Entrepreneurship

Commercial properties are a hot area for real estate investors in Singapore. Commercial properties are exempt from the ABSD (Additional Buyer’s Stamp Duty), which can significantly impact returns for residential real estate investments. There are some intricacies to this process, so it’s important you familarise yourself with the process first before sinking a large sum of money into a commercial property. We’ve written this comprehensive guide to purchasing commercial properties in Singapore.

We’ll explain:

• What is a commercial property?
• What are the different types of commercial properties available?
• Can foreigners buy commercial properties in Singapore?
• Should I buy a commercial property as an individual, or via a company?
• What taxes do I have to pay when buying commercial properties?
• What are the key factors to consider before purchasing commercial properties in Singapore?
• What are the most frequently asked questions on commercial properties?
• How should I protect my commercial property from damage?

1. What is a commercial property?

A commercial property is a building designed for business purposes. It is not meant for residential use. Commercial properties are purchased to earn returns through both rental income and/or capital gains.

2. What are the different types of commercial properties available in Singapore?

There are 4 main types of commercial properties here:

Retail Commercial Property:

Examples include shopping malls, stores (e.g. clothing stores, convenience stores, electronic stores, etc.), F&B premises, salons, spas, gyms, shophouses, etc.

Industrial and Commercial Properties:

Examples include offices, warehouses, and factories.

These properties are classed into two sub-categories:

• B1 Commercial Property: Offices, warehouses
• B2 Commercial Property: Factories

Hotel Commercial Properties:

Examples include hotels and hostels of all types. These could be 2-star budget hostels all the way up to 5-star hotels.

Take note that hotels require specific permits to run. For starters, you will need a valid hotel licence from the Hotels Licensing Board (HLB) to operate a hotel. You will also need various permits from the Fire Safety Bureau, National Environment Agency (NEA), and Building ad Construction Authority (BCA).

Depending on how many services you offer in your hotel, you may need to apply for a fair number of permits. If your hotel has F&B outlets within the hotel that are run by you, you will also need Food and Beverage licenses for each eating establishment. If you have a bar, you will need a Public Entertainment License. If you offer massage services, you’ll need a Massage Parlour License.

Parking Lots:

You can purchase car park lots. Singapore does not have strata-titled parking lots. This means you can’t just buy a few individual lots for investment. Rather, you have to buy the entire parking lot. This means you should set aside at least a few million dollars if you’re considering investing in a lot, given high land prices in Singapore.

3. Can foreigners buy commercial properties in Singapore?

Yes, foreigners can certainly purchase commercial properties here.

In Singapore, there are some restrictions for foreigners who wish to purchase residential properties. For example, foreigners can generally only buy non-landed private homes (i.e. condominiums). Foreigners can only buy landed residential properties subject to governmental approval. However, there are no such restrictions for commercial properties. Foreigners can buy landed commercial properties without having to apply for government approval.

Under the Residential Property Act, foreigners can buy the following commercial properties:

• Shophouses
• Industrial and commercial properties (e.g. retail spaces, factories, warehouses, etc.)
• Hotels

Can a Permanent Resident (PR) buy commercial property in Singapore?

Yes. See above – there are no restrictions for PRs investing in commercial properties here.

Can a foreign company buy commercial property in Singapore?

Yes. If you have a company that’s registered outside of Singapore (e.g. a US-based LLC, a British Virgin Islands, company, etc.), you can use this company to purchase commercial property here. There are no restrictions. You can buy retail shops, shophouses, factories, warehouses, hotels, etc.

4. Should I buy a commercial property as an individual, or through a company?

It can be advantageous to consider purchasing commercial properties through a corporate entity, rather than buying it as a private individual.

Here are some key benefits of buying commercial properties via a company:

i. Limitation of liability

If you rent your commercial space out, tenants can hold you liable for negligence in maintaining your property. For instance, if you neglect to properly maintain fire suppression systems, and a fire breaks out and destroys your tenant’s business and causes injuries, you can be sued for negligence. If you get sued as a private individual, almost all your personal property can be exposed to legal claims. This includes your house, your savings in your bank account, your car, your jewellery and clothes, and almost all other belongings.

However, if you were to purchase a commercial property via a company, then the limitation of liability would be capped at the assets that your company holds. Your personal assets would be kept separate from the company’s assets, which protects your private belongings from being claimed by aggressive litigants.

ii. Lower taxes

Depending on your income bracket, corporate taxes can be lower than personal taxes in Singapore. Buying a commercial property through a local Singapore company can therefore reduce your tax burden.

When operating a commercial property via a company, you can also reduce your taxable rental income via valid claims for business-related expenses, such as property upkeep costs.

If your company is GST-registered (you can voluntarily register for GST!) you can claim back the 7% GST that you pay on commercial properties, subject to certain relatively straightforward conditions laid out by IRAS (Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore). You cannot claim back GST if you buy a commercial property as an individual. If you buy a $2 million commercial property with GST included, that means you can claim back a whopping $140,000!

iii. Ease of ownership transfer

It is easier for companies to transfer asset ownership compared to individuals.

iv. Potential exemption from Total Debt Servicing Ratio (TDSR) limitations

If you buy a commercial property as an individual, you will be subject to the Total Debt Servicing Ratio (TDSR). The TSDR in Singapore is 60%. This means that you can only take on a loan that results in annual mortgage payments that are 60% or less of your yearly income.

For example, if your annual income is $100,000, you can only take on a loan with a mortgage of up to $60,000/year. This basically limits the type and size of commercial properties that you can invest in, unless you have a particularly high income.

However, corporate buyers who can demonstrate strong financials (e.g. positive cash flow, clean balance sheet, good operating history, etc.) can be exempted from the TDSR. This allows you to purchase more expensive commercial properties that can potentially get you higher returns.

5. What taxes do I have to pay when buying commercial properties?

Annual property tax: 10%/year

Commercial property owners pay a flat rate of 10% of the annual value (AV). The AV is calculated based on the gross annual rent if your property were to be rented out.

Property taxes for commercial properties purchased for investment tend to be lower than residential properties whose owners don’t live in them. For such residential properties, the tax rates can be as high as 20% if you don’t live in the unit and rent it out. This is another plus point for investing in commercial properties.

Capital gains tax: 0%

Singapore does not have a capital gains tax. That means when you sell your commercial property, you do not need to pay any capital gains taxes. This is in stark contrast to other countries like the US, which depending on the specific state, can levy capital gains taxes of up to 37% on real estate sales.

This helps real estate investors maximise their gains when buying and selling commercial real estate in Singapore.

6. Key factors to consider when buying a commercial property in Singapore:

Factor 1: What type of commercial property should I buy?

This is the first question that most investors will ask themselves. Should I buy a retail commercial property in a CBD-area shopping mall? How about an HDB shophouse in a heartland district? Or perhaps I should invest in an industrial warehouse? Different types of commercial properties will have varying expected rates of return, different price points, and their own unique strengths and risk factors.

For instance, let’s take a look at purchasing heritage shophouses. These shophouses are quite limited in supply. They command a premium over other shophouses, and over other commercial properties in general, because they are officially conserved by the government. Many of these shophouses are also located in the Central Business District (CBD), which makes them popular choices to rent amongst small companies and trendy startups. Areas like Chinatown and Telok Ayer are lined with these conserved heritage shophouses, many of which are rented out for princely sums to eateries, yoga studios, startups, and other businesses.

Since these shophouses are in high demand, you can usually expect to earn relatively good rental yields. With their conserved status, limited supply, and popularity amongst investors, such shophouses also hold their value well. Depending on your entry price point, investors typically can also typically expect to earn attractive capital gains.

However, the quantum (total purchase price) for such heritage shophouses are high. For instance, a 5,000 square foot heritage shophouse in an area like Chinatown can easily fetch $10 million or more. In 2020, The Business Times reported on a trio of shophouses, sporting about 10,000 square feet of built-up space, that went up for sale for $30 million.

Also, depending on the specific shophouse you intend to purchase, there may be restrictions on their usage according to urban zoning plans. Some shophouses are designated for commercial use only, while others can be both residential and commercial.

It’s important to properly evaluate the pros and cons of each type of commercial property. It’s a good idea to do up a comparison table of prices for different types of commercial properties, and see what the historical and projected returns are for each type of commercial property. If you already know which type of commercial property you want to buy, make sure to do comparisons of prices-per-square foot for a few properties in the areas you’re interested in. This helps you establish a market price, which will allow you to analyse whether the property you’re intending to purchase is trading for below or above market value. Don’t jump into a purchase before you’ve done lots of homework!

Factor 2: Location, location, location. Where is your property located?

Location will have a vital role in determining the returns you make from your commercial property. It will also influence the kinds of leaseholds that your commercial properties will have.

Here are some key factors you’ll want to bear in mind when evaluating the location of a commercial property:

• Transportation: How easy is it to access the MRT? Is it within walking distance? If not, , are there nearby bus stops, and how far is the nearest stop? Does the property have on-site parking? If not, how far is the closest car park, and is it easy to get parking spaces?
• Corner units: Commercial properties situated at corners of intersections (whether these are road intersections, or intersections in shopping malls) tend to be more valuable because more people will pass by the shop.
• Traffic: How many people will walk by the property on an average day? Is the property situated right by a busy street or road? Do lots of vehicles pass by the property every day? If so, you can command higher rentals because such properties have higher visibility.
• Surrounding developments: Is the property situated in a well-developed neighbourhood? Are there shopping malls, or office spaces, or lots of attractions nearby that will draw a natural amount of regular foot traffic? For instance, Paya Lebar Quarter is an integrated working-living-lifestyle hub that has offices, malls, eateries, and residences packed into one location, which draws large numbers of people there. Rental yields in such a location will therefore be high since commercial shops are in high demand. For example, if there’s an en bloc sale or if the government decides to redevelop the land, it could potentially affect human traffic and therefore also your business.

Factor 3: Can you change your commercial property’s intended use?

Commercial properties are zoned according to their intended use. Zoning rules are implemented by the URA (Urban Redevelopment Authority). If you purchase a commercial property and wish to change its intended use to something different from its original use, you may need to apply for planning permission from the URA first.

For example, let’s say you purchased a nice commercial retail shop unit. Instead of running it as a shop, you decide you want to convert the place into a commercial music school. You’ll need to first check with the URA whether the guidelines allow for this change in use. If not, you’ll need to apply for permission from the URA before you embark on your conversion project.

Factor 4: What’s the leasehold period?

Leaseholds for commercial properties typically range from 30 to 60 years. This is much shorter than that of residential properties, which range from 99 year leases to freehold properties.

New commercial property launches are usually 30 year leaseholds. This is in line with the government’s announcement of more commercial property sites with shorter tenures (and smaller lot sizes) being released for purchase. This helps make industrial sites more affordable for business owners in Singapore. It also gives flexibility for the government in terms of redevelopment of land

Factor 5: Can I get sufficient financing to purchase my commercial property?

Most buyers will apply for bank loans when buying their commercial property. The loan amount you can take out will be limited by your Total Debt Servicing Ratio (TDSR).

If you’re buying as an individual, the TSDR is capped at 60% of your monthly income. For instance, if your income is $10,000/month, then your maximum mortgage is $6,000/month.

If you’re buying through a company, your bank will evaluate your TDSR based on your company’s annual net operating income. Banks will also consider your company’s debt, if any.

Factor 6: Ensure you have sufficient cash to pay GST (Goods and Services Tax) on commercial properties

You have to pay GST (currently 7%) on the sale and lease of commercial properties in Singapore. Only sales/leases of residential properties are exempt from GST.

If you purchase a commercial property via a company that is GST-registered, you can claim the GST portion on the purchase. You can voluntarily register your company for GST if you wish to claim the GST back on commercial property purchases.

7. Frequently asked questions on purchasing commercial properties

i. Do I need to pay ABSD when buying commercial properties?

No. You do NOT have to pay ABSD when buying a commercial property. This applies even if you already own a residential property. This means you’ll save between 12% to 20% on ABSD, which is a huge amount for property purchases.

ii. Do I need to pay Seller’s Stamp Duty (SSD)?

No. You do NOT have to pay SSD for commercial properties, except when buying industrial properties. Industrial properties include factories and warehouses (basically buildings intended for industrial activity like manufacturing, storage, chemical refining, etc.). The SSD amount you have to pay depends on the number of years that you’ve owned the property before selling it (a.k.a. the “holding period”).

Here’s a breakdown of SSD rates:

SSD encourages buyers to hold onto their properties for the longer-term, and discourages short-term flipping or rapid-fire speculative purchases.

iii. How much can I borrow to buy commercial properties?

You can take a bank loan of up to 80% of the loan-to-value (LTV). This is higher than residential properties, where loans are capped at 75% of the loan-to-value ratio.

You’ll need to fork out at least 20% of the down-payment in cash. Remember, you can’t touch your CPF money to pay for commercial properties.

LTVs can be lower than 80% if you are buying a commercial property strictly for investment purposes, without living in the property. For instance, if you purchase a warehouse, or a commercial shophouse (and you declare to the bank you won’t be living there), the bank may cap your LTV amount at less than 80%.

Also, interest rates on loans for commercial properties tend to be higher than loans for residential properties. This reflects the relatively higher risk that comes with purchasing commercial properties.

iv. Must I pay GST on commercial properties?

Yes. You have to pay 7% GST. You can’t use your bank loan to pay for the GST. It has to come from your own pocket.

This means that your minimum cash outlay will be around 27% (20% down-payment + 7% GST) of the property’s purchase price, if you buy a commercial property that has GST attached to it.

You may wish to consider purchasing  a commercial property through a company. If you make a purchase made through companies that are GST-registered, you can claim back the GST portion of the purchase.

v. Can I use my CPF to finance the purchase of commercial properties?

No. You cannot use your CPF savings in your CPF account to pay for commercial properties.

CPF savings can only be used for residential properties.

vi. Where can I find data on commercial properties?

URA’s website has a list of useful data on commercial properties. You can view:

• Supply of commercial properties
• Major commercial projects to be launched
• Recent commercial projects launched each quarter
• Median rental prices
• Available office and retail space for rent

vii. How do I find upcoming commercial property land sites for sale?

Twice a year, the URA will announce Government Land Sales (GLS) sites that are up for sale. These GLS’ will contain a mix of both residential and commercial sites. The land will be sold via an open tender process.

viii. How long are the leaseholds for commercial properties?

Commercial properties usually have leases between 30 to 60 years. This is much shorter than residential properties, which have leases from 99 years all the way to freehold.

ix. Are there freehold commercial properties?

Yes. There does exist a small quantity of freehold and 999-year leasehold commercial properties in Singapore. However, many of such freehold commercial properties are usually not located within prime areas, which can affect your capital gain potential, and make it harder to find tenants to earn rent. The freehold commercial properties that are located within the CBD also command a significant premium relative to non-freehold commercial properties in the same area.

x. Can I buy a commercial property for residential use?

If your goal is to live in a commercial property, then your best choice is to purchase a commercial shophouse. This will have a retail space on the first floor that you can rent out for monthly income. It will also have a home on the second floor for you to live in.

Unfortunately, you cannot live in other types of commercial properties. For instance, you can’t buy a warehouse and then convert it into a massive loft residence. As much as that would exude massive amounts of hipster cool, that would violate zoning regulations. If you want a home, you’ll have to either invest in a shophouse, or purchase a residential unit.

xi. Do commercial properties have higher rental yields than residential properties?

On average, commercial properties in Singapore earn a rental yield of around 5%/year. This is higher compared to residential properties, which usually earn around 2% to 3%/year.

8. How should I protect my commercial property against fire, water damage, and other physical damage?

Commercial properties in Singapore don’t come cheap. Many investors rely on their commercial properties to provide a steady source of income to grow their wealth, or to tide them over through retirement. Since you’ve invested so much of your hard-earned money into your property, you need to make sure that your investment doesn’t go up in smoke – literally.

Commercial property insurance protects your property against an extremely wide variety of damage, including but not limited to:

• Fire
• Explosions
• Certain types of water damage
• Lightning
• Sudden structural collapse
• …and much more

Get Commercial Property Insurance from $12/mth now. Buy online in 3 mins!

The Home Office Scheme allows business owners to operate small businesses from the comfort of their home. If you want to run your own business from your house, this is an excellent scheme to consider. You don’t have to spend money renting an office, and you can easily make money without leaving your home.

Conditions for Home Office Scheme:

HDB flats and private residences are designed primarily for living in, and not for conducting industrial activity. Any business activities conducted should not impact your neighbour’s living conditions. The scheme was set up to allow admin-based businesses to be run from home (e.g. tech startups, consulting businesses, internet-based businesses). It’s not supposed to be used for labour-intensive businesses, or large-scale businesses, or any other business that will draw large amounts of foot traffic.

Here are the conditions for the Home Office Scheme:

• You cannot hire more than 2 non-resident employees. This means that you can hire as many resident employees as you want (i.e. people in your household), but you can only hire up to 2 people who are not members of your household.
• You cannot display any business signs or advertisements outside your house.
• Your business activities should not make noise, smoke, odour, waste matter or dust.
• Your business should not cause elevated levels of traffic into the neighbourhood.
• Your business cannot consume high amounts of electricity that exceed standard residential use. That means no Bitcoin mining.
• Your business cannot use dangerous chemicals or other hazardous substances/materials. You can’t run a real-life Breaking Bad lab, unfortunately.
• Your business activities cannot be in the prohibited list of activities (see list below).

The rules above are meant to protect the residential nature of the neighbourhood. For instance, imaging if your neighbour ran a popular clothing shop from out of their home, and had customers coming in and out 12 hours a day, 7 days a week. That would be quite disruptive to the people living around them.

What types of businesses cannot be run under the Home Office Scheme?

• Beauty, hair dressing or massage
• Construction/renovation contractors
• Car trading/sales
• Card reading/palm reading, tarot reading, or fortune telling of all kinds
• Catering/restaurants
• Commercial schools (eg. Tuition centres, music centres, dance centres, yoga classes, language classes, etc.)
• Courier services
• Classes involving dress-making, sewing, embroidery
• Employment agencies
• Embalming, funeral chapels/homes
• Maid agencies
• Mausoleums
• Manufacturing of any kind
• Medical services (eg. dental, medical, veterinary)
• Money lending
• Opticians
• Repair activities (eg. household appliances, electrical products, footwear, etc)
• Any business that involves conducting in-person seminars for large numbers of people
• Shops/Retail businesses – essentially the sale of any kind of goods it not allowed

What types of businesses are allowed under the Home Office Scheme?

• Accounting and book-keeping businesses
• Architecture/interior design business
• Asset management business (e.g. hedge funds)
• Consulting business (e.g. management consulting, engineering consulting, IT consulting, education consulting, HR consulting, financial consulting, etc.)
• Graphic design, marketing, advertising business
• Insurance and financial planning business
• Real estate agencies
• IT businesses (e.g. tech startups) Trading business

Essentially, admin-based businesses are suitable for the Home Office Scheme.

How to apply for the Home Office Scheme?

The application process differs depending on whether you live in an HDB or a private property.

If you live in an HDB:

Apply for the HDB Home Office Scheme.

If you live in a private residence (e.g. condo, landed property):

Apply for the URA Home Office Scheme.

You must be at least 18 years old to apply for the Home Office Scheme. If you’re the tenant of the unit, you have to seek permission from the owner first before you can get approval for the scheme.

How much does the application for the Home Office Scheme cost?

It costs a one-time fee of $20.

How long is the Home Office Scheme license valid for? Do I have to renew my Home Office license?

It’s valid for as long as you wish to run your business. It doesn’t expire. You only need to apply once and that’s it – no renewals are needed.

However, take note that your Home Office license can be revoked if you breach the conditions of the license. For instance, if your neighbours complain and it’s discovered that you’re actually running a prohibited business (e.g. massage parlour), your license can be taken away.

What’s the difference between the Home Office Scheme vs Home-Based Small Business Scheme?

There are two schemes available for entrepreneurs who want to use their home to run their business. Sometimes people get confused between the two schemes. There are 2 main differences between the Home Office Scheme versus the Home Based Small Business Scheme.

The first primary difference is the number of employees that you can hire from outside your household. Applying for the Home Office Scheme allows you to hire 2 employees who aren’t members of your household. This can be useful if you need to have employees come over to have meetings and do work in a conducive environment. It saves you the hassle and cost of having to rent an office. With the Home Based Small Business Scheme, you can only hire people within your household (i.e. the people living with you). You can’t hire people who don’t live together with you.

The second difference is the ability to use your residential address as your registered business address with ACRA. Under the Home Based Small Business Scheme, you cannot use your residential address for your business. However, under the Home Office Scheme, you can do so. This provides you with an additional level of convenience. You don’t have to engage a corporate secretary to get you a virtual address to register with ACRA.

How should I protect my home-based company from business risks?

Provide is the easiest and quickest way for business owners to protect their companies. It’s important to cover your home-based business against liability. You could face a severe business lawsuit which might cost you hundreds of thousands to defend. Or, one of your employees might get injured, leaving you liable under the law to compensate them for their injuries. Make sure you carry at least basic business insurance, so you don’t leave yourself exposed to such dangerous financial risks.

Click the links below to get your insurance online, in just 3 mins. Our premiums are amongst the lowest nationwide.

Are you still paying your business expenses using cheques or bank transfers? If your answer is yes – stop! If you’re an SME owner in Singapore, then you should really make use of corporate credit cards for your business. These corporate credit cards help you rack up points that you can redeem for exclusive rewards. Some of these cards also come with cashback terms designed specifically for business expenses. Of course, there’s a ton of SME credit cards in the market to choose from. Most people get dizzy even thinking about comparing the different benefits each card offers. Don’t worry – with this article, we’ve done all the heavy lifting for you. Read on to find out which SME credit card is best for your needs!

The 12 best SME credit cards for businesses in Singapore, in no particular order:

1. Aspire Corporate Credit Card
2. Standard Chartered Unlimited Cashback Card
3. OCBC Business Debit Card
4. Citi Corporate Credit Card
5. HSBC World Corporate Credit Card
6. DBS World Business
7. American Express SIA Business Card
8. American Express Corporate Platinum Card
9. UOB Regal Business Metal Card
10. Maybank Platinum Card
11. OCBC Debit Business Card
12. Diners Club Business Card

Summary of popular SME credit cards, based on benefit/function:

#1. Aspire Corporate Card

Click here to apply.

Aspire’s card is actually a debit card, but its benefits are fairly useful so it does deserve a mention amongst other SME credit cards.

Aspire is a digital FinTech startup that’s created a brand new virtual corporate card, designed specifically for business owners in Singapore. The company was founded in 2016 by Andrea Baronchelli. They were frustrated with how few good credit cards that were catered to business owners, so they built their statup to cater to the SME community. Aspire has raised over $30 million in venture capital funding, being part of the new wave of neo-bank startups disrupting the finance industry.

An Aspire corporate card comes with benefits that are very useful for businesses:

• 1% cashback on marketing spend and SaaS software
• 7% fees on foreign exchange
• $0 minimum deposit
• Rapid approval, with virtual credit card issued immediately once your account has been cleared by Aspire

Best for: Startups, E-Commerce businesses, Technology companies, companies that frequently transact foreign currencies

Annual fees: None

Payment processor: Visa

Eligibility: Sign up via Aspire to go through their proprietary checks

#2. Standard Chartered Unlimited Cashback Card

Click here to apply.

Even though the Standard Chartered Unlimited Cashback Card is not branded as a business card per se (it’s actually marketed as a personal card), there’s no stopping you from using it to fund your business activities. Especially with its high and unlimited cashback, the card is just too good to ignore if you’re going to be using credit cards for your business.

Standard Chartered’s Unlimited Cashback Card comes with the following benefits:

• 1.5% cashback on all spend, with no caps
• 5% cashback on all spend in first 3 months of signing up
• Cash on demand (0% interest, one-time processing fee as % of loan from as low as 6%)

Best for: SME owners who have moderate to high business spend, and who need access to quick working capital

Annual fees: $192.60 (incl. GST), waived for first 3 years

Payment processor: Visa

Eligibility: Singaporeans/PRs: $30,000 minimum annual income

Foreigners: $60,000 minimum annual income

#3. OCBC Debit Business Card

Click here to apply.

OCBC’s debit business card comes with a range of useful feature for SME owners:

• 0.5% rebate on all foreign currency spend
• 0.2% rebate on all local currency spend
• No minimum spend, no rebate cap
• Lifetime waiver of card annual fees
• Mobile payments via Apple Pay, Samsung Pay, Google pay, and more
• Personalise your debit card, free of charge
• Comfortdelgro fare discounts
• Up to 10% off car rentals from Hertz
• Discounts on STClassifieds
• Up to 10% off Business and Economy class flights from Singapore with Emirates
• Free premium membership for 2 years, and up to 30% shipping discounts at MyUS.com (shipping service)
• 2% off non-promotional items at FairPrice online
• 25% off annual insurance plans from Explorer Travel Insurance

Best for: Frequent business travelers

Annual fees: None

Payment processor: Mastercard

Eligibility: OCBC SGD Business Account holder

#4. Citi Business Card

Click here to apply.

OCBC’s debit business card comes with a range of useful feature for SME owners:

• Access up to $100,000 credit line
• Up to 55 days interest-free credit
• Free fraud insurance of up to $1.65 million per company against misuse of corporate credit card by employees
• Free travel insurance of up to $1 million per cardholder
• Double rewards points via Citi Rewards, spend at participating merchants like Amazon, Harvey Norman, etc. ($1 spent = 2 Citi points)

Best for: SME owners who need access to quick and affordable working capital

Annual fees: $160.50 (incl. GST), 1 year fee waiver

Payment processor: Visa

Eligibility: Contact Citi for more information

#5. HSBC World Corporate Card

Click here to apply.

HSBC World Corporate Card key features:

• Up to 3.33% cash rebate on all local and overseas spend (min. spend of $300 per quarter)
• Up to 54 days of interest-free credit
• Earn reward points across multiple cards and employees, consolidated into a single company-level account
• Free travel insurance of up to $500,000 per cardholder
• Up to 3% p.a. interest on the first $50,000 in your Maybank Save Up account

Best for: SME owners looking for good retail and dining rebates

Annual fees: $30 per quarter, waived for first 3 years

Payment processor: Amex

Eligibility: Singaporeans/PRs: $30,000 minimum annual income

Malaysians: $45,000 minimum annual income

Foreigners: $60,000 minimum annual income

#6. DBS World Business Card

Click here to apply.

DBS World Business Card’s key features:

• 2% cash rebate on overseas spend
• 1% cash rebate on local spend: dining, entertainment, and travel
• 3% on other eligible transactions
• Up to 14% discount on petrol at Esso, 15% discount on petrol at SPC
• Free fraud insurance of up to $1.65 million per company against misuse of corporate credit card by employees
• Free travel insurance of up to $1 million per cardholder
• Up to 10 complimentary visits each year to >1,000 airport lounges worldwide

Best for: SME owners looking for good petrol savings and cashback schemes, frequent business travelers

Annual fees: $406.60, 1-year fee waiver

Payment processor: Mastercard

Eligibility: Minimum $80,000 annual income

#7. American Express SIA Business Card

Click here to apply.

Amex SIA Business Card’s key features:

• Up to 8.5 HighFlyer miles per $1 spent with Singapore Airport Group (8.5 HighFlyer miles = approx. 12.75 to 25.5 cents, depending on the flight booked.)
• 1.8 HighFlyer miles on all other local and overseas spend (1.8 HighFlyer miles = approx. 2.7 to 5.4 cents, depending on the flight booked)
• One free night at a  hotel per year at Accor hotels, plus up to 50% off dining at Accor hotels throughout Asia
• Up to $1 million complimentary travel insurance
• 5,000 HighFlyer bonus points when you spend $500 with Singapore Airport Group in the first 12 months
• 15,000 HighFlyer bonus points when you spend $10,000 with Singapore Airport Group annually

Best for: Frequent business travelers who enjoy flying SIA

Annual fees: $306

Payment processor: Amex

Eligibility: $60,000 minimum annual income

#8. American Express Platinum Card

Click here to apply.

Amex Platinum Card’s key features:

• 25,000 Amex points when you sign up (worth est. $500)
• Receive 75,000 bonus Amex points (worth est. $1,500) upon spending $20,000 in first 6 months
• Free Omnidesk Pro (worth $840) when you sign up
• $800 travel credits annually ($400 for air fare, $400 for hotels)
• Complimentary access to over 1,200 airport lounges worldwide
• Special rates at luxury hotels worldwide
• Complimentary access to 67 Pall Mall (London) and Tower Club (Singapore)
• Complimentary green fees at premium clubs in Singapore and multiple countries in SEA
• Free all-day weekend parking at Great World City (Friday to Sunday)
• Up to 50% off restaurant bills at selected restaurants in Singapore, including restaurants at 5-star hotels
• Platinum concierge desk available 24/7, 365 days a year. Call for almost all kinds of requests – restaurant reservations, hotel bookings, travel emergency assistance, home assistance, roadside assistance, etc.

Best for: Business owners looking for a high level of luxury benefits, and will spend enough on dining, travel, and entertainment to make the annual fees worth it

Annual fees: $1,712 (GST inclusive) per year

First 2 supplementary cards are free forever

Payment processor: Amex

Eligibility: Minimum $200,000 annual income

#9. UOB Regal Business Metal Card

Click here to apply.

UOB Regal’s key features:

• 2% cash rebate on overseas spend
• 2% cash rebate on all local dining spend
• 5% cash rebate on all local retail spend
• Up to 50% off weekday lunches at Grand Hyatt Singapore
• 4x complimentary green fees (worth $2,200) across 35 golf courses worldwide
• Unlimited access to over 1,000 airport lounges worldwide
• Complimentary Imperial Treasure Club membership (worth $491)
• Complimentary Wyndham Hotels & Resorts Diamond tier membership, providing you access to over 30,000 hotels and vacation rentals worldwide. Comes with suite upgrade benefits and welcome amenities upon check in.
• Complimentary Fraser World Diamond membership. Free hotel stays at selected venues. 25% birthday discount. Free suite upgrades, with early check-in and late check-out.
• Free $500,000 travel insurance for cardholder and family members. Luggage protection of $3,000.

Best for: SME owners looking for solid retail and dining rebates, and attractive hotel discounts. UOB’s SME credit card is also excellent for business owners who travel overseas, whether for work or pleasure.

Annual fees: $680 (GST inclusive)

Payment processor: Mastercard

Eligibility: By invitation only, but you can register your interest.

#10. Maybank Business Platinum Visa Card

Click here to apply.

Maybank key features:

• Complimentary business logo printing
• Access to global concierge services
• Earn Maybank points to redeem rewards
• Worldwide cash withdrawal
• Up to 51 days of interest-free credit
• Credit limits based on company financials, unaffected by personal card limits
• Free travel insurance, up to $1 million coverage. Up to $1,000 luggage loss cover, up to $400 luggage delay cover, up to $400 flight delay cover.
• Free travel insurance of up to $500,000 per cardholder
• Up to 3% p.a. interest on the first $50,000 in your Maybank Save Up account

Best for: SME owners who already have a relationship with Maybank

Annual fees: $180, waived for first 2 years

Payment processor: Visa

Eligibility: Company must be registered with ACRA, with at least one local director. Director must be between 21 and 60 years old. Company must have 2 years of operations, with minimum annual sales of $200,000.

#11. DBS Platinum Business Card

Click here to apply.

DBS Platinum Business Card’s key features:

• Earn 1 DBS point for every $5 spent, and redeem attractive rewards
• Up to 55 days of interest-free credit
• Consolidate all supplier payments into a single company-level account
• Free travel insurance of up to $1 million per cardholder when full airfare is charged to the card
• Free annual coverage against employee misuse of credit card. Up to $25,000 per cardholder, and $1.65 million per company.

Best for: Business owners looking for an SME credit card to distribute to employees, that comes with built-in protection against employee theft/fraud

Annual fees: $192.60 (inclusive of GST), waived for first 1 year

Payment processor: Visa

Eligibility: Minimum income of $30,000 and above per year

#12. Diners Club Corporate Card

Click here to apply.

Diners Club key features:

• Free access to selected members-only airport lounges
• Up to 58 days of interest-free credit
• Overseas cash withdrawal
• Free travel insurance up to selected amount

Best for: SME owners looking for the longest duration of interest-free credit

Annual fees: Contact Diners Club for more information

Payment processor: Visa

Eligibility: Singaporeans/PRs: $30,000 minimum annual income

Provide past 2 years of audited company financial reports

Don’t forget to protect your business

Once you’ve got your credit card all set up, you can use it to purchase business insurance to protect your company. Make sure to protect your business comprehensively against major risks like business lawsuits, employee injuries, fire damage, and more.

Click the links below to get your insurance online, in just 3 mins. Our premiums are amongst the lowest nationwide.

Times are tough for F&B owners in Singapore. With dine-ins temporarily out of the question, F&B businesses need to rely on takeaways and online food orders. With the drop in sales, some establishments may even go out of business. Of course, if there’s any group of business owners that have got the guts and tenacity to withstand adversity, it’s F&B business owners. Here’s a list of 9 great strategies that you can use to improve your online delivery sales.

#1. Cultivate a strong social media following

The best food is pointless if you don’t run great marketing campaigns to advertise it. Use the following platforms to promote your business:

1. Facebook
2. Instagram
3. Twitter
4. Youtube

There are two ways to leverage social media platforms to grow your brand presence: i) paid advertisements, and ii) organic content.

Paid advertisements: These are simple to use. Create some slick advertisements, write some good copywriting, and then pay to boost your ads. I’ve found sites like Canva to be a lifesaver when creating ads. They have lots of pre-designed templates specifically for F&B businesses, so you can create beautiful looking advertisements with minimal skill, effort and time.

Organic content: Running an aesthetically pleasing Instagram feed is an excellent way to get people to know about your restaurant. Lots of people share posts that they find on Instagram. If you can make your dishes look beautiful and Instagram-worthy, then you can build a serious following on Instagram. Just ask yourself this: when was the last time you saw a delicious dish on Instagram, and thought about trying out the restaurant that posted that picture? This is an extremely cost-effective way to get more online orders. Building an organic following takes longer than running advertisements, but it costs a lot less, and in the long run will help you build a sustainable source of regular customers.

Here are some excellent examples of Instagram feeds by F&B businesses:

Burnt Ends (50.2K followers at date of publication)

Ryo Sushi’s Instagram (6.1K followers at date of publication)

Tiong Bahru Bakery’s Instagram (25.8K followers at date of publication)

As you can see from the images above, the owners of these F&B businesses put in great effort to ensure their social media feeds are aesthetically pleasing. Everything from the lighting, camera angles, to food presentation are well choreographed to produce maximum salivation in the viewer. It’s a good idea to invest effort into making your food Instagram-worthy, and also learning how to take such photos. You should also remember to post regularly. This sounds really basic, but so many F&B owners get caught up in the daily grind of running their business that they run out of steam to post on social media. They end up not building a very large following, which limits their ability to truly scale in the long-run. Your organic social media following is going to form an important part of your long-term customer acquisition strategy, so pay close attention to it!

#2. Engage food bloggers and micro-influencers to hype your food

Food bloggers are a great way to drum up publicity about your F&B business. Top bloggers like Seth Lui draw over 750,000 visitors every month. Of course, such prominent food bloggers charge high rates for a post. In 2015, it was reported that the cost of a Seth Lui sponsored post could go up to $10,000 (and that was in 2015!). If you don’t have such a high budget, you can look for food bloggers that are less prominent.

Another great option to consider is hiring micro-influencers on Instagram. These are influencers with fewer than 5,000 followers on social media. Micro-influencers have enough followers such that your business can get relatively good exposure, but because they don’t command a huge online presence, their rates are a lot more affordable. Typical rates for a micro-influencer with around 5,000 followers can range from $100 to $200 for one sponsored post. If you add up 10 micro-influencers, that means you can reach 50,000 people for only $1,000 to $2,000 – much cheaper than the cost of engaging a prominent food blogger.

#3. Have a great online ordering system on your website

When customers are casually browsing your F&B website, they may see a dish they like and want to place an order for it. Having your presence on food ordering apps like Grab is fine, but it’s an extra hurdle for the customer if they’re already on your site. Hungry customers want to give you their money to eat your food – why not make it super-easy and fuss-free for them?

If your website can accept and process online food orders, it’s very likely that you’ll see a higher volume of orders. Website orders open up another great sales channel for your business. Plus, you don’t have to pay commissions if customers order directly from you! Food app platforms charge a relatively hefty commission rate (20% or more) on each order, so having customers buy from your website directly will increase your margins quite significantly.

Broadening your sales channels and reducing sales friction is the core philosophy that the world’s greatest E-Commerce companies practice. For instance, Amazon pioneered their “One-Click” checkout system so that online shoppers wouldn’t have to go through the usual multi-step checkout process. They could just buy in, well, one click. It’s helpful to adopt this same philosophy of making sales as easy can be for customer. Allowing customers to easily click and order directly from you is a fantastic way to capture more sales from hungry diners browsing the web.

Implementing an online ordering system:

There are many tools that you can use to take online food orders. One of the most popular among F&B owners is Shopify. Shopify allows you to sell your food products on your website, and easily accept credit card payments. Credit card processing fees start from 3.2% + $0.50, which is in line with what most online payment processors charge. They offer a 14-day free trial so you can test drive the system before you feel like it’s worth investing money in.

Designing your online menu:

Having an online menu that is crisp, concise, easy to read, conveys all the necessary information, and comes with a clear CTA is exceptionally crucial. This online menu can be anywhere, be it on your restaurant website or the various restaurant delivery service providers. Since you know that most of your restaurant delivery orders come from these online channels, what stops you from optimizing your online menu? To know more, read how you can optimize your online restaurant menu to augment your online orders and your restaurant delivery. 

Delivering orders:

Once you’ve got your online ordering system set up, you’ll need to start thinking about the logistics of getting your food delivered. With so many large logistics companies around, this is pretty easy. You can use 3^rd-party services like Lalamove to pick up your orders, and send them to your customers. Your diners will have piping hot food at their doorsteps, and you’ll close another sale. This eliminates the hassle of hiring your own drivers, or even delivering food yourself.

#4. Put your F&B business up on major food delivery platforms

Most online food orders are made from apps like Grab. If you want to increase your online orders, you’ll need to let customers order from you within these apps. Make sure that you put your business up on the major food delivery platforms. The key ones that you should have a presence on are:

1. Grab
2. Deliveroo
3. Foodpanda
4. Chope

Pro Tip: If you’re selling online (and particularly if you’re selling on multiple platforms), you should integrate your online orders with your POS system. This will be important to keep track of all your orders. Try services like iChefPOS, or Eisol. The great thing about many of these integration services is that you can apply for government grants to subsidise up to 80% of the integration software costs!

#5. Incentivise repeat orders with an online loyalty programme

Loyalty programmes are a great way to incentivise existing customers to order from you again.

Here are some quick ideas for loyalty programmes:

1. A free meal item (e.g. side dish, main dish, drink, dessert, etc.) on every 3^rd order
2. 10% off birthday month orders for loyalty card members
3. A free meal upgrade on every 3^rd order
4. 10% off for orders above $50, 20% off for orders above $100
5. Free mug or tote bag on every 5^th order
6. 15% off for customers who make 5 orders within 1 month

It’s especially easy to implement a loyalty programme with online orders. You can easily track all the clients who’ve purchased from you before. You can use loyalty tracking software like Advocado. You can qualify for a PSG grant of up to 80% of the software cost with Advocado.

#6. Implement a Cloud Telephone System

Have you ever called in to a business expecting to speak with a customer representative immediately, only to hear the flat, disappointing beep of an “engaged” tone? When customers call your F&B business, they expect to have someone speak with them the first time they call. It’s really frustrating to have to call back multiple times, trying to elbow your way in because so many other people are calling at the same time. Not only are experiences like these bad for your brand image, it’s also likely to cause you to lose revenue. Customers that can’t get through to your phone won’t place their orders with you.

The solution to this is to sign up for a good Cloud Telephone system. When a client dials in, but the line is busy, the Cloud Telephone system automatically transfers the call to the next available person. Your main phone can be manned by your cashier, if you have one. If your cashier is busy, any calls can then be transferred to a phone held by another member of staff, or to your phone. This way, you can have multiple phone lines ready at a moment’s notice to take multiple calls. You also don’t need to shell out money to pay for 3-4 separate phone lines. It’s a simple, cost-effective, efficient way to manage phone orders.

Here’s a list of some popular Cloud Telephone providers in Singapore:

1. MyRepublic Cloud Telephone
2. Velox Cloud Telephone
3. Exotel Cloud Telephone

#7. Install a live chat function, and (potentially) hire chat agents

Customers may have questions before they place an order with you online. For instance, some customers may have queries regarding delivery times. Others may want to customise their order. Others may have certain dietary restrictions. Regardless of the actual query, some customers just need to speak with someone, and feel assured that their needs can be met before placing their order. To meet such needs, and reduce the stumbling blocks in the customer’s way before they order, you should have a live chat function on your website.

There are many live chat tools that you can use. One very popular tool is Tawk.to. This is a free live chat tool that allows customers to chat with you (or your employees). The great thing about Tawk.to is that it provides you the ability to hire “live chat agents” to speak with your clients. These are real people, and rates start from just $5/hour. All you need to do is brief these chat agents about your business, your menu, what you offer, etc., and they’ll be well-equipped to speak with your clients online. If you’re shorthanded but find yourself receiving lots of online enquiries, this is an affordable way to serve your customers quickly.

#8. No spills – pack your food securely

Nothing’s worse than an order that comes with the food spilled all over the packaging. Even if you thought you’d already pressed the lid on tightly, containers can come undone during bumpy delivery rides.

Make sure that you use good tupperware to deliver your food. Ensure that the edges are tightly sealed all around. Consider securing each container with some rubber bands, as an additional safety measure.

You can also consider moving away from plastic containers, and investing in paper packaging to be a little more environmentally friendly. Depending on the kind of F&B business you’re running, paper packaging can also be a useful marketing tool for you. You can highlight this as part of your F&B business’ marketing strategies to attract eco-conscious diners, who care about the kind of packaging that their preferred food establishments use. Forbes reported on a survey that showed 88% of consumers want to patronise brands that make a difference in society.

For instance, if you’re running a trendy café with a large customer base of millennials, using paper packaging can help your customers feel good about patronising your restaurant. In such cases, it certainly isn’t just an additional deadweight cost. It elevates the image of your brand above competitors who don’t take such environmentally-conscious steps, and makes your customers feel good about supporting you.

#9. Make sure that your food is delivered hot

It’s not a very good experience to receive cold food. In fact, it’s probably going to get you some bad reviews. You can forget about repeat orders. Unhappy customers may even badmouth your business to their family and friends. If you’re delivering cooked food, make sure that you insulate your food properly. If you’re serving hot drinks, make sure you use well-insulated takeaway cups. If you’re serving chilled desserts, make sure you include some cool gel packs to keep everything nice and cool.

#10. Email your existing customers to order online

If you have a database of existing customers, running an email campaign is a cheap and easy way to get more online purchases. Not all F&B owners will have email databases of their past diners, but for those who do, this is a great way to get the word out. Tell your clients about your fancy new website, how they can now order from you online, new dishes you’ve added, any promotions you’re running – really, anything under the sun to convince them to buy online from you.

If you don’t already have an email database of customers, now’s the time to start building one. It’s never too late to start building your own rolodex of clients. When clients order online, ensure that you collect at least their emails, as part of their personal contact info. This way, you’ll be be able to start building a relationship with them over time. You can send them messages on the latest promotions. If you know what dishes they like (e.g. from pas orders), you can send them discounts for those particular dishes to entice them to come back. If you collect information about their birthdays, you can also send them customised birthday offers. The possibilities are endless.

Emails are really a great way to keep your brand top-of-mind with customers, and to share news about your business with them. Try a service like MailChimp, which is one of the world’s the most well-known email marketing tools. It’s free to use, for up to 2,000 email contacts. Running well-planned email marketing campaigns at regular intervals is critical, given how saturated the F&B market is. You want to use every channel at your disposal to be front-and-centre in your customer’s mind.

Summary

Restrictions on dine-in have made it difficult to run F&B businesses. With the right marketing tactics, F&B businesses can improve their business prospects. Try these strategies out, and see if they help to increase your sales. While you’re busy trying to improve your revenue, don’t forget about protecting your business! You’ve invested lots of capital and time into starting your F&B business. It only makes sense to protect it against risks like food poisoning lawsuits, fires, worker injuries, and more. Provide offers the easiest and quickest way for F&B owners to protect their business.

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• Covers $250,000 food poisoning liability, and public liability
• Covers $100,000 property damage from fire, certain types of water damage, and more
• Covers $10,000 business interruption costs
• Top-up for Work Injury Compensation coverage, for employee injuries

Are you thinking about how to start your own restaurant in Singapore? Do you have dreams about running an amazing food business, or being hailed as a prodigy chef? Look no further – this all-in-one guide was written specifically to help you build your very own restaurant!

The 12 steps to becoming Singapore’s next Gordon Ramsay / David Chang:

1. Choosing a restaurant concept
2. Writing a business plan
3. Formulating a menu
4. Identify funding sources
5. Incorporating the company
6. Picking a location
7. Renovation
8. Purchasing equipment
9. Applying for necessary licenses
10. Hiring employees
11. Marketing and branding
12. Acquiring food poisoning and restaurant insurance

Step 1: Choose a restaurant concept

There are a multitude of restaurant concepts you could build. Should your restaurant be quick-service, casual dining, or a high-end place? Will you serve Chinese, Indian, Japanese, or other cuisines? Do you want to build your brand around specific food products, like steak or seafood? There are many moving parts here, and the concept you choose will play a central role in defining your value proposition to hungry customers.

Some examples of restaurant concepts you could build:

1. Casual Japanese-Italian, specialising in fusion pasta dishes
2. Quick-serve Mexican, serving a wide variety of tacos, burritos, and rice bowls
3. Quick-serve Korean, focusing exclusively on Jajangmyeon
4. Mid-tier American diner, serving burgers, barbeque, and shakes
5. High-end Western steakhouse, focusing on prime beef cuts

Step 2: Writing a business plan

Because there’s so much ahead of you, you’ll need a thorough business plan to keep you on track. Writing everything down makes executing your restaurant dreams easier, and helps you foresee any potential problems you might face. If you don’t write out a business plan, it’ likely that you’ll miss out crucial parts of execution (e.g. marketing, strategy, competition) that may very well jeopardise your entire business.

What should go into a good restaurant business plan? Some key items to include are:

• A precise vision of your restaurant concept,
• An overview of your target market,
• Your menu and price points,
• Inventory sourcing plans,
• Financial projections for the next 3-5 years,
• A go-to-market strategy,
• Research on your competitors,
• Competitive advantages
• Location planning,
• Renovation plans
• Employee hiring plans and incentive programmes,
• Training plans for food and beverage preparation,
• Business continuity plans,
• Expansion opportunities, and
• Business risks.

It might look like a long list, but remember: the more you plan at this stage, the less pain you’ll have as you move ahead. If you need further help writing a business plan, read this seminal article from Harvard Business School.

Step 3: Formulating the menu

By now, you should have at least a rough idea of what kind of cuisine you’d like to serve. It’s time to take those rough thoughts you have and really shape them into precise food items that customers will love.

For example, let’s say you want to start a casual Japanese Tonkatsu restaurant. You’ll have pork katsu as your main dish. Will you serve other types of katsu, like prawn katsu? What about side dishes, like gyoza, or krokke (croquettes)?

A crucial point when formulating your menu is thinking about competitive differentiation. You’ll need to understand what other Tonkatsu restaurants are generally serving. How will your Tonkatsu restaurant be any different? In Nagoya, Japan, there is a special local twist to Tonkatsu. Nagoya is famous for “Red Miso Tonkatsu”. It’s traditional Tonkatsu served with a deeply rich, thick, sweet-salty Miso sauce that’s packed with innumerable layers of salivating umami flavour. A quick Google search for “Red Miso Tonkatsu in Singapore” doesn’t bring up too many results. You’ll find only 2 or so notable results. One is for Ma Maison, a group of Japanese restaurants that’s been around for a long time, and the other for Hajime Tonkatsu, a restaurant in Serangoon Gardens. If you’ve been to Nagoya and tried their Red Miso, you’ll know that this sauce is absolutely heavenly. Perhaps this might be a good point of differentiation for your restaurant? It’s not easy to make an amazing Red Miso sauce.

You should also consider the general quality of your food. The Tonkatsu you fry might be delicious, but are they really that much better than other Tonkatsu served across Singapore? Is it good enough to attract someone from the other end of the island to patronise your restaurant? Think about the true quality of your food.

You’ll also want to think about your beverages. Canned drinks are standard. What about fresh juices? Will you serve alcohol? If yes, what kinds? A Japanese Tonkatsu restaurant would be remiss without a nice selection of Japanese beer. Again, this might be another area for differentiation. Many Tonkatsu restaurants serve the same old rotation of beers – Tiger, Heineken, Sapporo, Asahi, etc. Are there certain Japanese craft beers that you could incorporate to differentiate your beverage selection? A delicious, small-batch Japanese beer might go down very well with hot and crispy Tonkatsu.

The quality of your product will be instrumental in building your brand and revenue. So take as much time as you need at this stage to really refine your menu, and ensure that you can execute your food preparation perfectly.

Step 4: Identify funding sources

Starting a restaurant in Singapore is expensive. Ingredients are pricey, labour is costly, and rents are very high. You’ll need to make sure that you have access to sufficient capital to not just launch your business, but also to tide you through at least 2 years of operations. You need sufficient financial runway so that your restaurant has time to prove itself.

Banks are highly unlikely to lend you any capital to start a new business. There’s no business credit history, and it’s usually too risky for their credit portfolio. Venture capitalists also don’t fund restaurants, since the risk-adjusted returns are too low compared to high-growth technology startups. As such, you’ll have to source funds from other avenues to start your dream restaurant.

Some funding sources you can consider include:

Your bank account:

Hopefully, you’ve saved up enough to fund at least a portion of your startup capital costs. Consider all assets that you have – your checking account, savings accounts, and any stock investments you may hold.

Friends and family:

Here’s where you’ll find out who your truest friends are. Have discussions with good friends and close family members. Share your entrepreneurial dreams with them. When you’re discussing your plans with them, make sure that the central question of “Why should I invest” isn’t structured along some self-centred approach of “because you’re my uncle” or “because we’ve known each other for 10 years”. Put your personal ties aside. You’ve got to show your friends and family that you are uniquely positioned to build Katong’s next great Laksa restaurant, or Orchard’s best Korean BBQ place, and that they’re likely to earn a great return by investing with you. Oh, did I mention that this is one reason why a thorough business plan is so important? You’ll make much more convincing presentations if you have a solid plan. This way, you can really dig into the details, easily address whatever concerns they may have, and confidently show them that you’ve really thought the entire idea through.

Business partners:

Because the cost of starting a restaurant in Singapore is so high, it’s best to found your restaurant with a few business partners. You can each pool your money into the business, and also tap each person’s network for additional funding. This reduces the stress on each individual co-founder. Also, business partners will be essential for bouncing ideas off, and navigating the myriad challenges that come with starting and scaling a business. Solving problems and growing a business are just exponentially easier when you have a partner (or partners) running alongside you.

Step 5: Incorporating the company

Don’t make the mistake of running a restaurant without a registered corporate entity. If you don’t have a registered company, your Food License (more on that in step 9) will not allow you to hire foreign workers. If you can’t hire even a single foreign worker for a restaurant, please kindly be prepared for a world of pain.

There’s various entities that you can choose from (e.g. Sole Proprietor, Private Limited), but generally it’s a good idea to register your company as a Private Limited. Registering a Private Limited entity will shield you against personal liability for major risks, like food poisoning. A Sole Proprietorship doesn’t provide you with the same liability shield, so it might not be the best idea.

Incorporating a Private Limited is straightforward, and doesn’t take much time at all. It’s also affordable – many corporate secretaries have packages that hover around only $300 to set up a company. Ensuring you operate a corporate entity will also make it much easier to handle routine business tasks like hiring workers and paying taxes.

You can use online corporate secretaries to easily incorporate a company. Read our guide on Singapore’s best online corporate secretaries to pick one for yourself.

Step 6: Picking a location

You’ll need to scout for a great location for your restaurant. Here are the best methods to find a space that’s available to rent:

1. Online real estate portals like propertyguru.com.sg
2. Engaging real estate agents to do the legwork for you
3. Straits Times Classified Section

Real estate portals like PropertyGuru will give you a quick idea of how much the going rates are for certain areas and specific property sizes. When engaging real estate agents, it’s helpful to already have an idea of which areas of Singapore you’d like to locate yourself in, the approximate property size you’re seeking, your restaurant concept, and your budget. A good real estate agent will be able to sniff out good commercial spaces that fit your fledgling restaurant’s needs. In order to expedite the process and ensure that you have a ready list of potential sites to review, you can consider engaging multiple real estate agents to assist you.

When thinking about your location, you want to strike a balance between affordability and visibility to foot traffic. If you can build a good brand (say, through social media marketing), then you may not need to splurge on an expensive ground-floor unit that has high visibility to passersby. You could instead opt for a unit that’s more tucked away, and rely on your online marketing and word of mouth to draw customers to you instead.

Here are some additional important points you should consider when picking a restaurant location:

Potential sales:

Look at your financial projections. Are your expected sales able to support the rent a property is asking for? Make sure that your projections are conservative. In case you don’t meet your sales targets, a location with lower rent provides you with a larger margin of safety.

Traffic density:

Is your chosen location in a high-traffic area? Is it inside a mall, or close to one? What about proximity to public transportation hubs, like MRT stations? Hang around outside the location – how many people do you see walking by on average? How many customers do you see patronising neighbouring businesses?

Site history:

Do some research on previous tenants. Who were the previous tenants, and why did they move out? Was it because the location itself was poor?

Onerous lease terms:

Make sure that you aren’t signing up for lease terms that are particularly onerous. You can engage a lawyer to help you review whether particular terms place an undue legal burden on you.

Future development:

Is the area slated for future development, like new MRT stations, or new shopping malls? Is it part of a broader development of a particular region, like the Punggol Digital District, that may bring in large waves of new potential customers?

When you’ve identified your chosen location, don’t sign the lease straightaway. This is because further regulatory approvals are still required before you can launch your restaurant. What you can do in the meantime is to sign a “Letter of Intent” with your prospective landlord. This will allow you to reserve your chosen location while you clear the various regulatory requirements.

Do note that if your chosen location was not used as a restaurant before, then you’ll need to apply for planning permission from URA to convert the space into a restaurant. It costs $535 (true as of publication) to submit an application, and generally takes about 10 working days to be processed. It’s vital that you do this before you sign any lease agreements. If you don’t get permission from URA, you can’t use the space as a restaurant!

Once you’ve picked a location, it’s time to transform it into the restaurant you’ve always dreamed of.

Step 7: Renovation

When you’re planning your renovation, it’s a good idea to engage an interior designer that’s experienced in planning restaurant projects. A designer that has handled many such projects before will be able to help you maximise every square footage of your restaurant space, which in turn will maximise revenue.

In terms of layout, restaurants usually will allocate about 1/3 of their total square footage to the kitchen. Some extra space may be allocated to storage, and potentially a small office area. The remaining 2/3 goes to the dining room.

Also, some restaurant industry reports note the following customer group sizes:

Groups of 2: 40-50%

Groups of 3: 30%

Groups of 4 or more: 20%

With the above data in mind, it’s best to have tables that can fit 2-3 people. This allows you to optimise seating efficiency. Small tables can seat small groups, and can be pushed together to fit larger groups. Bigger tables can go to waste if you don’t often have larger groups coming in. These figures may change depending on your restaurant concept.

A good designer will also help you design an efficient production area. Often, many production areas are poorly laid out, which causes slower food delivery times, poorer service, and generally more time wasted reaching for or finding things. Make sure that there’s adequate space for food preparation, cooking, baking (if needed), dishwashing, equipment storage, food storage, trash storage, and receiving/delivering food. Make sure the production area is planned in a way that all the key equipment or ingredient areas are within close reach of one another. Your cooking area needs to have enough space for multiple cooks to work side by side.

Also, don’t skimp on your renovation costs. You might be tempted to opt for that contractor that gave you the cheapest quote – so cheap it left you wondering if it really is too good to be true. When you’re faced with sky-high start-up costs, any savings will seem like a gift sent straight from heaven. Don’t do it. Cheap prices mean cheap designs, cheap materials, and cheap workmanship. Poor designs affect your customer experience, and will influence your ability to attract new and repeat business. Low quality materials and workmanship mean your furnishings won’t last you very long, and new work will need to be ordered again.

In the long run, you’re much better off investing your money with a reputable interior design firm, along with a good contractor. High quality renovations will last you a much longer time than shabby work that you have to re-do in a couple years. It pays to play the long game here.

Also, sometimes restaurant owners forget this, but having a beautifully decorated restaurant is a really powerful marketing tool. You can use your restaurant interiors to create beautiful Instagram and Facebook posts. You’ll also wow customers, and these impressed diners will be more likely to talk about “that gorgeous restaurant” they visited, spreading word-of-mouth about your business.

Step 8: Purchasing equipment

Buying all the equipment will be one of your biggest start-up expenses, after renovations. For a 1,000 sq ft. restaurant with about 40-50 seats, you can expect to spend at least $50,000 just on the equipment alone.

Here’s a list of equipment you’ll need for a restaurant:

1. Stove range with exhaust system
2. Ovens
3. Chillers/Freezers
4. Dishwasher (optional)
5. Pots and pans
6. Knives and knife sharpeners
7. Miscellaneous cooking tools
8. Plates, bowls, and cutlery
9. Refrigerated display cases (optional)
10. Furniture like chairs and tables

When purchasing equipment, sometimes restaurant owners will debate between buying from a local supplier, or whether they should buy direct from platforms like Alibaba.

Step 9: Obtaining required licenses, permits, and certificates

The most important license you need is the Food Shop License. This license is issued by the Singapore Food Authority (SFA). The application will cost you $195 (true as of publication). It may take 18 working days, (almost 1 calendar month) or more to complete the entire process. Click here to apply.

If you are taking over a premises that was previously used as an F&B space, then you should inform the previous tenant to cancel their Food Shop License. This is because you can only be issued a Food Shop License after the previous tenant has had theirs cancelled. So it’s best to get in touch with them to hurry things along.

What’s the overall process like when applying for a Food Shop License? Here’s an overview:

1. Submit an online application via GoBusiness (note: you’ll need your CorpPass)
2. Book an SFA inspection. You’ll need to schedule this at least 7 days in advance.
3. Pay for the license after approval

To ensure a smooth inspection process, make sure that your premises complies with the requirements listed by SFA. Click here to view the full checklist.

There are a few key things to note about renting restaurant spaces:

Fire Certificate:

You should ask for a copy of the landlord’s Fire Certificate. A Fire Certificate is issued by the SCDF to property owners, certifying that the property meets basic fire safety standards. If the location you chose was not used as a restaurant previously, there may not be a Fire Certificate. In this case, you should ask the landlord to provide the Fire Certificate to you at their own cost. If the landlord refuses to do so, make sure to factor in the cost of obtaining this Fire Certificate when discussing your rent with the landlord.

The SCDF requires restaurant owners to clean key equipment like your exhaust ducts and kitchen hoods yearly. You must engage a professional cleaning firm to do this. Such cleanings must be done at least once a year.

Your Fire Certificates must be renewed annually, and can only be renewed after you complete a successful SCDF inspection. So make sure to keep your restaurant clean, tidy, and safe!

Food hygiene certificates:

All food handlers must possess a valid Food Hygiene Certificate, and be registered with the SFA (Singapore Food Association). A food handler is anyone who prepares food and beverages. This means chefs, cooks, and kitchen assistants. Waiters are generally not considered food handlers, unless they are also involved in preparing and cooking the food. Food handlers can earn a Food Hygiene Certificate by attending an NEA-accredited course, like this one run by the SFA.

Course fees: $160.50, incl. GST (these fees are before subsidies)

Course duration: 1 day (7.5 hours)

Course fee subsidies:

Food handlers are required to attend a refresher course 5 years after they first attained their Food Hygiene Certificate. Thereafter, food handlers will need to attend a refresher course once every 10 years.

Liquor licenses:

If you want to serve any alcohol, you must have a liquor license. These are issued by the Singapore Police Force. To apply for a license, simply use GoBusiness’ online portal.

The cost of a liquor license ranges from $110/year to $880/year (accurate at publication). Licenses must be renewed yearly.

Liquor is a fantastic way to earn lots of extra profit, since the margins are much higher on alcohol than food.

Here’s an overview of the various liquor licenses:

Selling liquor without holding a valid license is a criminal offence. Penalties include:

• Fine up to $20,000, and/or
• Jail up to 3 months

Halal licenses:

If you want to serve Halal food, you must make an application to MUIS. Application fees range from $775 for restaurants which are under 186 sqm (2000 square feet), up to $1,140 for restaurants which are over 186 sqm. Prices exclude GST.

As part of the application, you have to submit your restaurant’s floor plan to MUIS. This floor plan should clearly state the production areas, storage areas for inventory and cooking/dining equipment, and dishwashing areas. These areas can only be used for Halal items. If any Haram items touch these areas, you must inform MUIS, and a ritual cleansing will be ordered.

You must ensure that all inventory used are halal-certified. These inventory items must be declared to MUIS via their online portal.

You must hire at least two Muslim staff members, and they must each have Halal training certificates. At least one of these Muslim employees must be a supervisor. Also, employees are subject to MUIS’ approval.

Do note that MUIS may order laboratory tests to be carried out on your food. MUIS can also order religious cleansing procedures to be performed if they deem it necessary. The cost of these tests and procedures must be borne by you.

GST-registration:

Eventually, when your restaurant starts gaining traction and generates more than $1 million in revenue, you’ll need to become GST-registered. Here’s another guide on GST-registration for when you get there.

Step 10: Hiring employees

With all the effort that you’ve put into developing your menu, you’ll now need great kitchen staff to produce it on a consistent basis, along with friendly waiters to deliver great service. Start by looking at the capacity of your restaurant? Is it 25 covers? 100 covers? Are you open all day, or only for dinner? Look at how many covers you plan to turn over each day, and then plan your hiring needs accordingly.

In labour-starved Singapore, hiring for a Food and Beverage business is definitely a challenge. You need to bring in talented staff with good compensation packages, but you also can’t afford to pay too much, since margins are thin in this industry. Labour costs will form a significant portion of your ongoing expenses. Typically, you can expect to spend around 33% of your total revenue on labour.

First off, do some research on what the average compensation is for each position that you plan to hire. Do this for your head chef, your line cook, your dishwasher, your manager, your server, and whoever else you’re going to bring on board. Then, set a minimum, and maximum salary that you’ll pay. You can invest more resources into positions that you think are key (e.g. the head chef and manager), and then perhaps pay average wages for the rest of your employees.

Here’s a quick overview on the 3 main positions you’ll hire:

Manager:

This is the most important person, next to your head chef. Your manager will ensure the smooth running of your restaurant, make sure that your staff are all pulling their weight, and that all customers leave your establishment happy and full. Managers should receive a portion of profits or shares in the business to keep them motivated.

Chefs and cooks:

Bring them in for cooking interviews. Have them cook your menu. Does their food taste amazing? Have a look at their past culinary experience. Where did they work? Call up their previous employer and see if they were a great or middling employee.

Waiters:

Service is such a crucial part of the dining experience. A visit to a restaurant can be easily ruined by poor service, even if the food is top-notch. Have you ever been to a great restaurant, only to be disappointed by tardy or rude service? It didn’t really matter that the food was good, right? Chances are you wouldn’t go back to that restaurant – I know I wouldn’t.

Make sure to thoroughly screen your waiters for their service standards. How friendly are they with customers? Do they smile often? Are they confident? Can they easily explain your? How passionate are they about service, ultimately? Some people are built for the service line, and others just won’t make it no matter the amount of training.

Insider tips:

An F&B insider tip on hiring is not to rely too much on online job portals, like LinkedIn. Rather, consider recruiting people from other F&B establishments. That’s the most solid way to know that you have someone with firm experience. You can experience the service standards of waiters you want to recruit, and see (or rather, taste) the quality of chefs you want to hire. For restaurant staff, the proof really is in the pudding. It’s best to get out there to rope passionate people in.

Hygiene training:

Make sure you drill your staff on maintaining proper hygiene practices. A “simple” mistake like taking a knife used for raw food to cut cooked food could at best give someone bad diarrhea, or at worst kill them. Cross-contamination is a huge issue in restaurants, because it’s so easy to forget about. Have two separate sets of equipment for cooked food, versus raw food.

Enforce daily thorough wipe downs and cleaning. Do regular spring cleanings, especially in areas where inventory is stored. Label all produce with purchase dates. If you pre-cook anything, label it with a date of manufacture. You need to have a rigorous system like this, because otherwise you’ll forget and expired food might end up in someone’s food, with vomitous consequences. Don’t turn your restaurant into a Kitchen Nightmares episode.

You’ve sunk lots of money into this journey, so the last thing you need is having to shut your doors because you/your staff made someone terribly sick.

Step 11: Marketing and branding

Lots of marketing for restaurants can be done either freely, or without significant marketing expenses. Leverage social media channels like Facebook or Instagram. Take regular photographs of your food. Shoot videos of your food being cooked in the kitchen, so potential customers can see how your food is being prepared. If you use unique ingredients, tell customers about it. Shoot videos of your staff – have them tell stories of why they’re working with you, what their job means to them, to humanise the business in your customers’ eyes. If you’re diligent with your social media marketing, you can grow your awareness without having to spend too much on ads.

Ultimately, a successful restaurant won’t be built by acquiring customers through paid ads. Instead, word of mouth will be your best growth channel. Growth through word-of-mouth is exponential, when compounded over time. Ensure that every customer that walks through your doors is treated like a king or queen. If you can do this consistently, you’ll have a very good chance of building a restaurant empire.

It’s important that you don’t fall into the trap of thinking that “if I build it, they will come”. A common mistake that new entrepreneurs make, with often fatal consequences. If you have a great product, good for you. You’ve won half the battle of running and scaling a restaurant. To win the other half, you’ll need to get as many people as you can to recognise you even exist.

Strong investments into marketing and branding are vital to succeed in an industry as ridiculously crowded as F&B.

Loyalty cards:

Give your customers loyalty cards to encourage them to visit you again. For example, you could design a loyalty rewards programme that gives customers a 1-for-1 main course offer on every 5^th visit. Repeat business is the lifeblood of any business, and loyalty cards are a fantastic way to reward your best customers.

Gift certificates:

Giving customers gift cards is an affordable and really easy method to attract more customers. 20% off Monday night dinners. Free side dishes at Wednesday lunches. Get creative with your promotions. A good way to quickly get exposure is to reach out to event organisers, and have them use your gift certificates as prizes in lucky draws or competitions. You can do this for public events, corporate events, personal events, and more. You can also donate these gift certificates to charities. Non-profit organisations will often organise raffles or lucky draws to raise money.

Influencer marketing:

It’s a good idea to invite influencers to come try your food. Influencers with smaller followings may be willing to post reviews of your food on their social media accounts or blogs for nothing more than a free meal. Influencers with bigger followings will often ask for a fee, unless they’re doing it as part of their routine food hunts. If you can generate a buzz around your restaurant early on, chances are you might be able to lure some bigger influencers in without having to pay them for a sponsored post. Seth Lui, who runs Singapore’s most visited food website, has been reported to charge between $1,000 to $10,000 for a single post (and that was back in 2015!).

An interesting strategy here may be to leverage “micro-influencers” and “nano-influencers”. “Micro-influencers” are people with 10,000 to 50,000 followers, who are known for their posts/experience in a particular vertical. (This 10,000 to 50,000 figure is a global statistic; for smaller markets like Singapore, perhaps under 10,000 might be a more appropriate figure). For F&B, you may wish to target micro-influencers who are home cooks or culinary enthusiasts.

They key thing is that micro-influencers are cheaper to hire, and their followers tend to have higher levels of engagement with their posts. This allows you to not only spend less money, but also to get a potentially higher return on dollars that you spend on influencer marketing. You can do the same with “nano-influencers”, who are people with 3,000 to 5,000 followers. Nano-influencers may be much more willing to simply visit your restaurant for a free meal, without a sponsored post fee.

Think about the math for a second: if you can get 10 or 20 of these people to visit your restaurant and post reviews, your posts will reach a combined audience of anywhere between 30,000 to over 100,000 people. You can still generate a significant amount of buzz this way, without having to shell out the huge sums of money that more famous influencers would charge.

Step 12: Acquiring Food Poisoning and Restaurant Insurance

Congratulations for making it this far! If you’ve completed steps 1 to 12, you’ve probably invested close to a year (or more), and several hundred thousand dollars into realising your dreams. Grab a beer and give yourself a high-five – you’re almost at the finish line.

Before you open your doors to customers, it’s really important that you protect yourself against major F&B business risks. One of the worst risks that restaurants face is food poisoning liability.

Another major risk is worker injuries. Under Singapore law, you must compensate all workers for work-related injuries/sickness. For instance, if your chef cuts himself while preparing a dinner service, you’ll have to compensate him. If you don’t have Work Injury Compensation Insurance, this compensation is going to come out of your pocket. Work Injury Compensation Insurance is legally required for all manual workers. In the context of restaurants, occupations where Work Injury Compensation Insurance is mandatory include:

• Chefs/Cooks
• Kitchen Assistants
• Waiters
• Dishwashers
• Cleaners
• Delivery staff

A restaurant insurance package will combine all the essential covers that you need into a single policy. This provides comprehensive, affordable, and easy-to-manage coverage. Provide’s restaurant insurance package covers:

• Commercial property (covers major risks like fire, water damage, inventory/stocks damage, etc.)
• Public liability, including food poisoning
• Business interruption (covers operational costs like rent if your business shuts down unexpectedly)
• Money loss/theft
• Worker injuries

Restaurant startup resources:

Here’s a further list of resources that you may find useful as you work towards starting your restaurant in Singapore:

Restaurant Association of Singapore: When you start your own restaurant, joining our local Restaurant Association may be a useful idea. You can network with fellow restaurant owners, and receive some discounts on certain industry events.

Beverage Trader Network Singapore: Comprehensive list of wine/liquor distributors in Singapore. Emails, phone numbers, websites, and addresses are all conveniently provided for in one page. Simply look through this list, pick a company you like, and contact them to get some quotes for liquor that you can serve. Consider shopping around for a few quotes so you can get the best deal.

Menu Maker from Canva: Use this tool to create beautiful menus. No need to pay a designer to do it when you can make one yourself.

Restaurant Business Plan: Use this to quickly put together the structure of a business plan. This can help you organise your thoughts more coherently, save time, and might also bring up points that you might not have previously thought of.

Restaurant Startup and Growth Magazine: A regularly updated online magazine that’s dedicated to restaurant owners. You’ll find lots of education material on how to grow your restaurant business.

Virtual offices a great way to give your company an official-sounding address, without having to actually rent an office. If you’re registering a company with ACRA, a virtual office is a great way to avoid having to expose your own residential address to the public. These offices are also great for receiving physical items like business mail/parcels, which can be forwarded to you anywhere in the world. With most people working from home, having a virtual office is a great way to maintain a professional corporate image, whilst saving on expensive commercial rentals that eat into your margins. Also, if you’re an entrepreneur who’s located overseas but running a Singapore-based company, a local virtual office is a must. We’ve compiled this list of the cheapest virtual offices in Singapore for entrepreneurs who need a corporate address on a tight budget.

Contents:

1. Summaries
2. EZCorp
3. OnlyVirtualOffice
4. VirtualCorp
5. VOffice
6. Rovva
7. Protecting your business

Summaries:

The absolute cheapest virtual office: EZCorp. From $52.80/year ($4.40/month, 12-month contract).

Out of the 5 options listed here, EZCorp is the cheapest virtual office. The next 2 closest competitors are OnlyVirtualOffice ($58/year), and VirtualCorp ($90/year).

It’s interesting to compare EZCorp with VirtualCorp, because for about $40 more each year, you do get some useful benefits like free web hosting (for the 1^st year), and weekly cheque deposits to specific banks, which can be a nice convenience.

If you extend your contract to 3 years, however, VirtualCorp’s rate drops to $59.98/year, which is almost similar to EZCorp’s pricing ($52.80/year). If you’re confident that you’re going to need a virtual office for 3 years, then this locked-in plan may be worth considering. Do consider speaking to other business owners who’ve used VirtualCorp’s services first before you sign up for 3 years though.

If you don’t need any additional benefits, and are focused solely on price, then it’s worth looking into EZCorp.

For entrepreneurs based overseas, but whose companies are registered in Singapore: Most of the virtual offices here only include local mail forwarding in their packages. VOffice’s VIP Package includes forwarding letters to overseas addresses for an additional $100/year (there may be a limit on the number of mails they will forward, and top-ups may be required past a certain volume). EZCorp will do overseas letter forwarding for $5/letter, plus courier charges. The other providers in this list did not publicly state their overseas mail forwarding rates, so do contact your chosen virtual office for a custom quote.

An easier alternative would be simply to have your letters scanned and emailed to you. Most of the virtual offices in this list offer this service. However, the only virtual office provider that has publicly stated their mail scanning prices is EZCorp, which charges $180/year for such a service. Consider reaching out to the other providers in this list to see if you can get a better rate.

If you expect to receive parcels and need them forwarded, speak with your virtual office provider for a quote. Do note that not all virtual offices will accept parcels – some will charge a fee per parcel received, while others have a policy to outright reject them. Read the fine print before you sign up!

#1. EZCorp

Website: https://ezcorp.sg/registered-office/

Virtual office address: 2 Venture Drive #14-02 Vision Exchange Singapore 608526

Overview:

EZCorp is the cheapest virtual office provider, out of the 5 virtual offices listed here. Their services are the most basic out of all the offices in this list, but if you’re looking for the absolute lowest rate, EZCorp has it.

#2. OnlyVirtualOffice

Website: https://onlyvirtualoffice.com/

Email: [email protected]

Phone: +65 6974 2695

Virtual office address: 1 Tampines North Drive 1, T-Space, Singapore 528559

Overview:

OnlyVirtualOffice is the 2nd cheapest virtual office provider here. You won’t get any prestigious office addresses when you sign up with them – your office will be at Tampines. Then again, if you’re looking for the cheapest option, you’re probably not concerned about getting a swanky address.

It’s straightforward to sign up for an office address with OnlyVirtualOffice. Here are the steps:

1. Visit their website, and select 1 out of 3 virtual office plans
2. Provide basic details like company name and UEN
3. Make payment online
4. Receive email confirmation
5. Update ACRA with your new address
6. Update OnlyVirtualOffice on your revised ACRA records

OnlyVirtualOffice does offer users of its highest tier (the Business Plan) 8 hours of meeting room usage a year, which is definitely on the low side. You also have to book it at least 3 days in advance by emailing them. The meeting room is compact and fits 5 people. A projector is available on request.

If you have a small team, and don’t need an office environment to entertain clients or business partners, then OnlyVirtualOffice’s bare bones approach could be well-suited for you. You can always host meetings in cafes or other public spots.

#3. VOffice

Website: virtualofficeservices.com.sg

Email: [email protected]

Phone: +65 6460 0199

Virtual office address: 22 Sin Ming Lane #06-76 Midview City Singapore 573969

Overview:

VOffice is the 3rd cheapest virtual office in this list, starting at $57/year (4.75/month, 12-month contract). They differentiate themselves from other virtual offices by offering you free meeting and office room usage with their mid and highest-tier plans. You do have to book these rooms at least 3 days in advance by emailing them. The meeting room fits 6 people. If you need to meet clients in an office (and not some public space like a café), and only for exceptionally rare occasions, this may be a benefit that you find useful.

You can sign up with VOffice online.

#4. VirtualCorp

Website: virtualofficeservices.com.sg

Email: [email protected]

Phone: +65 6735 5181

Virtual office address: 50 Chin Swee Road #09-04, Thong Chai Building. Singapore 169874

Overview:

VirtualCorp’s generally provides more benefits compared to the other virtual offices in this list. The free weekly cheque deposit (to the specified banks) is a nice convenience if your clients still pay by cheque. 1 year of free web hosting is also a nice perk to have. It’s good to know that these benefits are included even with their most basic plan.

As move up to their Biz-Pro and Enterprise plans, we see some more useful benefits. Unlimited local mail forwarding is nice (some of the other virtual offices here limit the volume of mail they will forward, and charge for any excess amounts). You also get free incorporation and a named corporate secretary. The highest tier even includes handling your required annual tax returns. This looks to be a comprehensive, all-in-one service that could certainly save you time and effort when starting your company.

VirtualCorp also offers 6-month contracts, which is shorter than the typical 1-year contract that other offices will typically impose on clients.

#5. Rovva

Website: https://www.rovva.com/

Virtual office address: Choose from approx. 25 different locations across Singapore

Key office locations:

• Multiple locations in CBD:
  • Marina Bay Financial Centre
  • 1 Raffles Place
  • Asia Square Tower
  • 1 Fullerton
  • Guoco Tower
• Multiple locations in Downtown Core:
  • 18 Capitol Singapore (directly opposite City Hall MRT)
  • Spaces Clarke Quay
  • Duo Tower (Bugis)
• Multiple locations in Orchard Road:
  • TripleOne Somerset
  • Wisma Atria
• Locations in the East:
  • Paya Lebar Quarter
  • Spaces Joo Chiat (in Katong)
  • Tampines Junction
  • Changi Business Park
• Locations in the West:
  • Vision Exchange (Jurong, near IMM)
  • Fusionopolis (near One-North MRT)

As you can tell, Rovva has a massive roster of some of the most central locations in Singapore. You can choose from the most premium corporate addresses that Singapore has to offer, all from one virtual office provider.

Some pictures of Rovva’s well-appointed offices:

All pictures sourced from Rovva.

Overview:

Rovva is a global virtual office provider. The sheer size of the company is reflected in the number of virtual office addresses they have here – approximately 25, with the majority of them located right smack in the middle of Singapore’s most exclusive business districts.

You can choose virtual offices in super-prime locations like Marina Bay Financial Centre, Raffles Place, Orchard Road, and Tanjong Pagar. Rovva even has a virtual office at Fullerton, right in front of the Singapore river! If you prefer somewhere closer to residential suburbs, Rovva also has offices at Katong, Tampines, Paya Lebar, Jurong, and Changi. These locations are also cheaper than their CBD locations. If you live near to these areas, non-CBD offices may be a more convenient and wallet-friendly option for you.

Rovva costs the most out of the virtual offices in this list. However, given their selection of prime locations, and some pretty useful perks like frequent office facility access, Rovva isn’t all that expensive – especially if you consider the cost of alternatives, like renting a shared workspace (e.g. WeWork). For instance, Rovva’s “Virtual Office Mobile” plan starts at $178/month, which comes with 2 hours of community meeting room access each day, along with unlimited business lounge access. If you’re an entrepreneur who works from home, but still needs to hold regular in-person business meetings,  then Rovva would be a good option to consider. You can skip noisy cafes and go straight into hosting your business meetings in a polished environment, located at some of Singapore’s best addresses. From their website, Rovva’s offices (particularly their CBD options) seem very well-appointed.

Rovva also has the unique distinction of having the shortest minimum contract period – 1 month. Most providers will enforce a 12-month minimum. They also have live receptionists that are included in their higher tier plans, which other budget options don’t provide for.

Protecting your company:

After you’ve signed up for an affordable virtual office, make sure that you protect your business. We offer the most affordable and comprehensive business insurance plans in Singapore. Click the links below to get insured online, in just 3 mins!

• Commercial Property Insurance from $9/month
• Public Liability Insurance from $9/month
• Work Injury Insurance from $5/month
• Business Lawsuit Insurance (Professional Indemnity Insurance) from $42/month

Barbershops have exploded in popularity in Singapore. Just like with starting a cosy café, there’s a certain romance about running an old-school barbershop. From the plush leather barbering seats with their glittering chrome bases, to the slick razor-faded haircuts from the 50s and 60s, delivered with the intangible atmosphere of a bygone era – it’s all quite alluring for would-be entrepreneurs.

But before you plunge your hard-earned savings into setting up your own barbering business, it’s important to know what you need to set up a barbershop, and how it’ll affect you financially. Here’s the ultimate guide on how much it will cost to start a barbershop in Singapore!

Rental Costs

The largest chunk of your start-up costs is likely to go towards rental. Rents will differ significantly depending on where you locate your barbershop. You could go for a super-central location within the CBD, which gives you daily access to a large pool of working professionals and general shopping crowds. You could also opt for a location not quite within the CBD, but still within the broader Central Area  – hip areas like Bugis come to mind. Or, you could venture out into heartland suburbs, where foot traffic is still healthy, but rents are lower. The location you choose will have a large impact on your costs, revenue from foot traffic, and potentially your brand image. Weigh the trade-offs between these different factors carefully.

CBD/City Centre Locations

Leasing a space in ultra-prime locations like City Hall, Raffles Place, or Telok Ayer will cost between $10 to $20 per square foot. So, for an average 500 square feet barbershop, expect to pay $5,000 to $10,000 in rent each month. A quick Google search will reveal that many barbers choose to locate their shops in these prime central districts. In the pre-Covid-19 era, such locations offered barbers easy access to the working crowd.

Even though Singapore has largely reopened business activity, many office employees are still working from home for a fair portion of the week. They will likely continue to be doing so for the foreseeable future. In such an environment, it’s probably a good idea for new barbershops to think about basing themselves in residential districts. Areas like Tampines, Sengkang, Toa Payoh, Jurong, etc. are all well-populated estates that new barbers can tap into. Rents are more affordable in these areas, and you can still build a loyal following through hip branding, investments into social media marketing, and good service.

Heartland Suburbs

With rents stretching to such astronomical amounts in the city centre, some barbers have chosen to ditch “hip” addresses, and taken themselves out into the suburbs instead. For instance, old-school barber Acidic Chop Shop is based in Jurong West, while The Panic Room is based in Geylang. Although the rent in these neighbourhoods are lower, they’re still not always cheap by any means.

For heartland areas, barbers can expect to pay between $5 to $9 per square foot. For a typical 1,000 square foot barbershop, this works out to a monthly rent of around $2,500 to $4,500.

Residential districts are a worthwhile consideration, since transportation infrastructure in Singapore is highly-developed. It’s not particularly difficult to travel to one’s favourite barbershop once or twice a month. People will return as long as the service is top-notch and value-for-money. Businesses like The Panic Room have managed to capitalise on this by basing themselves outside of the city centre, and successfully building a large following that is happy to travel to their store. Aspiring barbers who don’t have access to lots of capital, or don’t wish to be saddled with a highly monthly rent, should consider this option.

Upfront Rental Deposits

When you sign the lease, your landlord will typically ask you to provide an upfront deposit of between 3 to 6 months worth of rent. In addition to this deposit, make sure you also have 3 to 4 months’ worth of operational costs (rent, salaries, consumables, etc.) saved up. This will provide you with a live-saving cash flow buffer, just in case your business doesn’t produce as much revenue as you initially projected. You don’t want to end up with a bankrupt business before you’ve even had at least a year or two to prove your business model.

Rent Increases

Although Covid-19 has certainly dampened some of the demand for commercial rental, there’s only so much space to go around in Singapore. Landlords are likely to increase your rent when your lease expires. Experienced barbershop owners who have good contacts in the industry, or previous relationships with landlords may be able to negotiate limits on rent increases, alongside other benefits like lower rental deposits. However, if you are new to the barbershop industry, or your barbershop is too small to warrant more favourable terms, it’s not likely that the landlord will grant you much leeway in negotiations.

If it’s your first time setting up a barbershop, it’s advisable for you to sign a shorter lease – around 6 months or so. Although this makes it more likely that your rent may be increased at the end of 6 months, a shorter lease will minimise the amount of start-up capital you need to put in. By contrast, if you sign a 24-month lease from the get-go, you’re stuck with paying rent for the next 2 years, regardless of whether you make money or not! Signing a shorter lease will also help you validate whether your business is actually working, and whether you have the ability to pull customers in and turn a consistent profit.

If you eventually find that your business is not working, a shorter lease will give you the option of either shutting it down, or pouring in more funds to keep the business going. A long lease, however, would block you from quickly exiting a business that’s hemorrhaging cash.

Relocation Costs

You should also take into account potential costs if you plan to relocate. Most leases will include a clause requiring that you restore the location to its original state. Restoration fees typically run around SGD 3,000 to SGD 5,000 for a 500 square feet barbershop.

Renovation Costs

After you find a good location for your barbershop, you’ll need to renovate the space to convey the aesthetic you want. Maybe it’s a sleek and modern barbershop, with neon lights, lots of glass and burnished metal. Or maybe you prefer a grittier aesthetic, and want a rough-and-tumble old-school barbershop. Whatever your choice, expect to pay at least SGD 10,000 to 20,000 for renovating a 500 square feet barbershop. This estimate includes interior design consultations, actual renovation work, and the cost of furnishings.

A lot of your marketing is going to come from social media – pictures of haircuts you’ve just provided, pictures of clients/yourself at work in your barbershop, etc. Given that your premises is going to feature so prominently in you marketing efforts, it’s advisable to invest a little more in an attractive interior design. This will pay dividends over the long run, as more customers get to know about your cool-looking space.

Manpower Costs

After rent, labour will be your second biggest recurring expense. Manpower in a barbershop is pretty flexible. The amount of barbers you need to recruit really depends on the scale of business you want to open, and whether you can barber yourself (or not). If you want to just open a one-man show, you can find a small space in a mall or housing neighbourhood, and just run the entire business on your own. You won’t have to deal with the stress of staff overheads. Of course, you’ll be completely limited in how much money you can make, since you won’t have barbers who can pay you commissions from clients they serve. If you want to run a bigger business, then you’ll need to hire additional barbers who can bring in this incremental revenue for you.

There are various compensation schemes that you can employ for your barbers. The most common compensation structure is a basic salary, plus a commission per cut. This incentivises barbers to provide good service, and to build relationships with their clients to keep them coming back. Another common compensation scheme is to rent chairs in your shop to each barber for a flat monthly fee.

If you’re an experienced barber yourself, you can also hire barber apprentices. Apprentice haircuts are almost always provided at a discount compared to their more experienced colleagues. This way, you can attract potential clients who are on a budget. You can also build up a talent pipeline by grooming these apprentices into experienced barbers. By hiring them when they’re still young and green in the industry, you save on the salary expense of having to hire an experienced barber straight of out the gate.

Barber Training

If you plan to do the barbering yourself, but don’t actually know how to cut hair yet, there’s two methods you can use to get started.

Method 1: Attend a barbering course

A basic barber’s course starts at around SGD 1,500, per participant. Most of these courses last for 2-3 days. These courses will go over the fundamentals of hair-cutting techniques, like performing fades, line-ups, and cutting layers.

Here are some courses in Singapore that you can attend:

1. Hair Mafia & Co. Barber Course: SGD 1,799 for 2 days

2. Beauty Recipe Intensive Barber Course: SGD 1,588 for 2 days

Once you’ve completed your chosen course, you can then go ahead to work in a barbershop as either an apprentice or a junior barber.

Method 2 (Recommended): Apprentice in a barbershop

An alternative is to become an apprentice in an established barbershop. Some apprenticeships may be paid, others may be unpaid. You will start from the bottom, and likely have to do “menial” tasks like cleaning the shop and tools. If you’re truly passionate about barbering, you’ll stick through it. There’s no better way to learn how to cut hair than to learn from others who’ve been doing it for a long time.

Equipment

Luckily for barber entrepreneurs, most barbering equipment is relatively affordable. First up, you’re going to need a set of good hair clippers to give your clients amazing hair fades. The most well-known brand in the industry is Wahl, which also happens to be the number one brand of clippers sold in the United States.

You’ll need a hair detailer as well, which you’ll be using to make crisp line-ups. You can use hair detailers for more precise cuts on beards.

You’ll also want to have a foil shaver. A cordless model, like this one from Andis, is particularly helpful and well-made.

For scissors, you’ll need barber’s scissors and thinning scissors.

Lastly, no barbershop would be complete without a good set of razors. Now, modern hygiene practices dictate that using the same single-blade razor on hundreds (or thousands) of customers is probably not the best idea. The problem with a traditional straight-edge razor is that you need to also have a commercial disinfectant unit (which are expensive), otherwise you’re going to run a serious risk of infectious or blood-borne diseases being transmitted through your shaves. A straight-edge razor must also be stropped before each shave, which adds additional labour to the already labour-intensive job of barbering. Straight-edge razors must also be professionally honed every few months to restore the keenness of the blade, which adds additional cost. You can sharpen the blade yourself on a whetstone, but that takes practice and time.

Enter the barber’s saviour: the shavette. Shavettes take single-use, disposable razor blades that can be swapped out for each new client. Since a new blade is used for each client, shavettes represent a more hygienic and convenient option. Furthermore, a shavette blade from a good manufacturer (like Feather, or Merkur) will be sharper than a straight razor’s blade. This will give your clients the closest possible shave.

Among the many brands of Shavettes, Parker makes durable and affordably priced shaving sets. This one below is full-metal, which gives it a nice weight. It’s sure to make you look like a real professional each time you whip it out to give your clients a clean, hot shave.

Parker Shavette, available from The Panic Room ($33).

After you’ve got your hair trimming equipment ready, you’ll want to have nice, plush chairs to make your customers comfortable. If you’re setting up an old-school barber, then this Old Style Barberchair is perfect for you. At SGD 440 per chair, it’s reasonably priced. If you’re not ready to spend that much, then this barber chair might be more to your liking. It won’t convey the same old-school vibe, but at SGD 119 per chair, it’s really priced to move. You can consider getting a rubber barber’s mat to go with your chair as well. These mats are non-slip, and their thick cushioning effect can help relieve stress on your joints from standing all day.

Consumables

Your main consumables are going to be hair styling product, dusting powder, shampoo, disinfectant, and razor blades. The great thing is that most of these consumables are pretty affordable, so they’re not going to take away much from your bottom line.

You can stock decent-quality but affordable product like American Crew or Suavecito. Suavecito makes a giant 32oz tub (900g) for only $130. This tub size is specifically designed for barbers. If you use 3g of product to style each client, that works out to just 43 cents per client. Highly economical.

You can also consider oil-based pomades for true greaserheads. Try the famous Reuzel Pink, which is sure to satisfy any greaser who walks into your store.

It’s also a good idea to stock some hair product to sell. You can apply product to your clients’ hair after their cut, and if they like the product you can then try to close a sale. This will form a nice extra revenue stream for you.

Utilities

Water and electricity will cost around $1,000 a month for a typical barber that operates around 8-10 hours daily.

Summary of total set-up costs for a new barbershop

How many haircuts will you need to break-even?

This is one of the most important questions you’ll have to answer when deciding whether you should open a barbershop. If we add all the costs above, minimum start-up costs for a barbershop are about $50,000 to $80,000.

Let’s use the assumptions below for our break-even calculations:
1. You run an old-school barbershop
2. You charge $35 for a haircut (market rate)

You would therefore need to provide 1,428 haircuts to recoup your initial investment. Assuming you deliver an average of 10 haircuts a day, you would take about 143 days to break even, or about 5 months.

Protect your barbershop

Starting a barbershop is expensive. Suffering accidents while running your barbershop is even more expensive.

A fire could break out from a faulty electrical outlet, burning your shop down and taking all the money you invested with it. A customer could get injured during a close shave or haircut, leaving you legally liable for their injuries. One of your staff might slip and fall at work, leaving your business liable to pay his medical expenses under MOM’s Work Injury laws.

Given the $50,000+ you will spend building your barbershop, make sure you protect your investment with a good barbershop insurance policy. These policies start from only $200 a year, and will provide you several hundred thousand dollars’ worth of insurance coverage. Click here to buy barbershop insurance in 3 minutes, online!

Introduction

Are you thinking of incorporating a new company in Singapore? Or maybe you’re tired of your current corporate secretary, and are looking to switch to a new provider. Whatever your situation is, there’s never been a better time than now to consider using an online corporate secretary. Online corporate secretaries provide an affordable, quick, and highly convenient experience for secretarial-related services. Whether you want to start a new business, issue new shares, or remove a director, these online firms have got you covered. To help you decide which company to use, we’ve put together this guide on the 5 best online corporate secretaries in Singapore for 2021.

What is a corporate secretary?

First off, let’s start by establishing the role of a corporate secretary. In Singapore, all companies are required by law to appoint a company secretary within 6 months of incorporation. A corporate secretary’s main functions are to ensure that the company fulfills statutory requirements, the company practices good corporate governance, and shareholders’ interests are protected.

A corporate secretary helps you achieve this by filing your annual returns, assisting you with share transfers, appointing directors, and more. Corporate secretaries take on these mundane administrative tasks so that you can focus on more important business matters.

How are online corporate secretaries different from traditional corporate secretaries?

Both traditional and online corporate secretaries offer the same set of services. The biggest difference, however, lies in the speed, convenience, and price. Online corporate secretaries often operate much more quickly than their brick-and-mortar counterparts. Because they’re online, they tend to charge lower prices too.

The 5 best online corporate secretaries in Singapore 2021 (no particular order):

#1. Osome

Osome (pronounced as “awesome”) is an online corporate secretary that provides a full spectrum of services. The company was founded in 2017. Osome has raised over USD $5 million in venture capital funding, being part of a recent wave of online corporate secretary startups sweeping the industry.

Osome’s range of services include:

a. Incorporation: Osome will register your company for you with ACRA, and will provide you with a company constitution. All government charges are included in their service fee. Their incorporation package includes up to 3 shareholders, and you can add extra shareholders for $50 per person. Osome claims that once you have your documents ready, most company incorporations can be done in under 1 hour.

Osome also has specifically designed packages for foreigners. For $2,250, you can get an incorporation deal that includes registration with ACRA, nominee directors, and. This helps you to easily set up companies without having to find a resident Singaporean to be on your company board. For $2,650, you can throw in an employment pass application as well.

b. Corporate secretary: Osome has 2 packages – Basic and Unlimited. Under the Basic Package ($300/year), Osome will take care of, well, just the basics. You’ll get your annual ACRA filings which are required by law, and also preparation for your AGM. This is a barebones package that’s suitable for companies that really aren’t experiencing any changes to shareholders, directors, or location changes.

Under the Unlimited Package ($600/year), Osome will take care of much more. You get what’s included in the Basic Package, plus changes to directors, shareholders, addresses, issuance of new shares, dividend distributions, and more. If you need to make regular changes to any of these things, then it’s best to go with the unlimited package. For a set yearly fee, you’ll have access to all these services which makes it pretty cost-efficient.

Do note that if you sign up for the Unlimited Package, you will get a free company incorporation. So, if you’re registering a new company, it’s advisable to consider getting the unlimited package so you can make use of the various secretarial services, whilst saving money on the incorporation fees.

Osome also offers multiple useful add-on services, like company stamp supplies, Corp-Pass registration, company strike-offs, and more.

c. Accounting and taxes: Unless you’re running an accounting practice, few business owners are going to enjoy trying to reconcile their books regularly. Osome takes care of this for you with their accounting subscription service. For $600/year, you can get a basic package that allows for 40 transactions each year. Their starter package from $1,200/year covers 480 transactions, and you even get a personal accountant/bookkeeper assigned to you. They also have custom plans available if you handle much higher transaction volumes.

#2. Sleek

Sleek is an online corporate secretary that offers a comprehensive set of services. The company was founded in 2015. The company has raised over USD $5 million in venture capital funding.

Sleek’s pricing scheme is slightly different from the other companies in this list. Whereas companies like Osome charge based on the level of service, Sleek charges based on the number of shareholders you have.

Sleek’s range of services include:

a. Incorporation: Sleek will register your company for you with ACRA, and all government charges are already included in their incorporation fee. Unlike other companies in this list, do note that the number of shareholders you want to include will change your incorporation fee. For instance, 1 shareholder will cost $300. 10 shareholders will cost $780. Use their price calculator to check how much you’ve had to pay.

If you’re a foreigner who wants to incorporate a local company and move to Singapore, a full incorporation package from Sleek is slightly pricier than Osome’s. Assuming you only have 1 shareholder, the incorporation itself will cost you $300, a corporate secretary another $300, a nominee director will cost $1,500, and an employment pass $980. Sleek’s total is $3,080 versus Osome’s $2,650.

If you don’t need an employment pass, then Sleek’s package can be slightly cheaper. Assuming you only have 1 shareholder, Sleek’s foreigner incorporation package is $2,100 versus Osome’s $2,250. If you have 3 or more shareholders, then Sleek’s package becomes more expensive with rates starting from $2,280.

b. Corporate secretary: Sleek’s corporate secretarial services also differ in pricing based on the number of shareholders. 1 shareholder will cost $300/year, while 10 shareholders will cost $780/year. Unlike Osome’s two-tier system, Sleek’s corporate secretarial services are a one-tier plan. Once you sign up, you get have unlimited access to their secretarial services.

Sleek will do your annual ACRA filings and preparation for your AGM. You’ll also have unlimited access to changes to directors, shareholders, addresses, issuance of new shares, dividend distributions, and more. If you have a small number of shareholders, then Sleek’s one-tier plan represents great value for you, since it basically costs the same as Osome’s basic plan but offers you Osome’s unlimited-tier of services. On the other hand, if you have lots of shareholders, then Sleek’s plans may not make as much sense as the from the other companies in this list.

c. Accounting and taxes: Sleek’s accounting services come in four tiers. They offer bookkeeping, management reports, corporate tax returns, and even free payroll (for a limited number of employees). They also offer add-on services like multi-currency accounting and GST registration.

#3. Cabin

Cabin is an online corporate secretary that provides a full suite of secretarial services. The company was founded in 2017. The founders come from a pedigreed entrepreneurial background, having previously started Grain, a well-known meal delivery startup in Singapore.

Cabin’s range of services include:

a. Incorporation: Cabin will register your company for you with ACRA for a fee of $150. The website doesn’t make it immediately clear whether government fees are included. Given that ACRA charges $315 to register a new company ($300 for incorporation, $15 for name registration), there is a possibility that the $150 fee excludes government charges. If you’re looking to incorporate your company with Cabin, contact them for more information on this.

b. Corporate secretary: Cabin’s corporate secretary service is priced at $350/year. This price includes annual return filings with ACRA, preparation of AGM documents, and updates to Company Registers. Cabin’s website doesn’t state how much access users will get to things like director changes, share issuances, etc., and whether such services are already included in the $350 fee or whether you’ll have to pay for them as top-ups.

c. Accounting and taxes: Cabin’s accounting service starts at $750/year. Their accounting service includes a useful tax optimisation service, where their team will look through your transactions to maximise tax deductions from areas like capital allowances and charitable donations. Their monthly accounting plan is $200/month, and their quarterly accounting plan goes for $150/month.

#4. Lanturn

Lanturn is an online corporate secretary that offers a comprehensive set of services. The company was founded in 2017.

Lanturn’s range of services include:

a. Incorporation: Lanturn’s incorporate fees include all government charges. Incorporation is free as long you subscribe to a corporate secretary or accounting plan. For foreigners, Lanturn offers Entrepreneur Pass applications ($1800), with a 50% refund for unsuccessful applications. Employment pass applications are $1200, also with a 50% refund if you don’t manage to win the visa.

b. Corporate secretary: Lanturn’s corporate secretary services are priced higher than the other companies in this list. Their website doesn’t break down exactly what services are offered, so if you’re interested it’s best to get in touch with them directly so you can compare their services with other corporate secretarial companies.

c. Accounting and taxes: Lanturn offers 4 tiers of accounting plans, ranging from Basic ($80/month) all the way to Select ($1,800/month). From their website, Lanturn’s accounting plans appear to top out at a quarterly frequency. They also offer add-on services like multi-currency accounting and GST registration.

 d. Virtual CFO: Lanturn offers a suite of “Virtual CFO” services, which makes them unique among their competitors in this list. Lanturn can assist you with financial statement projections (e.g. cash flow, income statement, balance sheet, etc.) Interestingly, they also fundraising support, and can even send staff to accompany you on venture capital pitches. This is a service that none of the other companies on this list appear to offer. If you’re a startup founder raising money and are more focused on the strategy/product side of things, this service could be useful if you don’t happen to know your numbers down cold when meeting investors.

#5. Sprout

Sprout is an online corporate secretary that offers a comprehensive set of services. The company was founded in 2019.

Sprout’s range of services include:

a. Incorporation: All government charges are already included in Sprout’s incorporation fees. Sprout promises to incorporate your company within 24 hours. For Singaporeans/PRs, Sprout offers 2 plans. The Minimalist plan ($348) is a basic plan that gets you a registered entity. The Kick-Start plan ($588) includes ACRA registration, and importantly also comes with 1 year of corporate secretarial service. These prices are slightly lower than the average of other companies in this list, so if you’re looking for the most affordable corporate secretary, Sprout seems a favourable choice.

For foreigners, Sprout’s Launch plan ($2588) gets you a registered company, 1 year of corporate secretary service, nominee director, and virtual office. For only an extra $100, the Onshore plan ($2688) will get you everything in Launch, plus an employment pass. For comparison, these prices are lower than Sleek’s, but slightly higher than Osome’s.

b. Corporate secretary: Sprout offers 3 different corporate secretary plans: Essential, Comprehensive, and Total Compliance.

The Essential plan ($288/year) is a basic plan that takes care of annual ACRA filings and AGM preparation. At $288/year, this is marginally cheaper than its competitors, who typically charge prices averaging around $300/year.

The Comprehensive plan ($588/year) contains everything in the Essential plan, plus unlimited basic resolution changes.

Their Total Compliance plan ($788/year) includes everything in the Comprehensive and Essential plans, plus nice extra like tax compliance, and a review of your books by a Chartered Accountant. Do note that this plan is not applicable for companies with over $1 million in annual revenue, or who have corporate shareholders.

c. Accounting and taxes: Sprout has 3 different accounting plans: Seed, Seedling, and Sapling. The Seed plan ($80/month) offers you accounting for up to 10 transactions/month. It comes with unaudited financial statements, tax compliance, a review by a Chartered Accountant, and a Xero subscription. The Seedling plan ($180/month) has everything the Seed plan offers, but offers 40/transactions month. The Sapling plan ($320/month) offers up to 80 transactions/month.

Don’t forget about business insurance, from just $9/month

Once you’ve appointed a corporate secretary and have your administrative matters out of the way, you should move on to considering business insurance. You’ve probably invested a fair amount of money into starting your new venture, so make sure you protect your company with business insurance.

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