Accounting Fees in Singapore: What SMEs Really Pay

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.

Try asking a Singapore accounting firm for a number and watch the subject change. Everyone wants a call before they'll say a number. Which is useless if you're only trying to forecast next year's costs.

Here are the real figures. For the average Pte Ltd or sole proprietorship, monthly accounting and bookkeeping runs S$150 to S$600 a month at up to 300 transactions a month. 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. Plan on it.

What moves your number up or down

The common mistake is assuming the wrong variable. Your fee isn't set by revenue. It's driven by how many transactions run through your accounts.

Take two examples. 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, takes many times the hours. 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. Each line needs recording, categorising, and reconciling to the copyright. 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. A payment that doesn't tie to an invoice, a duplicate charge, a refund processed weeks after the sale, a supplier who changed their billing name. Those need a human to investigate. By hand. Scale the transactions and you scale the exceptions with them, and exceptions are where the hours go.

A handful of extras change the total:

• Staff 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 returns: usually S$80 to S$200 extra per return if your business is GST-registered.
• Backlog reconstruction: 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.
• Accounting software: 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: every entity carries a separate set of accounts, so two companies rarely cost the same as one and a half.

Understanding the payroll line

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. 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. Employer CPF contributions run 17 percent of wages for employees under 55, with the employee contributing 20 percent on top. The rates taper as employees get older. 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.

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 changed what employers owe on higher salaries. 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. 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, 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.

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. It explains how one firm quotes S$1,200 and another S$250 without either being dishonest.

The recurring monthly piece is bookkeeping, covering bank reconciliation, accounts payable and receivable, payroll with CPF submissions, and SFRS-compliant year-end statements. That's the fee we've been discussing. That part alone.

Three more get billed apart. Corporate tax work is handled by a tax agent, not your bookkeeper. GST filing only matters once your taxable turnover crosses S$1 million, the threshold that triggers mandatory IRAS registration. And statutory audit can only be signed off by an ACRA-registered public accountant.

Most small companies never need that audit. 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.

This is a bigger deal than it sounds. 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. Check which side you're on.

Outsourcing versus hiring someone

This one's less close than people expect. Hiring in-house runs 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 annual leave, medical coverage, a desk, and the accounting software licence. 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.

Outsourcing is cheaper for the majority of SMEs. The crossover comes later than owners assume, generally once volume and reporting needs fill a full-time role. Until accounting firm price list then, you're paying a salary for capacity you aren't using.

Where in-house wins is complexity. 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 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, does the fee include year-end financial statements, or just monthly bookkeeping? 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's doing the work? Ask whether you get a named contact who knows your business or a rotating queue. It matters more than you'd think.

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. monthly transaction volume, number of employees, and your GST registration status. 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. 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 fee you can budget around is worth more than a cheap hourly rate that drifts. Predictability is what you're actually buying, not the smallest figure you can find.