those responsibilities. We supply the year-end pack and answer questions about the ledger.

We do not file the corporate tax return.
We do not prepare the tax computation.
We do not sign off on statutory accounts.

Where a firm has no such appointment, we will list what needs to be arranged rather than absorbing it silently into our scope.

Stays with your corporate secretary

Statutory registers and ACRA filings

Statutory registers, director and shareholder changes, the annual return to ACRA, and the registered office arrangements all stay with your appointed corporate secretary.

We coordinate where a deadline touches both sides, for example when the year-end accounts feed the annual return. We do not act as secretary.

Engagements run more smoothly when we know who your secretary is and how to reach them.

Escalation

How fast things move

You should not have to chase. Two routes exist, and which one a question takes is decided by the question, not by who you happen to have emailed.

Routine questions

Go to the accountant handling your engagement and get answered the same working day where possible.

Same day

Deadline or filing query

Goes straight to the engagement lead and gets a documented response, in writing, so the answer sits in the file.

Documented

Discrepancy over threshold

Any variance above the agreed materiality threshold is escalated with the numbers attached, before the pack is issued.

Before issue

Urgent, handler away

The engagement lead picks it up. Continuity is the point of the escalation route, not an exception to it.

Picked up

A person at a back-office desk reviewing figures beside a laptop, under louvred morning light — A reporting conversation, mostly without a meeting

Meetings

The reporting conversation

Most engagements run without scheduled meetings. The reporting pack arrives with a short written note on what moved and why, and questions are answered by email or a call if needed. That keeps the rhythm on your calendar rather than ours.

Firms that want a regular slot can have one: a monthly or quarterly call to go through the numbers, typically thirty minutes. For partnerships where several people need to see the same figures, that call is often the only time everyone looks at the same page.

Default Written pack plus email questions, no standing slot.
On request Monthly or quarterly call, typically thirty minutes.
Partner firms Usually the one moment every partner sees the same figure.

Scope changes

Growth, and how it lands in the ledger

Adding a second entity, opening a new bank account, hiring five people, or moving into a new revenue line all change the bookkeeping. We would rather know before the change lands than discover it in a bank feed.

Tell us early

A note before the change lands is worth ten after it has already swept into three ledger lines.

We quote first

Scope changes are quoted before the work starts, so nothing appears in an invoice that was not agreed.

Temporary adjustment

Where a change is temporary, we agree a temporary adjustment rather than resetting the fee permanently.

Reset when it settles

If the change becomes the new normal, we revisit the scope and the fee with the actual numbers in front of us.

Data and access

Who holds the keys

We work inside your accounting platform with a user account assigned to us — not your credentials. Bank feeds are connected through the platform's own authorisation, and documents are stored in the shared folder set up for your engagement.

Access

A user account assigned to us inside your accounting platform. Your login stays yours.

Bank feeds

Connected through the accounting platform's own authorisation, not through credentials shared with us.

Documents

Stored in the shared folder set up for your engagement and referenced from the working papers.

On exit

Access is removed at the end of an engagement, and you keep full ownership of your data throughout. Confidentiality terms are set out in the engagement letter.

Ending an engagement

A clean handover, when it is time

Engagements run month to month unless agreed otherwise. We would rather end an engagement cleanly than keep one alive on inertia.

Ledger

The ledger in its current state, posted through the last period we handled.

Working papers

The supporting schedules for every period we handled, in the same convention you received them.

Opening position

The opening position for whoever takes over, with the open items listed explicitly.

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A steady-state engagement

The rhythm is the point. The boundaries make it hold.

Most of the friction between a firm and its accountant comes from unclear boundaries, not from bad work. If any of the boundary cases on this page apply to you, or you want to know which one does, the first conversation is the way to find out.

Ask about your scope Who we work with

Singapore Cloud Ledger Pte. Ltd. · 16 Raffles Quay, #30-01 Hong Leong Building, Singapore 048581 · Mon–Fri 9:00–18:00, Sat 10:00–13:00