Straits Ledger · About the practice
Every payout is settled before it is spent.
We are a Singapore cloud accounting practice built for online sellers, and nothing else. This page is about who does the work, how we track IRAS and GST guidance, and what the guides here are worth to you.
Practice note · Accounting firm Singapore · IRAS-ready record keeping
A specialist firm, plainly stated
Straits Ledger is a Singapore cloud accounting practice built specifically for online sellers. We are not a general bookkeeping firm that also happens to accept e-commerce clients. The channels, settlement formats and GST questions on this site are the whole of our work, which is why the guidance here can afford to be specific.
- Founded Practising in Singapore Cloud accounting for e-commerce businesses, GST treatment and marketplace payout reconciliation — the scope from day one.
- Also Google Ads and Microsoft Ads safe by design No invented statistics, no borrowed figures, no claims about outcomes we cannot describe. Every guide names its source.
- Where 71 Robinson Road, #14-01, Singapore 068895 Meetings are in person when the numbers get strange, and by phone or email for the routine month end.
- Reach us +65 6821 9482 · [email protected] Monday to Friday, 9:00 am – 6:00 pm Singapore time.
- Not A dashboard or a bookkeeping app We are a service on top of your cloud ledger. Your clients' data and login stay yours — read-only access is granted on our side, never installed on yours.
Who does the work
One named accountant owns your month end
The engagement is handled by a named accountant who owns your month end and your filing, not rotated between whoever has capacity. That consistency matters with online sellers, because channel quirks accumulate: the platform that posts refunds twice, the gateway that batches payouts, the marketplace that holds funds through a dispute window. A person who has seen your ledger for six months recognises these instantly.
Handover notes exist anyway, so your books are never hostage to one person's memory. What you get is a practitioner whose reading of your settlement history is continuous — someone who notices that a payout landed net of a chargeback before you do, and who can say what was done about the last one.
Months is the shortest record we would take on and still call it a diagnosis. A channel's quirk usually takes one or two full cycles to show itself.
Accountant on the file, named in writing at the start of the engagement's month end.
How we stay current
IRAS published guidance is the source of truth
GST and IRAS guidance changes, and the practical treatment of imported services, exports, and marketplace settlements is the area most likely to move. We work from IRAS published guidance as the source of truth and update our posting rules when it changes. Where the treatment of a channel is genuinely unclear, we say so and document the position taken rather than pretend a settled answer exists.
Nothing on this site should be read as a substitute for the guidance itself. If your filing depends on a reading of the rules, the reading comes from IRAS, and we tell you where we got it.
Standard-rated
Local sales to Singapore consumers, most marketplace fees, and domestic courier charges on outbound goods. The rate applies, and it applies to the settlement, not to the order.
Zero-rated exports
Goods that leave Singapore, where the export evidence holds. What matters here is the record: tracking, a shipping document, the timing of the sale against the timing of the shipment.
Out of scope
Some fees and adjustments fall outside the tax entirely — a refund reversal of a previously taxed sale, for example. We tag it in the ledger so nobody chases it a year later.
The editorial standard
Written by the team that does the accounting work
Everything published on this site is written by the team that does the accounting work, reviewed before it goes out, and revised when the guidance changes. No invented statistics, no borrowed figures, no claims about outcomes we cannot describe.
Where a fact comes from IRAS or a platform's own documentation, it says so. Where it comes from our own engagement experience, it is framed as a practice, not a rule. If a guide here is wrong or out of date, tell us and we will correct it.
Places a published figure can come from: IRAS guidance, a platform's own documentation, or a practice of ours named as such. If it is none of those, it does not go out.
Read the GST guideWhy we work in cloud ledgers
Paper records cannot survive the volume
Online sellers generate a volume of financial events that paper records cannot survive, and a desktop file locked on one machine is worse. Cloud ledgers give you continuous access, a clean trail of who changed what, and the ability to hand an accountant read-only access without a courier. Our clients keep ownership of their data and their login — always.
We are a service on top of the ledger, not the reason it works. If you already run one and it is doing the job, we will work inside it. If you are choosing one, we will tell you what the choice makes easier or harder at filing time.
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Ownership
The login is yours, the ledger is yours, the export formats are documented on day one. Leaving us is not a data migration project.
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Trail
Every posting rule, every reclassification, every adjustment signed. If IRAS asks a question, the answer is a dated entry, not a memory.
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Access
We work with read-only access where the platform allows it. You keep writing; we keep reconciling; nothing moves without your hand on the ledger.
Next step
See the worked pricing if you want numbers before a conversation, or read the reconciliation guide if the marketplace payout is the question you actually came with.
Working alongside your other advisers
We hand the file over, not our name
Some clients keep a tax agent for corporate filings or an internal finance person for payables. We coordinate rather than compete: reconciliation output, F5 figures, and the year-end schedules are handed over in formats the next person can use. If you need a referral for something outside accounting — corporate secretarial work, for example — we say so and step aside rather than stretch the scope. The goal is your books being correct, not our name on every document.
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Handover
Reconciliation output and year-end schedules are delivered as spreadsheets and PDFs your tax agent already reads. No new tools required on their side.
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Split scope
If another adviser already covers a piece of the month end, we name it in writing and leave the overlap out of our fee.
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Referrals
Corporates secretarial, legal, or a specific marketplace's own seller support — we point and step back rather than absorb the work.
Judging whether to trust the guidance
Read a guide, come to a conversation, or send us the question
The practice is on Robinson Road, and the accounting firm in Singapore that answers your enquiry is the same one that wrote the guide you just read. If a page here has aged badly or carries a figure we cannot source, tell us — that correction is the whole point of the editorial standard above.
Get in touch
- Address
- 71 Robinson Road, #14-01, Singapore 068895
- Phone
- +65 6821 9482
- [email protected]
- Hours
- Monday to Friday, 9:00 am – 6:00 pm (Singapore time)