Accounting Services Fees Singapore: A Detailed Breakdown
Accounting Services Fees Singapore: A Detailed Breakdown
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Singapore Accounting Fees: The Numbers Nobody Posts
Singapore accounting fees run S$150 to S$600 a month for most SMEs. Here's what drives your quote, what's excluded, and how outsourcing compares to hiring.
Ask three Singapore firms what they charge and you'll get three non-answers. The standard reply is a request for a consultation, not a figure. Which is useless if you're only trying to forecast next year's costs.
Here are the real figures. For most Singapore small businesses, the going rate is S$150 to S$600 a month for light to moderate transaction volumes. The full market spread is wider, roughly S$80 monthly for the smallest setups up to S$2,000 plus for books that have gone properly complicated. But most owners reading this will land in that S$150 to S$600 band. Budget against that one.
Why quotes differ so much
The common mistake is assuming the wrong variable. the price isn't keyed to turnover. What matters is the number of lines your accountant has to touch.
Picture two companies. An agency turning over S$800,000 on twelve annual invoices has almost nothing to reconcile. An e-commerce store doing S$200,000 across 900 small orders, complete with gateway fees, returns and disputes, takes many times the hours. The one with less revenue pays the bigger fee. A quote based purely on revenue is a placeholder, not a price. Volume, not revenue.
It's worth understanding why volume matters so much. Each line needs recording, categorising, and reconciling to the copyright. A tidy transaction takes seconds. The cost sits in the exceptions, and they look like this. an unmatched payment, a duplicated charge, a late refund, a vendor who renamed their entity. Each one needs someone to chase it down. By hand. A business with 900 transactions doesn't just have thirty times the data of one with 30, and exceptions are where the hours go.
Beyond volume, a few things push the number up:
- Staff payroll: billed per head monthly, with enormous variation between firms, anywhere from single digits to S$30 or S$80 per person.
- GST returns: usually S$80 to S$200 extra per return once you're registered.
- Clean-up: when nobody's touched the accounts since incorporation, that's reconstruction. It's a one-off project fee, not a monthly rate.
- Software licences: occasionally passed on with a margin attached. Confirm the subscription is included.
- Management reporting: asking for monthly numbers costs more than a once-a-year close. Decide whether you actually read them before paying for them.
- Group structures: each company needs its own books and its own filings, so the second entity costs close to a full second fee.
Why payroll pricing varies so wildly
Payroll deserves its own explanation because the quotes look irrational. Quotes range from single digits to S$80 per employee. They're usually describing different jobs. Different scope entirely.
At the low end you're getting a calculation and a payslip. The higher price includes the statutory filings, and in Singapore that means CPF. Employer CPF contributions run 17 percent of wages for employees under 55, with the employee contributing 20 percent on top. Rates step down with age. 13 percent for 55 to 60, then 9 percent, 7.5 percent, and 5 percent for the older bands. One misclassified employee means an amended filing.
Ceilings complicate it further. The Ordinary Wage ceiling sits at S$6,800 a month in 2026, up from S$6,300, which changed what employers owe on higher salaries. The Additional Wage ceiling works annually, at S$102,000 minus the Ordinary Wage contributions already made that year. Bonus payments hit the Additional Wage cap, and that's the common failure point. Worth double-checking.
Then there's the Skills Development Levy, at 0.25 percent of gross wages, capped between roughly S$10 and S$17 per employee monthly. The CPF deadline is the 14th of the month after, and late payment attracts interest at 1.5 percent per month.
Before comparing payroll prices, establish scope. Paying more for correct statutory submissions can beat paying less and doing the filings yourself.
What your quote probably doesn't cover
In Singapore, "accounting" gets used to describe four separate regulated jobs, and only one of them is the monthly work. This is why a S$1,200 quote and a S$250 quote can both be honest.
The recurring monthly piece is bookkeeping, covering reconciling your bank feed, tracking what you owe and what's owed to you, running payroll and CPF, and preparing SFRS financial statements. That's the fee we've been discussing. Just that.
The other three are separate engagements. Corporate tax work is handled by a tax agent, not your bookkeeper. GST filing only matters once your taxable turnover crosses S$1 million, which is the point IRAS registration becomes compulsory. And statutory audit can only be signed off by an ACRA-registered public accountant.
Most small companies never need that audit. You qualify for the small company exemption if you meet two of three tests, and here they are. revenue at or under S$10 million, total assets at or under S$10 million, or 50 or fewer employees. The company must be private for the whole financial year too, and ordinarily you'd meet the tests in the two prior years, though newly incorporated companies under two years old are assessed on the current year.
That exemption matters more than most owners realise. Audit is a distinct engagement carrying its own cost, often several thousand dollars, so your exemption status materially changes what you'll spend each year. Find out where you sit.
Is a full-time hire cheaper
This one's less close than people expect. Hiring in-house runs S$62,000 to S$87,000 a year after employer CPF contributions, leave, and the subscriptions. Set that against S$600 a month, or S$7,200 a year, at the top of the outsourced SME band.
The salary itself is only part of it. accounting fee singapore Add 17 percent employer CPF for anyone under 55, then leave entitlement, medical benefits, workspace, and software. There's also the risk nobody prices in: when a single in-house accountant leaves, the function stops with them. A firm has cover. One person is a single point of failure.
For most small businesses, outsourcing wins comfortably. The tipping point arrives further out than most expect, generally once volume and reporting needs fill a full-time role. Before that, you're funding idle capacity.
Where in-house wins is complexity. Multi-warehouse inventory, multi-currency exposure, and decisions that copyright on same-day figures justifies someone on site. That's not the same as just getting bigger.
Red flags worth checking
Cheap isn't automatically bad, though it deserves questions. A well-run fixed-fee practice can price below the market through efficiency alone. The concern is a price that's low because something's been left out.
Check these three things. First, are year-end statements included or is this monthly work only? Many low quotes cover reconciliation and charge again for the year-end. Second, what's the rule when transactions increase? An unannounced jump at a volume threshold isn't a fixed fee. It's a starting price. Third, who's doing the work? Find out whether there's a named accountant or a shared inbox. The difference shows up fast.
Get the answers in writing. Firms comfortable with their fees will document them. Hesitation tells you plenty.
How to get a real number
Skip the discovery call theatre and hand over three things. Your average monthly transaction count, your headcount, and whether you're GST-registered. Any competent provider can price that in a day. A firm that still won't quote is telling you something.
Counting your transactions is easier than it sounds. Open your business copyright for a normal month and count the lines. Include gateway payments if you're selling online. Don't use your peak month or your slowest, since an atypical month produces a quote that changes on you. Average is what you want.
Insist on a written fixed fee up front, including what happens if your volume grows. A fixed monthly figure agreed upfront beats an hourly rate you can't forecast. Predictability is what you're actually buying, not the smallest figure you can find.
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