By KYN AI Advisory Team — AI implementation specialists, Singapore
This glossary defines 60 terms that come up when a Singapore SME automates finance and operations: 14 on tax and compliance, 14 on accounting, 10 on operations, 14 on AI and 8 on systems. Each entry is one to two sentences, written for an owner or a finance lead, with a pointer to a fuller article where we have one. Rules and rates change, so check the authority named in each entry before you act.
Tax and compliance
GST (Goods and Services Tax). Singapore's consumption tax on most supplies. Registration is compulsory when taxable turnover passes S$1 million under the tests in IRAS guidance/gst-registration-deregistration/do-i-need-to-register-for-gst), and voluntary below it.
GST F5. The periodic GST return that reports output tax, input tax and the net amount payable or refundable.
Input tax. GST you pay on business purchases. It can be claimed back if the purchase and the document meet the rules.
Output tax. GST you charge customers on your taxable sales.
Zero-rated supply. A taxable sale charged at a zero rate, such as an international service that qualifies. It still counts toward taxable turnover.
Reverse charge. A rule that makes the buyer account for GST on certain imported services. Ask your accountant whether it applies to you.
ECI (Estimated Chargeable Income). Your estimate of taxable profit for a year. A company files it within 3 months from the end of its financial year unless a waiver applies, per IRAS.
Year of Assessment (YA). The year in which IRAS assesses the income earned in the preceding financial year.
Form C-S. The simplified corporate income tax return for eligible small companies. IRAS sets the eligibility criteria.
IR8A. The employee's income statement that employers prepare after year end.
CPF (Central Provident Fund). Singapore's mandatory savings scheme. Employers contribute for eligible employees at rates that depend on age and wage; confirm current rates with the CPF Board.
Withholding tax. Tax deducted at source on certain payments to non-residents, such as royalties.
ACRA. The Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority, which registers companies and receives annual returns.
IRAS. The Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore, which administers taxes including GST and corporate income tax.
Accounting
Chart of accounts. The list of categories your ledger uses: assets, liabilities, equity, income, expenses. Keep it short.
General ledger. The complete record of every posted transaction, by account.
Double-entry bookkeeping. Every transaction is recorded twice, as a debit in one account and an equal credit in another, so the books balance.
Journal entry. A manual posting to the ledger, used for adjustments that no invoice or bill creates.
Accrual accounting. Income and expenses are recorded when earned or incurred, not when cash moves.
Trial balance. A list of all account balances at a date. Debits equal credits when the books are in balance.
Bank reconciliation. Matching each bank line to a ledger entry and explaining every difference. See automate bank reconciliation in Singapore.
Accounts payable (AP). What you owe suppliers.
Accounts receivable (AR). What customers owe you.
Aging report. A list of unpaid invoices grouped by how overdue they are, such as current, 30, 60 and 90 days.
Three-way match. A check that the purchase order, the delivery record and the supplier invoice agree before payment.
Month-end close. The steps that finish a month's books: reconcile, accrue, review, lock.
Cash flow. Money in less money out over a period. A profitable company can still run short of it.
Foreign exchange revaluation. Restating foreign-currency balances at the current rate. See recording foreign currency expenses.
Operations
SOP (standard operating procedure). A written process with an owner, steps, limits and evidence. Template: SOP for approvals, claims and invoices.
Approval gate. A step where a named person must say yes before an action proceeds. See approval gates for high-risk agent actions.
Audit trail. A record of who did what and when, which cannot be edited by the person it describes.
Segregation of duties. The person who requests spend is not the person who approves or pays it.
Purchase order (PO). A document that commits spend to a supplier before delivery.
Goods received note (GRN). A record that goods arrived, in what quantity and condition.
Reorder point. The stock level that triggers a new order.
SKU (stock keeping unit). A unique code for each sellable item variant.
Idempotency. A property of an operation that gives the same result if run twice. It prevents a retry from paying a bill twice.
Webhook. A message one system sends another when an event happens, such as "invoice paid."
AI
LLM (large language model). A model trained on text that generates and reads language. It is the engine behind most AI assistants.
Token. A chunk of text the model reads or writes. Model use is priced in tokens.
Prompt. The instructions and data you give a model.
Context window. The maximum amount of text a model can consider at once.
Hallucination. Output that sounds plausible and is false. Reduce it with sources the model must cite.
RAG (retrieval-augmented generation). The system first retrieves relevant passages from your documents, then the model answers from them. It answers from your data, not only its training.
Embedding. A list of numbers that represents the meaning of text, used to find similar passages.
Agent. Software that uses a model to choose and perform steps toward a goal, using tools, within rules. Read what an AI sales agent can and cannot do.
Tool call. The model's request to run a defined function, such as "look up this invoice."
MCP (Model Context Protocol). An open standard for connecting AI applications to data and tools, described on modelcontextprotocol.io. See MCP explained for SMEs.
Prompt injection. Hostile text, in an email or web page, that tries to redirect an agent. See prompt injection in business AI agents.
Human in the loop. A design where a person approves defined actions before they happen.
Guardrail. A rule enforced outside the model, such as a spending limit or a blocked action.
Evaluation (eval). A fixed test set you run to measure an agent's accuracy before and after a change.
Systems
API (application programming interface). A defined way for one program to read from or write to another.
Row-level security (RLS). A database rule that limits which rows each user can read or change, enforced in the database. See multi-tenant database security.
IAM (identity and access management). The cloud service that defines who can do what in your account.
Least privilege. Every user and agent gets only the access its job needs.
SSO (single sign-on). One company login for many systems, such as Microsoft Entra.
Multi-tenant. One system serving many customers, with each customer's data separated.
Managed database. A database run by the cloud provider, which handles backups and patching. Postgres on AWS RDS is one example.
Infrastructure as code. Cloud resources defined in files, so you can rebuild them and review changes.
Where KYN fits
Most of these terms show up in a KYN review. In the first 14 days we inventory your stack and interview your team, and we define the terms your team uses before we write a specification, so that "approved" and "reconciled" mean one thing in the system. A full build ships in under 90 days.
Our systems apply the security terms above literally: named accounts through the cloud identity service, row-level security in the database, one restricted account per user per session, restricted accounts for agents, and every action logged with the actor. See security and finance systems.
Frequently asked questions
Which terms matter most before I start an automation project?
Know SOP, approval gate, audit trail and bank reconciliation first. They describe your process. The AI terms matter after that, because they describe the tool you use to run it.
Where do I check tax rates and thresholds?
Use the authority itself: IRAS for GST and corporate tax, the CPF Board for contribution rates, ACRA for company filings. We link to them where we state a figure.
What is the difference between an AI assistant and an AI agent?
An assistant answers when you ask. An agent takes steps with tools toward a goal, so it can change records, send messages or move money. That is why agents need approval gates and restricted accounts.
Checked 30 October 2026.
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