Accounting Services Fees Singapore: A Detailed Breakdown
Accounting Services Fees Singapore: A Detailed Breakdown
Blog Article
Singapore Accountant Fees: What Really Drives Your Quote
Real Singapore accounting fees: S$150 to S$600 a month for most small firms. Learn what moves your quote, what's billed separately, and how to compare.
Ask three Singapore firms what they charge and you'll get three non-answers. 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 the average Pte Ltd or sole proprietorship, 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, 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. That's the number to plan around.
Why quotes differ so much
This is where most people misjudge it. Your fee isn't set by revenue. It's set by transaction volume.
Consider two businesses. A consultancy billing S$800,000 a year across twelve invoices takes very little work. An e-commerce store doing S$200,000 across 900 small orders, complete with gateway fees, returns and disputes, is far more work. Revenue tells you nothing here. Any firm quoting you off turnover alone hasn't looked at your books. Ask them to count instead.
The reason volume dominates is mechanical. Each line needs recording, categorising, and reconciling to the copyright. Most of that is fast when the data is clean. 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. Those need a human to investigate. 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.
Some other factors move the price too:
- Payroll: charged per employee per month, and the spread between providers is huge, anywhere from single digits to S$30 or S$80 per person.
- GST filing: typically another S$80 to S$200 per filing if your business is GST-registered.
- Clean-up: 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.
- Xero and copyright subscriptions: 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. Only pay for the cadence you'll actually open.
- Group structures: every entity carries a separate set of accounts, so the second entity costs close to a full second fee.
What payroll really adds to the bill
Payroll pricing confuses people, and the reason is scope. Quotes range from single digits to S$80 per employee. They're often not describing the same work. Scope explains the gap.
The cheap end is usually salary computation and a payslip. The expensive end includes statutory submissions, 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. One misclassified employee means an amended filing.
Ceilings complicate it further. As of 2026 the Ordinary Wage ceiling is S$6,800 monthly, raised from S$6,300, which changed what employers owe on higher salaries. 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, at 0.25 percent of gross wages, capped between roughly S$10 and S$17 per employee monthly. 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.
Why two quotes are rarely comparable
The word "accounting" covers four distinct functions here, but just one is what you need every month. It explains how one firm quotes S$1,200 and another S$250 without either being website dishonest.
Monthly bookkeeping is the first, covering bank reconciliation, accounts payable and receivable, payroll with CPF submissions, and SFRS-compliant year-end statements. That's the number in the range above. Just that.
The other three are separate engagements. Corporate tax work is handled by a tax agent, not your bookkeeper. GST only becomes your problem after taxable turnover passes S$1 million, which is the point IRAS registration becomes compulsory. Statutory audit requires an ACRA-registered public accountant to sign.
Plenty of SMEs are exempt from audit entirely. 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. You also need to be a private company throughout the financial year, and ordinarily you'd meet the tests in the two prior years, though a company less than two years old is judged on the current year alone.
This is a bigger deal than it sounds. 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.
Is a full-time hire cheaper
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. Set that against S$600 a month, or S$7,200 a year, at the top of the outsourced SME band.
Salary is the headline, not the total. Add 17 percent employer CPF for anyone under 55, then leave entitlement, medical benefits, workspace, and software. And there's a risk that rarely appears in the comparison: if your only accountant resigns, your books stop. A firm has cover. That's a real risk.
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. Before that, you're funding idle capacity.
The honest exception is complexity, not size. Multi-warehouse inventory, multi-currency exposure, and decisions that copyright on same-day figures benefits from someone in the building. That's a different situation from simply having grown.
Red flags worth checking
A very low quote isn't automatically a bad deal, but it's worth interrogating. A well-run fixed-fee practice can price below the market through efficiency alone. The problem is when the low price reflects missing scope rather than better process.
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? Ask whether you get a named contact who knows your business or a rotating queue. The difference shows up fast.
Get the answers in writing. A provider confident in their pricing will commit to it. If they stall, that's your answer.
What to ask for
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 transaction volume takes ten minutes. Open your business copyright for a normal month and count the lines. Include gateway payments if you're selling online. Avoid picking your busiest month or your quietest, because a quote built on an unrepresentative month will get revised later. Pick a boring month.
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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