r/smeSingapore

Hey all,

Bit of a long shot, but I'm hoping to learn from people who've lived this.

I'm trying to understand how small Singapore companies handle paying people outside the country like remote employees, contractors, freelancers, whoever. Not from a "best practices" angle. More like, what does it actually look like on a Tuesday afternoon when payroll is due and someone's bank in Manila hasn't received the transfer yet.

If you're the founder, finance person, ops lead, or HR manager who's stuck dealing with this, I'd really love to hear from you.

Some of the things I'm curious about (no need to answer all, just whatever's on your mind):

- What platform are you using right now? Did you try anything that didn't work?
- Who in your company actually owns this? Is it falling on one person who didn't sign up for it?
- What's the part of the month you dread?
- Has anyone ever pushed back on how or what currency you're paying them in?

I'm not selling anything and I'm not going to pitch you. I'm at the stage where I'm just trying to understand the problem before assuming I know it. I've talked to a handful of people so far and almost everyone's process is held together with spreadsheets and goodwill, which is exactly why I want to talk to more.

Happy to do a 15–20 min call, or just trade DMs if that's easier. Can send a small coffee gift card as thanks for your time, I'm grateful for any reply, even a one-liner.

If you've hired anyone outside Singapore in the last year, I'd love to hear how you're managing it.

Hear a fair share of people complaining about shopee collection point (home and shophouse) and the impossible mission of getting a PICK locker.

How would you prefer Singapore delivery system like? Why you think SG still dont have it? I go first, i think China Cainiao station is amazing, autonomous, 24/7 and store helll lot of parcel. Rental easily kill this idea as we can't can't rent a space just for parcel

For SMEs here in Singapore, I think Real talk. What is actually causing cash flow gaps for small businesses in Singapore right now?the number one thing that quietly kills small businesses is not the lack of clients. It is the gap between when you deliver work and when the money actually lands in your account. You finish the job in March and the client pays in May. Meanwhile rent is due, salaries need to go out and supplier invoices are stacking up. That gap is where a lot of good businesses quietly start to struggle.

The situation gets worse when costs keep rising. Office space is not cheap. Manpower is expensive. And with supply costs climbing the way they have been lately it becomes really hard to keep everything covered from your existing cash alone. Most owners I know are not overspending. They are just caught between timing.

So genuinely curious what you guys are actually doing to fill that gap? Are you negotiating shorter payment terms with clients, tapping on invoice financing, or just grinding through it on reserve? Would love to hear what is actually working on the ground for fellow SME owners here because I feel like this is one of those problems everyone has but nobody really talks about openly.

I was comparing PSG solutions and got curious — how good are the vendor websites themselves? So I ran all 278 of them through Google PageSpeed Insights (Google’s free website speed test) on mobile.

What I found:

	PSG Vendors (278 sites)
Median score	47 / 100
Scored below 50 (“poor”)	54%
Scored above 90 (“good”)	3%
Couldn’t even load	4 sites

What’s making them slow:

1. Heavy website builders stacking up code the site doesn’t actually need
2. Images that aren’t compressed or sized properly
3. Pages loading too many scripts at once before showing any content
4. Some sites took over 10 seconds just to show the main content on mobile

Why this should matter to SMEs:

Google uses website speed as one of its ranking factors. Slower site = lower in search results = fewer customers finding you. If your vendor’s own website can’t score well on Google’s own test, it’s fair to ask what your website will look like after they build it.

You can test any website yourself for free — just go to pagespeed.web.dev and paste the URL. Takes 30 seconds.

For details, this is our comprehensive analysis: https://knoyi.com/guides/sg-b2b-performance-benchmark-2026/

I want to try DashToCart.io as a Shopee alternative.

Not sure if it’s better or just solving a different problem.

Anyone here actually using it in production?

Is it cheaper and better as it claim?

Hey everyone, going to be upfront about what this is and isn't.

I'm not building a new app. I'm not a startup raising funds. I'm just someone who noticed that a lot of SMEs here could benefit from automating their WhatsApp messaging. From appointment reminders, follow-ups, renewal nudges, candidate confirmations but never get around to it because setting it up feels too technical, and maintaining it feels like another job.

The tools to do this already exist. The gap isn't the technology, it's that most SME owners don't have the time or inclination to figure it out, and hiring someone to build it properly isn't always worth it at their scale.

So what I'm actually offering with RELAY is one of two things, depending on what works for you:

Option 1 — Managed for you I set it up, I maintain it, you just focus on running your business. No technical knowledge needed.

Option 2 — Set up once, yours to keep I help you get it running on existing platforms, show you how to manage it yourself, and you take it from there with little to no ongoing cost.

This isn't just for marketing. If you're in recruitment, insurance, education, healthcare, or any business where you're sending the same types of messages to a lot of people repeatedly, this is probably relevant to you.

I'm genuinely in this to understand whether this is a problem worth solving, not to make a quick buck. If you're willing to try it for free and tell me honestly what works and what doesn't, I'd really appreciate it.

Drop a comment or DM me. Happy to have a no-pressure chat.

*I have a day job in tech doing similar work but in a much much larger scale and I would like to explore this so that I can scale this long term and hopefully build something myself. |

This is my Day One

Long post. Real situation. All details changed enough to protect everyone involved, but the patterns are 100% real.

I do SME advisory work in Singapore. A friend referred a business owner to me a few weeks ago. "She needs help with a loan for her business."

Fine. I do that. Set up a meeting.

But I don't start with the loan. I never do. I start with the business. Because if the business has a structural problem, a loan doesn't fix anything — it just delays the crash.

So I sat her down and started asking questions.

Twenty minutes in, I looked at my notes and thought: "This woman doesn't need a loan. She needs a rescue."

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Her story

She's the founder. Built a services business from nothing. Developed the offering, got the clients, built a real customer base. People were paying upfront for packages. Revenue was coming in. The business model worked.

She needed capital to scale. So she brought in an investor. The investor put in a significant amount — call it 300K. In return, the investor got majority shares. About 55%.

No shareholders' agreement was signed. "We trusted each other." You know how this goes.

For the first few months, things seemed okay. The investor was "involved." Had ideas. Knew people. Brought energy.

Then "involved" became "in charge."

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What the investor did

The investor started directing marketing spend. Big spend. Influencer partnerships — specifically with someone the investor knew personally. Exhibition appearances. Agency fees. The founder pushed back on some of it but kept getting overruled.

The investor appointed herself as the company secretary on ACRA. That meant she had practical access to and control over the compliance process — statutory records, ACRA filings, board minutes. Directors remain legally responsible for these records, but when the person preparing them has their own interests at stake, the integrity of those records is compromised.

The investor brought in her own accounting firm. Now the investor also controlled the financial records. The founder was relying on the investor's people to tell her the truth about her own company.

The investor started talking to staff directly. Giving them instructions. Sometimes instructions that contradicted what the founder had told them. Staff didn't know who to listen to.

The investor argued with the founder about operational decisions. Not as a shareholder exercising voting rights — as someone who behaved as if she were the managing director.

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What the numbers showed

When I finally got hold of the management accounts, this is what I saw (rough numbers, changed slightly):

• Revenue over 15 months: ~360K
• Total expenses over the same period: ~950K
• Net loss: ~600K
• Total share capital: ~545K
• Net assets: negative ~55K

The company spent nearly three times what it earned. It burned through more than its entire share capital in 15 months.

But here's the kicker — where did the money go?

Marketing and exhibition expenses: ~200K. On a revenue base of 360K. That's 55% of revenue on marketing.

For a single-location services business, the benchmark is 10–15%. She was spending 4–5x the norm. And a chunk of that went to the investor's personal contact — an "influencer" — with no campaign reports, no analytics, no content deliverables, no measurable outcomes. Just invoices and payments.

The accounting fee was ~28K over 15 months. For a small exempt private company, the going rate is 3–8K per year. The investor's own firm was charging roughly 3x the market rate.

There were another ~40K in consulting and professional fees paid to vendors nobody could identify yet.

Staff costs were ~445K — actually more than the total revenue.

The company had 19K in the bank. Against 171K in services it was obligated to deliver to customers who'd already paid. Both the founder and the investor had loaned money to the company to keep it alive.

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What I did

I'm not a lawyer. I was very clear about that with her. But I know how to read a P&L, and I know what governance failure looks like.

My corporate secretary and I sat with her and walked through everything:

The financial picture. We showed her that the company's problem wasn't a lack of revenue or clients — it was a cost structure that someone else had imposed on the business. Strip out the excess marketing spend, normalise the accounting fees, and the business could potentially be viable. The investor's spending decisions, not the market, caused the financial distress.

The governance picture. We explained what it means when your majority shareholder is also your company secretary and controls your accountant. She has practical control over the compliance process and the financial records. That's not governance. That's a conflict of interest wrapped in a corporate structure. The director retains legal responsibility for these records, but when the person preparing them has competing interests, the reliability of those records is in question.

The legal landscape. We walked through the basics — not as legal advice, but as awareness. In Singapore, directors manage the company, not shareholders acting merely as shareholders (s.157A Companies Act). If a shareholder is in substance directing the board or company operations, there may be an argument that she is acting as a de facto or shadow director, with potential duties and liabilities depending on the facts (s.4(1)). Oppressive or unfairly prejudicial conduct by a majority shareholder may be challenged under s.216. And where the wrong is really a wrong done to the company, a shareholder may need to seek leave to bring a derivative action in the company's name under s.216A — the underlying claim might be breach of director duties, conflict of interest, or similar.

The negotiation scenarios. We talked through what might happen when the investor eventually calls a meeting. What the investor might push for. What the founder can push back with. What leverage each side actually holds.

And then I told her the thing that changed how she saw the whole situation:

"You built this business once. You can close it and build it again. She can't."

The founder has the skills. The client relationships. The operational knowledge. The industry expertise. If the company winds up, the founder starts fresh. It's painful, but it's possible — and she's done it before.

The investor? She has money in a company that's worth nothing. If it winds up, she loses her capital, her loan, and her leverage. She can't rebuild the business because she never built it in the first place. She just funded it — and then spent the funding on marketing that went to her friend.

That asymmetry is the founder's strongest card. But nobody had ever framed it that way for her. She'd spent months feeling trapped by the investor's 55% when in reality, the investor should be the one worried about what happens next.

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What her options actually are

Without getting into specifics:

Option 1: Negotiated exit. Present the investor with the financial reality — the company is in a net liability position, shares have no positive equity value on any standard methodology, the spending pattern is documented, and the governance conflicts are clear. Propose a clean exit: all shares transferred, resign as secretary, accounting firm replaced, full record handover. At a price that reflects what the shares are actually worth (which is very little).

Option 2: Legal action. If the investor refuses a reasonable exit, the facts may support a Section 216 oppression or unfair prejudice claim, subject to legal advice and evidence. The court has wide remedies including ordering a share buy-out, regulating the conduct of the company, or other relief. Valuation in these cases is discretionary and fact-sensitive — the court considers the actual accounts, the conduct of the parties, and the circumstances as a whole.

Option 3: Winding up. If the investor makes it impossible to resolve things cleanly, the founder may be able to apply for a just-and-equitable winding up order under the Insolvency, Restructuring and Dissolution Act 2018 (s.125(1)(i)). She cannot do this unilaterally as a 45% shareholder — it requires a court application. But the threat is powerful because, as I said, the founder can rebuild and the investor can't.

The investor's informal proposal to sell half her shares at her original investment price? The accounts show that's not supportable. The net assets are negative. The company is loss-making. There's no methodology — net asset, earnings, revenue multiple — that supports the price she's asking. She's trying to cash out at cost from a company she helped run into the ground.

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What every SG founder should take from this

If any of this resonates, here's the practical checklist:

Do today:

• Export all WhatsApp chats with your investor (full history, including media). Store somewhere they can't access
• Pull your ACRA BizFile profile (SGD 5.50 on BizFile+)
• Check if you're a signatory on the company bank account
• Start a diary of all interactions with the investor — date, time, what was said
• Do NOT confront the investor or tip them off

Do this week:

• Talk to a corporate litigation lawyer who handles shareholder disputes
• Request full bank statements directly from the bank (not through the accountant)
• Request monthly P&L from the accountant — if they delay, document it

Know your rights (but always verify with a lawyer for your specific situation):

• Directors manage the company, not shareholders acting as shareholders (s.157A)
• If you hold more than 25% of ordinary voting shares and there are no unusual constitution or class rights, the investor generally can't pass special resolutions without you
• A person found to be a de facto or shadow director may be subject to directors' duties and liabilities (s.4(1)) — but this is fact-specific, not automatic
• Oppressive or unfairly prejudicial conduct may be actionable (s.216)
• Where a wrong has been done to the company, a shareholder may seek leave to bring a derivative action in the company's name (s.216A)
• A just-and-equitable winding up is possible under the IRDA (s.125(1)(i)), but requires a court application

Before you ever take investment:

• Shareholders' agreement — non-negotiable
• Independent company secretary
• Independent accountant
• Spending limits requiring mutual consent
• Monthly management accounts to all directors
• Exit mechanisms in writing

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Why I'm posting this

I'm not posting to promote myself. I'm not naming anyone or any company.

I'm posting because I've now seen this pattern enough times to know it's not rare. Founder builds something real. Investor comes in with capital. Governance gets ignored. The investor slowly takes control of everything — the spending, the accounting, the compliance, the staff. The founder gets sidelined in their own company.

And the founder almost always thinks they're powerless because "the investor has majority shares."

You're not powerless. The law provides real protections for directors and minority shareholders. But you need to know what those protections are before you walk into the room — and you need proper legal advice for your specific circumstances.

If this hit close to home, feel free to DM. I'm not going to sell you anything. But I might be able to point you in the right direction.

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Not a lawyer. Not legal advice. All details anonymised. Always engage qualified legal counsel for your specific situation.

Hey everyone,

I’ve been running a small business here in Singapore and tried a few digital marketing agencies, but honestly, the results have been pretty underwhelming. Poor communication, slow responses, and strategies that don’t seem to work for smaller businesses.

Has anyone had any luck with an agency that really understands the challenges of small businesses in Singapore? Would love some recommendations.

I’m curious about the current reality for small creative agencies.

With many fresh graduate designers struggling to find full-time jobs, some are starting their own freelance studios or small agencies. But I wonder if the market is becoming too crowded.

For SME owners, freelancers, and agency founders:

How much can a small creative agency realistically earn today?

What services are still profitable?

Are clients still willing to pay for branding, web design, social media, and design retainers?

Or has AI, Canva, and low-cost freelancers made it much harder?

Would love to hear real experiences, especially from small agencies or SME clients.

We’re mid-build on an MVP and I wanted to QC the tech stack before making the next milestone payment. A friend in VC told me about an automated due diligence tool (Micah 6 AI Engine), so I ran our repo through it just to see what would happen.

It terrified me. The report flagged that the devs had left critical database credentials exposed and built an architecture that would crash if we scaled past 1,000 users. Because the report translated everything into plain English, I could actually take the exact files to the lead dev and demand a fix before I paid the invoice.

Problem is, I can't afford to drop $79 every time they push an update, but I can't let them think I'm taking my foot off the gas either. For those managing external teams, what's your cadence for technical due diligence? Do you just audit at major milestones?

Hi all,

I run a boutique interior design firm in Singapore and have been using Xero since late 2020. The account currently holds ~1,100 transactions.

I’m looking to engage an experienced accountant/bookkeeper to take full ownership of restructuring and managing my accounts properly. To be direct, I’ve worked with multiple firms over the past few years and have yet to resolve fundamental issues due to poor handovers and lack of continuity. I’m no longer looking for basic bookkeeping support—I need someone who understands the nuances of project-based businesses and can implement a system that actually works.

The key issues are:

1. Non-functional project tracking

Project tagging was set up but is unusable in practice. Projects are not consistently tied to specific locations, and because I work with recurring suppliers across multiple jobs, there is currently no reliable way to track P&L per project.

Time tracking is not required—my focus is purely on accurate financial tracking, not hours logging.

2. Incorrect revenue recognition

Revenue is currently recorded based on payments received rather than total project value. Given that my projects are milestone-based, I believe revenue should be structured against full contract value and progressively reconciled. The current setup is distorting financial visibility and cash flow positioning.

3. Misalignment between accounts and tax

Despite the accounts reflecting a negative position, I am still being taxed on recorded earnings. I need clarity and correction on how this has been handled.

What I’m looking for:

- Proven experience with project-based accounting (interior design, construction, or similar industries preferred)

Ability to diagnose, clean up, and rebuild an existing Xero account properly

-A clear methodology for project tracking (without excessive manual tagging)

-Strong understanding of revenue recognition for milestone-based projects

-Someone who can work independently without repeated handholding

Ability to read Mandarin is a plus.

If this is within your scope, please share:

-Your relevant experience

-How you would approach restructuring this setup & how long

-Your fees and engagement model

If you know a strong accountant who fits this scope, feel free to send me a DM.

This is a clean-up and rebuild exercise, not just maintenance.

Thank you.

Hi guys, I'm not quite sure if this sub is the best place for this.

My cofounder is my husband and he's supposed to be the technical cofounder. We quit our jobs a few years ago to start the business, and it did well for a couple of years. We work from home and have a small team who also works from home.

Recently, AI has impacted our business quite a bit (negatively). Despite that, I tried to keep positive and we are starting another venture.

All along, as the technical cofounder, he's responsible for building, while I'm the business and marketing side. However, he is extremely lazy and unproductive, and this used to be fine, but now that sales are dropping rapidly, it's become very difficult. He does not even keep a to-do list (keeps delaying and forgetting deliverables and important milestones we've discussed), does not communicate or lead our team at all (some members of our team have no work and have to beg for work) and lacks basic communication and time management skills. As such, I've had to lead the team and cannot rely on him at all to deliver anything without chasing him regularly..literally being his Todo list. In fact, I've had to ask members of the team to remind him of stuff repeatedly. I've also had to give him hard deadlines...which again, he never respects or abides, just doing whatever he wants, delaying small stuff by months.

Anyone in the saas start up space would likely know that it's important to ship fast. But he takes extremely long and blocks everyone in their respective work streams. Our engineers literally are blocked by him all the time. He doesn't know how to lead them..or maybe he doesn't try.

He spends a disproportionate amount of time treating working time as his personal time, reading articles, spending time on social media. Literally hours in a day.

Seeing that it's not working out, I've even taken it upon myself to even start coding and work on the most technically challenging aspects (yes) and he only works on infra and simple tasks (literally just calling LLM to generate a list of stuff). Even then, he takes weeks or months to review my code for no reason at all and literally drags his feet while working on other stuff on the side that aren't critical. He also ended up delegating those tasks to others, who seemingly complete them in a day or two.

Our sales have dropped to the extent that it might not even be possible for us to continue this business. This is despite the fact that our new venture is extremely forward looking and has great product market fit.

I'm honestly at a loss. He's my husband, so I'm not sure what to do here. Has anyone dealt with such a cofounder before?

Hi SME owners, founders, employees,

Just curious on what issues or problems SMEs or chain outlets facing and if are using AI and their cost.

How much effort, time and energy do you spend trying to fix the issues and how much have you spent? Just trying to get some feelers out there on the issues faced by companies and employees.

Hi, I have a partitioned space in my warehouse looking to rent out as I don't need the space. Have lock and aircon, so you'll have your own space. Utilities bills can be discussed on how we want to split.

Location: 29 Mandai Estate

Price: $850 ($2.36psf)

Area: 360sqft

Toilet: Included.

Airconditioned: Yes

Duration: til March 2027

Deposit: 1 month deposit required.

Access: 24hours fingerprint/passcode access.

We have SPX and Singpost coming everyday to do collection, so if you are under any of them, you can also benefit from not having to go drop-off your parcels.

https://vida-prod-webdev-app.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/android-builds/310519663596072784/28e28170-3523-454b-a14b-f622b9e159c7/goservice-app-v1\_0\_3.apk?X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Credential=AKIAZV3A2ECZO4N7RSPW%2F20260501%2Fus-east-1%2Fs3%2Faws4\_request&X-Amz-Date=20260501T220320Z&X-Amz-Expires=604800&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&x-id=GetObject&X-Amz-Signature=4e74bb1ff367be3e9ee4d5a9166a849cf9f9b9da7350b72d6802626d45a93470

Hi! I'm a student working on a project to understand how local small business owners (hawkers, mama shop owners, wet market vendors etc.) manage their bookkeeping / accounting practices.

I am trying to come up with a solution to make digital bookkeeping more widespread as I see many such owners still using pen and paper for business records

If you run a small business or know someone who does, I would appreciate if you could take 3-5 mins to fill in this short survey. https://forms.gle/Mj3uHdR3Cx1Pn6va8

Reposting this to garner more responses. Please do help to share!

Hihi, im a student in Singapore looking into an idea around how small-medium service businesses can better understand and respond to real customer demand online.

i started noticing that for some services, especially home services like aircon repair/servicing, people often make public posts like “anyone can recommend a good aircon repairman?”.

The idea im exploring is a simple tool that helps SMEs pick up these posts earlier, figure out what the customer needs, and prepare a useful reply that the business owner can review and respond themselves. Also, just to emphasise, the business will respond as the business, not by pretending to be a satisfied customer. For now, i've built the tool now specifically for home service businesses, collecting over 100++ clear demand posts per month, via whatsapp.

However, i'm still unsure whether this is only valuable for very specific, high-intent service categories, or whether there’s a bigger SME use case here around spotting demand signals and engaging more helpfully in online communities. Would you find this useful, and is there anything about working with SMEs I should know before I go further with this?"

Would love honest thoughts, especially from SME owners or people with SME sales/marketing experience. Thanku so much!! :")

Finding leads/users in Singapore isn't that simple — most lead finders out there aren't really local or SG-focused.

I tried leadverse, which worked decently for my first startup (a SaaS education product) and helped me pull in a few leads. But when I tried it on my new local project, it just didn't get the context right.

Anyone else running into this? Would love to hear what other tools you've tried that actually work for the Singapore market 🙏