Accounting Services Fees Singapore: A Detailed Breakdown
What Small Business Accounting Costs You in Singapore
Most Singapore SMEs pay S$150 to S$600 monthly for accounting. Here's what drives the price, which services cost extra, and how outsourcing stacks up.
Most Singapore accounting quotes arrive as "it depends," which helps nobody. You'll hear "it depends on your requirements" and get pushed toward a discovery call. Which is useless if you're only trying to forecast next year's costs.
Let's skip to what things actually cost. For most Singapore small businesses, the going rate is S$150 to S$600 a month for light to moderate transaction volumes. Across the whole market the range stretches further, from about S$80 a month at the very light end to S$2,000 or more for complex operations. The vast majority of small businesses sit in the narrower range. Budget against that one.
Why quotes differ so much
Here's the thing most owners get wrong. it's not about how much money you make. It's driven by how many transactions run through your accounts.
Consider two businesses. An agency turning over S$800,000 on twelve annual invoices takes very little work. A Shopify shop doing S$200,000 through 900 tiny transactions, with payment gateway fees, refunds and chargebacks, is far more work. Revenue tells you nothing here. Any firm quoting you off turnover alone hasn't looked at your books. Volume, not revenue.
It's worth understanding why volume matters so much. Every transaction has to be recorded, categorised, and matched against your bank feed. Most of that is fast when the data is clean. The expense lives in the ones that don't match, and they look like this. an unmatched payment, a duplicated charge, a late refund, a vendor who renamed their entity. Those need a human to investigate. One at a time. A business with 900 transactions doesn't just have thirty times the data of one with 30, and exceptions are where the hours go.
A handful of extras change the total:
Staff payroll: billed per head monthly, and the spread between providers is huge, anywhere from single digits to S$30 or S$80 per person.
GST returns: usually S$80 to S$200 extra per return if your business is GST-registered.
Backlog reconstruction: when nobody's touched the accounts since incorporation, that's reconstruction. Expect a separate one-time charge, which is fair, but get it quoted on its own.
Software licences: sometimes rebilled with a markup. Confirm the subscription is included.
Reporting frequency: asking for monthly numbers costs more than a once-a-year close. Only pay for the cadence you'll actually open.
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. Scope explains the gap.
The cheap end is usually salary computation and a payslip. The higher price includes the statutory filings, and CPF is the bulk of it. Employer CPF contributions run 17 percent of wages for employees under 55, and the employee adds 20 percent. The rates taper as employees get older. 13 percent employer for ages 55 to 60, 9 percent for 60 to 65, 7.5 percent for 65 to 70, and 5 percent above 70. Getting the age band wrong on a single employee means a correction and a resubmission.
There's also a wage ceiling to track. The Ordinary Wage ceiling sits at S$6,800 a month in 2026, up from S$6,300, which shifted the numbers for better-paid staff. Additional Wage is capped yearly at S$102,000 less whatever Ordinary Wage has already absorbed. Bonuses fall under that second ceiling, which is where most calculation errors happen. Easy to get wrong.
Then there's the Skills Development Levy, charged at 0.25 percent of gross wages with a monthly cap in the S$10 to S$17 range. CPF submissions are due by the 14th of the following month, with 1.5 percent monthly interest on anything overdue.
So when you compare payroll quotes, ask what's included. Paying more for correct statutory submissions can beat paying less and doing the filings yourself.
The four jobs hiding under one word
The word "accounting" covers four distinct functions here, and only one of them is the monthly work. It explains how one firm quotes S$1,200 and another S$250 without either being dishonest.
Monthly bookkeeping is the first, 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 number in the range above. Just that.
The other three are separate engagements. Corporate tax filing, meaning your ECI and Form C-S, goes to a registered tax agent. GST only becomes your problem after taxable turnover passes S$1 million, which is the point IRAS registration accounting services singapore price becomes compulsory. And statutory audit can only be signed off by an ACRA-registered public accountant.
Plenty of SMEs are exempt from audit entirely. Exemption applies when you satisfy two of three criteria, and here they are. revenue at or under S$10 million, total assets at or under S$10 million, or 50 or fewer employees. You also need to be a private company throughout the financial year, and normally you need to have met the criteria across the two preceding financial 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, frequently in the thousands, so knowing whether you're exempt changes your annual budget significantly. Find out where you sit.
Outsourcing versus hiring someone
This one's less close than people expect. A full-time accountant in Singapore costs somewhere between S$62,000 and S$87,000 annually once you add employer CPF, annual leave, and software. Compare that to roughly S$7,200 a year at the upper end of the outsourced range.
The salary itself is only part of it. Employer CPF adds 17 percent for staff below 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. Nobody prices that in.
For most small businesses, outsourcing wins comfortably. The crossover comes later than owners assume, usually when transaction volume, headcount and reporting demands justify a dedicated person. Until then, you're paying a salary for capacity you aren't using.
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 a different situation from simply having grown.
Warning signs in a quote
A very low quote isn't automatically a bad deal, but it's worth interrogating. A lean fixed-fee provider can undercut the market by working efficiently on modern software. 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? A fee that jumps without warning at 40 transactions isn't fixed. That's an opening rate. Third, who actually does 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
Give any firm these three things and they can quote you properly, no consultation needed. monthly transaction volume, number of employees, and your GST registration status. Any competent provider can price that in a day. If they still won't commit to a number, that tells you something.
Counting your transaction volume takes ten minutes. Open your business copyright for a normal month and count the lines. Add your payment gateway transactions if you sell online. Avoid picking your busiest month or your quietest, since an atypical month produces a quote that changes on you. Pick a boring month.
Get the fee confirmed in writing before you sign, including what happens if your volume grows. A fixed monthly figure agreed upfront beats an hourly rate you can't forecast. That's the whole game with accounting fees: predictability, not the lowest number on the page.