This post incorporation checklist Singapore companies need covers the 10 steps to action immediately after receiving your UEN. Getting your UEN is the easy part. What happens in the weeks after incorporation sets the tone for how well the business runs from a compliance and operational standpoint. Miss a few of these, and you’ll spend more time and money fixing things later than you would have getting them right upfront.
Here’s what to do, roughly in the order it matters.
1. Open a corporate bank account immediately
Your company has a separate legal identity from you. Its money needs to be separate too.
This isn’t just best practice but it’s also essential for clean accounting, tax filing, and protecting your limited liability. If you’re co-mingling personal and company funds, you’re undermining the very protection that the corporate structure is supposed to give you.
Get a bank account open as fast as you can. If the traditional bank application takes a few weeks, set up a digital business account (Aspire, Airwallex) in the meantime and transfer transactions there.
Once the account is open: all company income goes in, all company expenses go out from it.
2. Appoint a company secretary within 6 months
This is a legal requirement under the Singapore Companies Act, not optional. You have six months from the date of incorporation to appoint one.
The company secretary is responsible for keeping the statutory registers up to date, filing annual returns with ACRA, organising resolutions and minutes, and generally keeping the company legally compliant. Most SMEs outsource this to a corporate secretarial firm as it’s not worth the liability of doing it yourself unless you know what you’re doing.
Don’t leave this until month five. Things come up.
3. Set up your accounting system from day one
The biggest headache we see with early-stage companies is founders who run the business for 12 months and then try to reconstruct their accounts from bank statements and a shoebox of receipts. It’s expensive to fix and leads to errors in tax filing.
Set up basic bookkeeping before the first transaction hits your account:
- Cloud accounting software (Xero and QuickBooks are both widely used and well-supported in Singapore)
- A chart of accounts that reflects your business activities
- A process for capturing receipts and expenses as they happen
If you’re outsourcing your accounting (which most SMEs do), get that relationship set up before or immediately after incorporation. Your accountant will set up the system; you just need to feed it.
4. Register for GST if you need to (or want to)
GST registration is mandatory if your taxable turnover exceeds S$1 million under the retrospective test, or if you reasonably expect taxable turnover to exceed S$1 million in the next 12 months under the prospective test. If you’re nowhere near that, you can still register voluntarily.
Voluntary registration makes sense if your main clients are GST-registered businesses — they can claim the GST you charge them as input tax, so it doesn’t cost them anything, and you get to claim back GST on your business expenses.
It doesn’t make sense if your clients are mainly end consumers who bear the cost directly, and your own GST-claimable expenses are minimal.
If you’re unsure, ask your accountant before you register. Once registered, you have ongoing quarterly filing obligations regardless of whether there’s any GST to pay.
From April 2026, new voluntary GST registrations come with InvoiceNow compliance requirements. Factor that into your accounting system setup.
5. File your Estimated Chargeable Income (ECI) when it’s due
This one catches a lot of new company directors by surprise.
Within three months of your company’s financial year end, you generally need to file ECI with IRAS — a rough estimate of your taxable income for the year — unless you qualify for the ECI filing waiver. A common waiver applies where annual revenue is S$5 million or below and ECI is nil. Check whether you qualify rather than assuming.
IRAS will send a reminder to your registered address. Make sure someone is monitoring that address.
6. Get your business insurance sorted
This is often the most overlooked item on this list.
At minimum, consider:
- Professional indemnity insurance: Covers claims arising from professional errors, advice, or negligence. Relevant for anyone providing professional services — accounting, consulting, legal, tech, design.
- Public liability insurance: Covers third-party bodily injury or property damage. If you have a physical premises or work at client sites, you want this.
- Work injury compensation (WIC) insurance: Mandatory if you employ manual workers, regardless of salary, or non-manual employees earning S$2,600 or less per month. Even where insurance is not mandatory, employers remain liable for valid work injury compensation claims.
Some client contracts require proof of insurance before you can start work. Better to have it in place from day one than to hold up a contract signing.
7. Understand your CPF obligations before you hire
If you plan to hire Singapore citizens or PRs, you have CPF contribution obligations from their first payslip. There’s no grace period.
CPF contribution rates vary depending on the employee’s age and whether they’re a citizen or first/second-year PR. Get the current rates from the CPF Board website or ask your payroll provider. Mistakes here, such as underpaying, late payment and wrong rates, attract penalties.
If you’re planning to hire, set up your payroll system before the first employee starts. This is not the kind of admin you want to figure out retroactively.
8. Register business licences relevant to your activities
Depending on what your business does, you may need one or more licences before you can operate legally. ACRA incorporation doesn’t cover these — they come from separate regulatory bodies.
Common examples:
- Food establishment licence (Singapore Food Agency)
- Employment agency licence (Ministry of Manpower)
- Money service business licence (MAS)
- Educational institution licence (MOE)
- Travel agent licence (Singapore Tourism Board)
Check the GoBusiness Licence Adviser tool on the GoBusiness portal — it walks you through your activities and tells you what licences apply.
9. Set up your registered address properly
Your registered address is where IRAS, ACRA, and other government bodies will send official correspondence. Letters from these agencies are not the ones you want to miss.
If you’re using a corporate service provider’s address as your registered address, make sure you have a clear arrangement for how mail forwarding works. Some firms scan and email documents; others forward physically. Either way, make sure it’s actually happening.
If you move your office or change your registered address, update ACRA through Bizfile+ promptly. Any applicable filing fee or late lodgement penalty is small compared with the risk of missing an important notice.
10. Get clear on your financial year end
Your first financial year end will determine when your first set of accounts, annual return, and corporate tax filing are due. Most companies choose a financial year end of between 12 and 18 months from their incorporation date, which gives them time to get organised.
A few things to consider:
- December year ends are popular but create competition for accountants and auditors at year end. March, June, or September can mean faster service.
- If your business is seasonal, aligning your year end with your off-peak period makes the audit and filing process less disruptive.
- Whatever you choose, tell your accountant and company secretary so they can plan their work accordingly.
Post incorporation checklist Singapore: quick summary
Most of these items are straightforward, but they all have deadlines and consequences if ignored. The companies that run into compliance problems aren’t usually the ones that did something wrong — they’re the ones that just didn’t get around to setting things up properly at the start.
Use this post incorporation checklist as your Singapore company’s starting point, and if you want help getting the setup right from day one, Abacus handles corporate secretarial services, accounting, and payroll for Singapore companies. We can take most of this off your plate.
