In this part, know for ACRA XBRL filing what documents must be included and what data needs to be tagged. Need XBRL filing service? Try us.

What are the XBRL filing requirements

What documents have to be compiled in the financial statements for XBRL conversion

What is annual return (AR)

The Singapore Companies Act requires all mandated companies to file an Annual Return with ACRA within 30 days of holding an AGM. The Annual Return is an electronic document and provides information like:

• Company Name
• Registration Number
• Registered address
• Principal business
• Company type during the financial year
• Share Capital & summary of shares
• Registered Charges
• Particulars of Officers of Company
• Particulars of Shareholders
• Dates of Annual Returns, Annual General Meeting, & Accounts
• Financial statements in XBRL format, if needed

The AR needs to be duly signed by the director or company secretary before filing it with ACRA. A company must attach its audited financial statements when it submits an Annual Return with ACRA, unless it is a small private company meeting two of the three following criteria:

• Total annual revenue from the past fiscal year is less than S$10 million
• Total assets from the past fiscal year are less than S$10 million
• Total employees in the past fiscal year are fewer than 50

What are the information that financial statements should have?

A complete set of financial statements should contain the following:

• Statement of financial position (balance sheet)
• Statement of profit or loss and other comprehensive income
• Statement of changes in equity
• Statement of cash flows
• Notes, comprising of a summary of accounting policies and other explanatory information
• Directors’ report
• Statement by directors
• Independent auditors’ report (if audited)

What are the taxonomy and accounting standards adopted in Singapore?

In Singapore, the ACRA Taxonomy is created based on disclosure requirements for financial statements from

• Singapore Financial Reporting Standards (SFRS),
• SFRS for Small Entities,
• Singapore Companies Act as well as the
• Singapore Exchange Listing Manual.

The ACRA Taxonomy is a closed taxonomy and is not extensible. Therefore it does not allow preparers to add or define their own company specific concepts or create their own relationships between concepts. This is to enhance the comparability of the data collected. However, certain customizations are allowed within the ACRA Taxonomy to give preparers flexibility in their presentation, such as company specific labels and re-ordering of the concepts.

What is minimum tagging requirement list?

As a concession to ease the introduction of XBRL, ACRA has allowed that companies submitting their financial statements in XBRL can tag the elements from a “minimum tagging requirement list’ within the ACRA taxonomy. Companies may choose to submit more information in XBRL format than the minimum requirement list.

The minimum requirement list consists of two parts:

• A text block element, to submit your entire set of financial statements.
• Detailed information elements, to submit more details about individual sections of financial statements.

The minimum requirement list, as well as the full ACRA Taxonomy, is available in the ACRA Taxonomy 2016 templates (Excel, 489KB)

It may be mentioned here that the taxonomy may be updated from time to time by ACRA. So users are recommended to subscribe to taxonomy update alerts