Accounting Services Fees Singapore: A Detailed Breakdown

Accounting Services Fees Singapore: A Detailed Breakdown

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What Small Business Accounting Costs You in Singapore

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.

Getting a straight price out of a Singapore accounting firm is weirdly hard. 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. bookkeeping price For a typical SME here, expect to pay 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. The vast majority of small businesses sit in the narrower range. Budget against that one.

What moves your number up or down

This is where most people misjudge it. Your fee isn't set by revenue. 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 costs almost nothing to service. An e-commerce store doing S$200,000 across 900 small orders, with payment gateway fees, refunds and chargebacks, takes many times the hours. The one with less revenue pays the bigger fee. Any firm quoting you off turnover alone hasn't looked at your books. Ask them to count instead.

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. 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, it has thirty times the opportunities for something to go wrong.

Beyond volume, a few things push the number up:

• Payroll: billed per head monthly, with enormous variation between firms, anywhere from single digits to S$30 or S$80 per person.
• GST filing: usually S$80 to S$200 extra per return once you're registered.
• Catch-up work: if your books are a year behind, someone has to rebuild them. Expect a separate one-time charge, which is fair, but get it quoted on its own.
• Software licences: occasionally passed on with a margin attached. 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.
• Multiple entities: every entity carries a separate set of accounts, so two companies rarely cost the same as one and a half.

What payroll really adds to the bill

Payroll deserves its own explanation because the quotes look irrational. One firm says S$8 a head, another says S$80. They're usually describing different jobs. Different scope entirely.

At the low end you're getting a calculation and a payslip. The expensive end includes statutory submissions, and in Singapore that means CPF. For staff below 55, the employer contributes 17 percent, with the employee contributing 20 percent on top. 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 shifted the numbers for better-paid staff. Additional Wage is capped yearly at S$102,000 less whatever Ordinary Wage has already absorbed. Bonus payments hit the Additional Wage cap, and that's the common failure point. Check that one twice.

SDL sits on top of that, charged at 0.25 percent of gross wages with a monthly cap in the S$10 to S$17 range. The CPF deadline is the 14th of the month after, with 1.5 percent monthly interest on anything overdue.

Before comparing payroll prices, establish scope. Paying more for correct statutory submissions can beat paying less and doing the filings yourself.

The four jobs hiding under one word

In Singapore, "accounting" gets used to describe four separate regulated jobs, but just one is what you need every month. This is why a S$1,200 quote and a S$250 quote can both be honest.

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. That part alone.

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. Statutory audit requires an ACRA-registered public accountant to sign.

Plenty of SMEs are exempt from audit entirely. Exemption applies when you satisfy two of three criteria, and here they are. S$10 million or less in revenue, S$10 million or less in total assets, or no more than 50 staff. The company must be private for the whole financial year too, 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. An audit is a separate professional engagement with its own fee, frequently in the thousands, so knowing whether you're exempt changes your annual budget significantly. Check which side you're on.

In-house or outsourced

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 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. Add 17 percent employer CPF for anyone under 55, then annual leave, medical coverage, a desk, and the accounting software licence. There's also the risk nobody prices in: 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. A business with inventory across multiple warehouses, foreign currency exposure, and daily management decisions that depend on live numbers benefits from someone in the building. That's not the same as just getting bigger.

Warning signs in a quote

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.

Ask these before signing. First, are year-end statements included or is this monthly work only? Plenty of cheap quotes stop at the monthly reconciliation and bill separately for the annual close. Second, what happens when your volume grows? 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.

Put all of it in writing. Firms comfortable with their fees will document them. If they stall, that's your answer.

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 transactions is easier than it sounds. Pull one typical month of bank statements and count the entries. Include gateway payments if you're selling 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.

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