Changing a Company’s Financial Year End

Key Points

A local company may change its current or immediately preceding financial year, but not after missing relevant AGM, annual-return or financial-statement circulation deadlines. Approval is needed for a financial year exceeding 18 months or certain repeat changes within five years. Prepare the revised date and reasons where required. ACRA lists no filing fee. Foreign-company changes use a separate, immediately processed route.

Prepare the FYE Change Before Filing

Identify the company and accounting period before selecting a revised date. For a local company, check the existing AGM, Annual Return and financial-statement circulation deadlines first. The change route is not a way to repair a year whose relevant deadlines have already been missed. Position holders may apply directly, or a CSP may act for the company.

Prepare the UEN, revised FYE and financial-year period. Where the change needs reasons because the financial year exceeds 18 months or a repeat change falls within the specified five-year rule, attach the supporting explanation. ACRA asks for PDF documents with file names that avoid spaces, special characters and foreign-language characters.

In Bizfile, log in as a Business User through Corppass and check that the dashboard shows the correct entity. The local-company transaction is under Manage, Local company, Update change of financial year end date. This helps avoid preparing a change against the wrong entity when an administrator has access to several companies.

If approval is required, allow for ACRA’s stated processing time of up to 14 working days and check the Bizfile inbox for the outcome. An application submission is not confirmation of approval. For a foreign company, follow its separate instructions instead; ACRA lists that update as free and immediate. See the FYE change procedures ↗ for the applicable route.