Ask AwraIQ about features, pricing, onboarding, login, integrations, security, demos, mobile apps, automation, reports, or support.
For Singapore
If you run a Singapore business whose warehouse is in Singapore, this page is not for you and you have excellent local options. It is written for the other kind of Singapore company — the holding entity, the trading house, the regional headquarters — where the board, the auditor, the bank and the consolidated accounts are all on this island and the stock, the sites, the plant and most of the people are three time zones and several currencies away. That structure has a specific failure mode, and it is not a compliance one.
Where the numbers are made, and where they are read
Nothing in this sequence involves anybody doing anything wrong. It is the ordinary consequence of a structure where accountability is centralised and activity is not, and it repeats every month in a large number of otherwise well-run groups.
At the operation
Stock moves, a supplier is paid early because the site would otherwise stop, a machine is repaired, a subcontractor is engaged, a container clears late. Each decision is reasonable and each is made by somebody with better local information than anyone in Singapore has. Most are recorded in a local package, a spreadsheet, or a WhatsApp group, in local currency, in a local format.
At the boundary
Once a month a submission arrives — a trial balance, some schedules, a commentary. It is a summary, which means it is an interpretation, and the interpretation was made by the party being reported on. Everything in it is arguably true. What is missing is not concealed; it simply was not asked for, because the template was designed for accounts rather than for operations.
In Singapore
The numbers add up, the auditor signs, the board pack is accurate. And nobody in the building can tell you how much stock the group is actually holding right now, what it cost to land, how much of it has not moved in a year, or which subsidiary is quietly funding another through a receivable nobody has confirmed. The financial reporting is in good order. The operational visibility is nil, and the two are not the same thing.
Where we fit, and where we do not: we have no Peppol access point and we do not transmit invoice data to IRAS. The InvoiceNow requirement is being phased in over several years by registration type, and if your Singapore entity needs to send and receive on that network you need a provider or an accounting system that connects to it — that is not us. This page is about the other half of the structure, the half that has no mandate attached and therefore never gets bought: knowing what is happening in the operating entities without waiting for a monthly pack.
What this costs today
Each of these presents as a reporting difficulty and originates as an operational one, which is why buying more reporting has never fixed any of them.
Financial reporting is timely and operational reporting is not. Between packs, decisions about capital, stock and pricing are taken on a picture that is several weeks old and was summarised by the party being measured.
The same transaction recorded twice, in two currencies, on two dates, in two systems. The difference is discovered at audit, explained rather than resolved, and reappears next year.
A local package here, spreadsheets there, something inherited from an acquisition over there. Every question asked of the group becomes a data-collection exercise before it becomes an answer, and the answer is stale by the time it arrives.
Freight, duty, clearing and demurrage settle in the operating entity, weeks after the goods. If they never reach the unit cost, group margin analysis is built on a purchase price rather than on what the goods actually cost to have.
The least loved schedule in the pack
Every group with operating subsidiaries has an intercompany reconciliation, and in most of them it is the least loved schedule in the pack. The reason is structural rather than clerical: each side records the same event in a different system, in a different currency, on a different date, under a different description, and nobody owns the difference until an auditor asks about it.
Same event, two dates 01
What happens
What happens: Singapore raises a management charge on the 28th. The subsidiary posts it when it arrives, on the 3rd. Across a month end, that is a difference in both entities' figures that is entirely legitimate and entirely invisible unless somebody is looking for it.
What helps
What helps: the transaction existing once, with both sides looking at the same record rather than at two entries that are supposed to describe the same thing.
Same event, two currencies 02
What happens
What happens: charged in dollars, recorded in kwacha or shillings at whatever rate the local system was using, translated back at a group rate. Three numbers, all defensible, none matching, and the difference lands in an exchange line nobody interrogates.
What helps
What helps: holding the original currency and the rate actually applied on the transaction rather than converting once and discarding the source. The difference then has an explanation instead of a plug.
Goods, not just money 03
What happens
What happens: one entity ships inventory to another. It leaves one balance sheet in one month and joins another in the next, sometimes at a different value, occasionally at a different quantity. Unrealised margin on group stock depends on knowing which units are still on hand, and very few groups genuinely do.
What helps
What helps: a transfer that is one movement with two confirmations rather than two independent transactions, so the in-transit position is owned and the quantity at the far end is a receipt rather than an assumption.
Cost recharges nobody can evidence 04
What happens
What happens: shared services, group insurance, a seconded engineer, an allocation of head office cost. Perfectly normal, and when a tax authority in the operating country asks what the subsidiary received for the charge, the answer has to be reconstructed from memory and email.
What helps
What helps: the underlying operational record — the hours, the purchase, the asset, the project the cost was consumed by — existing in the same place as the charge, so evidence is retrieved rather than assembled.
The activity is elsewhere. The consequence, in every case, lands here — which is the reason this page exists and the reason the buyer is in Singapore.
Two honest limits, because this block invites a bigger claim than we can make. We are not a consolidation engine and we do not produce statutory group accounts, eliminations or a translation reserve — that is your accounting system's job and your auditor's. What we hold is the operational layer beneath it, on one basis, across entities, so the schedules are built from records rather than negotiated between them.
The operation, in detail
Each links to a fuller tour. Nothing here consolidates or files — the boundary is drawn in full below.
Subsidiaries, warehouses, depots and sites each hold their own stock, approvals and numbers, visible individually and together rather than only after a submission.
A movement between entities or locations stays open until the receiving end confirms what it actually got, so in-transit stock is owned and shortages surface against the dispatch.
Purchases held in their own currency at the rate genuinely used rather than a standing monthly one, so differences have an explanation instead of a plug.
Requisitions, thresholds that refuse rather than warn, RFQ comparison with the award reason recorded, and delegation configured per entity.
Freight, insurance, duty, clearing and handling allocated to the receipt they belong to and carried into the unit cost the group prices against.
Budget, hours and true cost per project, and plant and equipment under named custody, on the same basis in every operating company.
Scope, stated plainly
No access point and no statutory consolidation. In this market both are reasonable objections and neither has a workaround worth pretending about.
Running in the product today
Not built — and the first two are the ones a Singapore buyer will ask about first
The honest positioning, since this is the market most likely to test it: we are not competing with a Singapore ERP for a Singapore business, and if that is the requirement we are the wrong shortlist. Where we are worth a conversation is when the Singapore entity is the reporting layer over operations in markets we know well — which is most of Africa and a growing part of this region — and the actual problem is that nobody here can see what is happening there between month ends.
How this starts
Not last month end — today, at cost, across every operating entity. Time how long it takes to arrive and count how many people had to be asked. That number is the honest measure of your operational visibility, and it is usually a surprise to a board that is entirely satisfied with its financial reporting.
Pick the largest, ask both entities for their figure independently, and look at the difference before anybody explains it. Whether the gap is timing, currency, goods in transit or something else, the useful discovery is usually how long it takes to find out which.
Compliance, consolidation and Singapore payroll are one purchase and there are excellent local providers for it. Operational visibility across operating companies in difficult markets is a different purchase. Groups that conflate the two tend to buy the first, remain blind to the second, and conclude that the software was disappointing.
Read before you shortlist
The consolidated accounts are accurate, the auditor signs, and nobody in the building can say what the group is holding today. Those are not contradictory statements.
One event, two records, created independently in two systems, two currencies and two dates — with no single object anywhere that either of them is a version of. That is why tidiness never fixes it.
Written for the holding company rather than the local business — because if your warehouse is in Singapore, you have excellent local options and you should use them.
Questions we are asked here
No. We are not a Peppol access point, we do not send or receive structured invoices on the network, and we do not transmit invoice data to IRAS. The GST InvoiceNow requirement is being phased in over several years by registration type and date, so your obligation depends on your specific position — check it with IRAS or your tax adviser. If you are in scope, you need a provider or accounting system that connects; that is a genuinely different product from what this page describes, and there is no reason you cannot have both.
No, and it is worth being precise because the distinction gets blurred by vendors regularly. We do not produce statutory consolidated accounts: no eliminations, no minority interests, no translation reserve, no group financial statements. What we do is hold operational records — stock, purchases, projects, assets, costs — on one basis across multiple entities, so the numbers that feed a consolidation are consistent before anyone starts consolidating. That reduces the reconciliation work considerably. It does not replace the consolidation itself.
For a Singapore-only business, it very likely would not, and we would say so on the first call. The case exists where your operations are in markets we understand well — Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Zambia, Nigeria, Ghana and their neighbours, increasingly parts of this region too — and the difficulty is that Singapore cannot see what is happening in them between monthly packs. We have built for those operating conditions specifically: intermittent connectivity, imported goods with real landed cost, cash purchasing, high asset mobility. That is a different qualification from being a good Singapore ERP, and we are only claiming the first.
Yes. Each entity holds its own positions, approvals and numbers, transactions retain their original currency at the rate genuinely applied rather than a standing monthly rate, and reporting is available per entity or across the group. The limit to keep in mind is the one above: that is management and operational reporting, not a statutory consolidation, so it will tell you what the group is holding and what it cost without producing a set of group accounts.
Only indirectly, and it would be dishonest to claim more. We do not benchmark charges, set a policy or produce documentation. What is genuinely useful is that the operational substance behind an intercompany charge — the hours worked, the purchase made, the asset used, the project it was consumed by — sits in the same system as the entity records, so when an authority in an operating country asks what the subsidiary actually received, the evidence is retrieved rather than reconstructed from memory and email. The policy stays with your advisers.
It becomes another entity with its own locations, approvals and numbers, reportable on the same basis as the rest. Realistically the constraint is never the software; it is that the acquired business records things differently and somebody has to decide what a location, a cost centre and a project mean across the group. That is a fortnight of decisions rather than a configuration screen, and any vendor who tells you an acquisition is a quick import has not integrated one.
Nairobi, remote, in English. Singapore is UTC+8 and Nairobi is UTC+3 — a five-hour difference, so your afternoon is our morning. For a holding company that is often less of a constraint than it looks, because your operating entities in Africa are in our time zone rather than yours, and they are usually the ones who need support. There is no Singapore office and no local implementation partner, which in this market is a fair objection rather than a detail.
Not last month end. Today, at cost, across every operating entity — and time how long it takes to arrive. If it comes back in an hour, your visibility is better than most and you probably do not need us. If it takes a week and three phone calls, that is the conversation.