Accounting Services Fees Singapore: A Detailed Breakdown
Accounting Services Fees Singapore: A Detailed Breakdown
Blog Article
Singapore Accountant Fees: What Really Drives Your Quote
What does a Singapore accountant cost? Most SMEs pay S$150 to S$600 monthly. See what sets the price, what isn't included, and when hiring in-house wins.
Getting a straight price out of a Singapore accounting firm is weirdly hard. The standard reply is a request for a consultation, not a figure. Not helpful when you're doing a simple cash flow projection.
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. 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. Plan on it.
What moves your number up or down
This is where most people misjudge it. Your fee isn't set by revenue. It's set by transaction volume.
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, complete with gateway fees, returns and disputes, is far more work. Revenue tells you nothing here. A quote based purely on revenue is a placeholder, not a price. 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 expense lives in the ones that don't match, and they look like this. an unmatched payment, a duplicated charge, a late refund, a monthly accountant cost vendor who renamed their entity. Each one needs someone to chase it down. One at a time. Scale the transactions and you scale the exceptions with them, and exceptions are where the hours go.
Some other factors move the price too:
- Payroll processing: charged per employee per month, and the spread between providers is huge, anywhere from single digits to S$30 or S$80 per person.
- Quarterly GST: usually S$80 to S$200 extra per return once you're 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.
- Xero and copyright subscriptions: 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. Decide whether you actually read them before paying for them.
- More than one company: each company needs its own books and its own filings, so two companies rarely cost the same as one and a half.
What payroll really adds to the bill
Payroll pricing confuses people, and the reason is scope. 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 higher price includes the statutory filings, and in Singapore that means CPF. For staff below 55, the employer contributes 17 percent, and the employee adds 20 percent. Rates step down with age. 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.
There's also a wage ceiling to track. 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. Bonus payments hit the Additional Wage cap, and that's the common failure point. Worth double-checking.
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.
So when you compare payroll quotes, ask what's included. A firm charging more but handling CPF and SDL submissions correctly may be cheaper than one that computes payslips and leaves the filings to you.
What your quote probably doesn't cover
The word "accounting" covers four distinct functions here, 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 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.
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.
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. 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, 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. Hiring in-house runs S$62,000 to S$87,000 a year 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.
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: when a single in-house accountant leaves, the function stops with them. An outsourced provider has continuity built in. That's a real risk.
Outsourcing is cheaper for the majority of SMEs. The tipping point arrives further out than most expect, generally once volume and reporting needs fill a full-time role. 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.
Red flags worth checking
Cheap isn't automatically bad, though it deserves questions. A lean fixed-fee provider can undercut the market by working efficiently on modern software. 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? Many low quotes cover reconciliation and charge again for the year-end. 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? Find out whether there's a named accountant or a shared inbox. It matters more than you'd think.
Put all of it in writing. A provider confident in their pricing will commit to it. Hesitation tells you plenty.
What to ask for
Skip the discovery call theatre and hand over three things. monthly transaction volume, number of employees, and your GST registration status. That's enough for a firm to give you a fixed figure quickly. If they still won't commit to a number, that tells you something.
Counting your transactions is easier than it sounds. Open your business copyright for a normal month and count the lines. Add your payment gateway transactions if you sell 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.
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. That's the whole game with accounting fees: predictability, not the lowest number on the page.
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