ACRA to decommission BizFinx portal from 1 October 2020

18 September 2020

On 9 September 2020, the Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority (“ACRA”) announced that the BizFinx portal will no longer be available from 1 October 2020, and that companies are to upload their financial statements directly from the BizFinx preparation tool.

Background

Since 2014, the BizFinx portal has provided companies with access to the BizFinx preparation tools and other resources to facilitate the preparation and filing of XBRL financial statements. Companies would prepare their XBRL financial statements using the BizFinx preparation tool and log in to the BizFinx portal to validate and upload their XBRL financial statements.

Updates

Over the years, ACRA has streamlined the filing processes to bring greater convenience to companies filing XBRL financial statements:

  • In May 2019, ACRA enhanced the BizFinx preparation tool enabling companies to validate and upload their XBRL financial statements directly from the preparation tool to the BizFinx server and introduced the BizFinx multi-upload tool enabling companies to concurrently upload multiple XBRL files to the BizFinx server. With these enhancements, companies no longer need to log in to the BizFinx portal to validate and upload XBRL financial statements with ACRA.
  • In 2020, ACRA partnered with selected accounting software providers to enable companies to automate the preparation of financial statements in Simplified XBRL format in the accounting software, and file directly from software to ACRA.

Decommissioning of BizFinx portal

In view of these available functions, ACRA will be decommissioning the BizFinx portal from 1 October 2020. Companies are to validate and upload their XBRL financial statements directly from the BizFinx preparation tool, BizFinx multi-upload tool or the accounting software with seamless filing feature going forward.

Services that will be discontinued from 1 October 2020

ACRA will discontinue the following services from 1 October 2020 following the decommissioning of the BizFinx portal:

  • Free Data Analysis: The Free Data Analysis tool available through the BizFinx portal will be discontinued due to low usage. Companies that have successfully filed Annual Returns with ACRA will continue to receive a free copy of Business Profile via an email with a URL to download the free Business Profile which will be sent to the registered email of the person who filed the Annual Return.
  • Acknowledgement emails when Annual Return (with XBRL financial statements) has been filed: The acknowledgement email service, which was provided to notify company directors, company secretaries, persons who uploaded the XBRL financial statements and/or filed Annual Returns following the successful filing of the Annual Return (with XBRL file), will be discontinued. Companies that wish to find out the latest filing can do so via the BizFile+ portal by entering the company name / UEN in the search bar in the BizFile+ portal to view the latest Annual Return filed.
  • Subscription to BizFinx news updates on BizFinx portal: Subscribers to BizFinx announcements will no longer receive updates after 1 October 2020.

Reference materials

The following materials are available on the ACRA website www.acra.gov.sg: