How do I open a restaurant in Singapore? Presenting the PayrollHero Knowledge Kit!

The PayrollHero blog aims to be the knowledge repository for any restaurant owner or retailer in Southeast Asia. We have built our database with things you need to know while doing business in Singapore.

With that in mind, we have been working on a little project. Presenting the PayrollHero Knowledge Kit!

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This starter kit was put together to give you high level information about Singapore, share some thoughts from restaurant owners, and present relevant statistics from our market research.

The information here includes research that will help you open a restaurant in Singapore or expand into the country.

  • We talk about what CPF contributions are with information about the different Ethnic Funds that require contributions.The pages are linked to relevant tax forms and websites that offer more detailed information if you want it.
  • There is an industry overview and analysis on the latest consumption trends in the country. We give you a salary table to refer to for your Human Resources (HR) team in Singapore.
  • We also give you practical write-ups on how to get an import license, food hygiene requirements and the best internet service provider for your restaurants.

But we don’t want to give you simple hard facts that you could just Google anyway. The Knowledge Kit has a wealth of information in the form of personal stories and experiences in these countries. We interviewed the president of SaladStop!, Mr. Adrien Desbaillets. He gave advice on how he chooses locations in Singapore among other practical nuggets of information. We see it as a way to help the community because there is no better way to learn than from people who have gone through the same roadblocks as your are facing right now.

We hope this information is useful to you. We would love to hear back from you with what you think about the Knowledge Kit, how we can make things better and how you use this Kit for your own research into the restaurant industry.

Lastly, we are releasing more of these for the retail industry. Watch out for more information about these industries and countries. We have also created a Knowledge Kit for the Philippines.

So go ahead and click on the image above to access the Knowledge Kit. Let us know what you think. And good luck with your new business!

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PayrollHero Certification: Hands on Experience with the App

badge-payroll-certificationLast week, Kieran our Head of Client Success, conducted training sessions for the new PayrollHero team members in Singapore as well as a few clients. We got some hands on experience with the app, which helped us gain a deeper understanding of how the product works. As an intern who has been here for a few weeks, my knowledge about the product came from speaking with team members, listening to sales pitches and reading about the product online. So it was an interesting experience to use the product on a demo account and view it from the perspective of a payroll administrator. All new PayrollHero team members get certified on the platform so that they know exactly what the platform can do.

Kieran took us through every aspect of the product. My first thought when I was told about the training was, “Wow, a two and a half day training session? But I already know everything about it!” Which, as you may have guessed, turned out to be highly overstated. Within the first two hours of training, I came to the conclusion that the product was far more powerful than I had expected.

The first day was about Human Resources Information Systems (HRIS). The next day was spent on generating payroll and the final day was dedicated to understanding time, attendance and scheduling using the app.

The interesting part about the app is its customization capabilities. A human resources (HR) administrator can record the company’s organizational chart. The hierarchy allows you to identify employee types and positions. Thresholds allow you to set rules on what kinds of notifications you get based on the activities of employees under you in the hierarchy. The thresholds have multiple permutations and combinations that, once customized, help you prioritize information that you need instantly versus information that can wait till a more suitable time.

badge-tas-certificationIt didn’t stop there. Customization extended to how you segment payroll: employer contributions (CPF, SDL, FWL), bonuses, vacation payments, advance payments, claims that need to be redeemed. Any kind of payment outside of the basic calculation of an employee’s hourly wages can be segmented and customized so that all a payroll administrator has to do, is enter which segment the payment should go into. The app can take care of debiting/crediting the amount to the required account. It will notify you when the account is hitting a pre-recorded limit. The flexibility of the app went as far as allowing you to import data from a spreadsheet, allowing the app to automatically fill in employee details.

While all of this might seem like a rather dry topic to train on for nearly three days, Kieran managed to make the whole session more interesting by throwing in quizzes and having interactive sessions. Every demo account had characters from Kieran’s favourite fiction series. Homer Simpson got a bonus for his outstanding work (let’s pretend like that is EVER going to happen), Sherlock Holmes got promoted to the next level on the org chart, Buffy Summers asked for a change in her schedule for the next 3 weeks and Harry Potter recorded coming in early to work consistently. All these characters were a part of the certification exercises, which made the entire process not only informative but also engaging.

The time, attendance and scheduling part of the course was done through an online training portal on the PayrollHero website. Again, I was pleasantly surprised by how detailed the app was and how customizable the entire process of scheduling was. It was impressive that the app was user friendly and flexible with creating, adjusting or removing schedules based on timing, location and type of work: whether it was a routine desk job or a part time job that required changing schedules often. The app, as was intended, was perfectly designed for retailers and restaurant owners who deal with employees who have erratic schedules which require constant adjustments.

The exercises and quizzes were effective in understanding how much we grasped from the lessons. It was clear that working with app required you to be consistent and methodological with the processes for entering data, giving system permissions, organizing the company’s hierarchy and setting customized options especially since the data that the system works with is sensitive. Finally, the certification undoubtedly served its purpose: it gave us a complete picture of how the app works and how a payroll administrator can benefit by using all its features for time, attendance, scheduling and payroll.

Learn more about PayrollHero Certification in the Philippines and Singapore.

Special Employment Credits in Singapore

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The Special Employment Credit was introduced in 2011 in order to provide tax credits for employers who employ low-wage Singaporean senior citizens. The time period in which the SEC is implemented is between January 1, 2012 and December 31, 2016. The last SEC payout will be on March 2017.

There are three main criteria in order to apply for the SEC. The employee must be:

  1. a Singaporean citizen
  2. aged over 50
  3. earning less that $4000 a month

In the year 2015, the Government decided to increase credit rates in order for companies to cope with the increase in CPF contributions. Credit offered by the government is 8.5% of the employee’s monthly wages for employees aged between 50 and 65. For employees over 65 years of age, the credit is 11.5% of monthly wages. These rates apply till December 31, 2015. The schedule for credit is given below:

SEC for the month ($) for employers who hire Singaporeans
Income of employee/month ($) between ages 50 and 65 over age 65
500.00 42.50 57.50
1000.00 85.00 115.00
1500.00 127.50 172.50
2000.00 170.00 230.00
2500.00 212.50 287.50
3000.00 255.00 345.00
3250.00 191.25 258.75
3500.00 127.50 172.50
3750.00 63.75 86.25
>= 4000 0.00 0.00

The rates for 2016 have not been announced. The Singapore government has not specified whether these rates will remain or be reverted back to the old credit rates.

SEC Payments

SEC payments are made on a retrospective basis. For the months between January and June, SEC payments will be made in September. For months between July and December, SEC payments are made the following March. A company will qualify for SEC payments only after the necessary CPF contributions have been made. To check the contribution schedule for CPF and for more details on CPF payments, check out our blog post. Payments are made via GIRO. For companies without GIRO, a cheque will be sent. An important point to note that SEC is taxable.

To find out the absolute value of credit that your company will receive, you can click on the SEC calculator here. For more details on SEC, you can find FAQs here.

Payroll in APAC: Singapore

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Employer contributions in Singapore are collected by the Central Provident Fund (CPF). The deductions and levies contribute towards savings for Singaporeans and Permanent Residents (PRs) for retirement, insurance and building their homes. There are also certain levies that go towards different ethnic funds. We will go through all these deductions and levies.

CPF

CPF contributions are done by the employee and employer. The contributions arsingapore cpfe restricted to Singaporeans and PRs only. There are 4 major accounts that CPF contributions go into: Ordinary Account (for retirement, housing finance, investment, education), Special Account (for old age and special contingencies), Medisave Account (for hospital bills) and Retirement Account (this account is opened once the employee turns 55). Check out these links to find out contributions rates and deadlines.

Foreign Workers Levy

The levy is imposed on employers who employ foreign workers with Work Permits or S Passes. Levies do not need to be paid for employees with Employment Passes. The levy is calculated based on the ratio of Singaporeans to foreign employees that your business employs. Here is a link on how the foreign levy is calculated. The levy is paid on the first of every month. More details on the FWL here.

Skills Development Levy

The SDL goes to the Skills Development Fund, which provides grants for training programmes and workforce upgrading programmes. The levy must be paid for Singpaorean, PR and foreign workers. The rates are linked here.

Ethnic Fund

There are 4 Self Help Group (SGH) Funds that collect levies based on the ethnicity of your employees. The four funds are:

  1. Chinese Development Assistance Council (CDAC) Fund, administered byCDAC
  2. Eurasian Community Fund (ECF), administered by the Eurasian Association(EA)
  3. Mosque Building and Mendaki Fund (MBMF), administered by Majlis Ugama Islam Singapura (MUIS)
  4. Singapore Indian Development Association (SINDA) Fund, administered by SINDA

The levy is paid out of employees’ salaries. Employees may choose to opt out of the levy by signing the relevant forms. The levy must be paid every month. Here are the rates.

If you are looking for a Singapore cloud based payroll platform – look no further. PayrollHero’s end to end solution includes time, attendance, scheduling, HRIS and Singapore payroll. Plus, amazing business intelligence. Let us know if you want a one on one demo.

For more information on CPF contributions, make sure to read this link. If you want to know more about employer contribution in the Philippine, check out Payroll in APAC: the Philippines.. Hope this helps!

Disclaimer: As always, consult your lawyer or accountant for advice! We are here to help, but your specific situation should be reviewed by a professional with complete knowledge of your situation.

5 Sure Wins When You Come To PayrollHero Meetups

This meetup is all about HR and payroll management in the cloud for businesses of any size. Today, more companies are getting smarter and are transforming the way they manage their time, attendance, scheduling, payroll and HRIS to a systematized cloud based solution. To make sure your company does not fall behind on this trend, you need to discover why choosing a better management system helps increase your bottomline.

During the meetup, we will be focusing on tips and tools you can use to better optimize HR and payroll processes, while cutting costs on time and creating a happier work culture.

Let’s solve those problems! We want to share our expertise together with you at our next PayrollHero Meetup!

We will have Steve Jagger, co-founder of PayrollHero!

Steve Jagger, PayrollHero

Hello there!

Sure Wins! 

  1. Know the tools that can increase productivity in your business by eliminating buddy punching and ghost employees.
  2. Gain new tactics to effectively improve scheduling, time and attendance, HR and payroll management for your employees.
  3. Business Intelligence tools to use for your business to make informed decisions on human resource.
  4. Get to learn about new tools that can help you gain insights and better understand your customer segment.
  5. Our event is free of charge with FREE wine and snacks!

10th June, 2015, 4pm- 5.30pm
Ocean Financial Centre

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The Employer’s Guide to Singapore Work Visas

This video provides an introduction to hiring foreign workers in Singapore- types of visas available to the employee according to skill level, application criteria and levies due to the employer. More information is available on the Ministry of Manpower website

After you have incorporated your business in Singapore, you will need to hire employees, both local or foreign to work for your company. If you are employing non-resident employees in Singapore, as an employer you have to make sure that they hold a valid work pass (also known as work visa).

Professional Work Visa

Pass type

Who is it for

Employment Pass

For foreign professionals, managers and executives. Candidates need to earn at least S$3,300 a month and have acceptable qualifications.

EntrePass

For eligible foreign entrepreneurs wanting to start and operate a new business in Singapore.

Personalised Employment Pass

For high-earning existing Employment Pass holders or overseas foreign professionals. The PEP offers greater flexibility than an Employment Pass.
 Skilled or Semi- Skilled Workers
Pass type Who is it for

S Pass

For mid-level skilled staff. Candidates need to earn at least S$2,200 a month and meet the assessment criteria.

Work Permit for foreign worker

For semi-skilled foreign workers in the construction, manufacturing, marine, process or services sector.

The Foreign Worker Levy

singapore work passesIt is important to note that Singapore companies are required to pay Foreign Worker Levy (FWL) for the Work Pass and S Pass holders. This levy is imposed by the Singapore Government to regulate foreign workers numbers in the country.

The amount of levy due to the employer is determined by the sector the company belongs to and the educational level and skills of the employees. Employing workers with relevant qualifications and skill-based test certificates will count towards your skilled workers, which will entitle you to a concession in the worker’s levy.

Look at this example on the FWL scheme for manufacturing and service sectors. 


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PayrollHero is live in Singapore. We are completely localized to Singapore’s itemized payroll requirement. We are able to effectively compute the Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore (IRAS) taxes on employee remuneration, CPF employer contributions and deductions, bonuses, contributions to community funds (MDMF, SINDA, CDAC), Foreign Worker Levy and others- for your business in 5 Minutes!

Find out how PayrollHero can provide you the solution you need to optimise your payroll process. Write to us!

The New Employer’s Guide to CPF

Further the blog post on what CPF is. We thought it will be helpful to post a general guide to how CPF works (with useful links to CPF Website), for the new entrepreneurs setting up business in Singapore.

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You are an employer, and employing Singapore citizens or Permanent Residents (PR) in your company- you are required contribute to CPF for your employees at the end of each month.

Know your role as an employer. CPF conducts regular audits on employers to ensure that CPF contributions are paid correctly and on time (14 days grace period is given at end month). CPF also takes feedback from employees on incidences where employers have not paid or under-paid their CPF contributions. Note that the penalty to employers breaching the CPF Act may be taken to court and if convicted, fined up to $10,000 or imprisonment, or both.

With that in mind, let’s get this right. 

Contribution on Employee Wages and Age Group
CPF contributions should be determined based on the employee’s total wages for the entire month. This includes overtime pay, allowances, cash awards, commissions and bonuses. Find out which types of payment attracts CPF Contributions here.

The CPF contribution rate is determined by different age groups. There are 6 defined age groups and the CPF contribution rates decreases as an employee moves to the next age group.

Here are the 6 age groups:

  • 35 years and below
  • Above 35 and below 50 years
  • Above 50 and below 55 years
  • Above 55 and below 60 years
  • Above 60 and below 65 years
  • Above 65 years

As of 1 January 2015, the CPF contribution rates have increased to help employees save more for retirement and medical.

Click to find out the updated contribution rates. CPF website also offers a contribution calculator.

When to Pay Contributions
The CPF contributions are due at the end of every month with 14 days grace period given at the end month. Should the last day of the grace period falls on a weekend or public holiday, your payment will be due on the next business day.

You are required to pay the employer’s and employee’s share of CPF contributions monthly for all employees (Singapore Citizens and Singapore Permanent Residents) at the rates set out in the CPF Act. The CPF contributions payable should be based on the employee’s actual total wages earned for the calendar month.

How to Make Your Payment
CPF has made payment easy for new employers via online Direct Debit. As soon as you started the process of hiring your first employee, you should submit your CPF details using CPF e-Submit@web using the Singpass and Unique Entity Number (UEN).

Once you are approved, you will receive the an email and a welcome letter containing your CPF Submission Number, Payment Advice (CPF91) and Direct Debit Authorisation Form.

Here’s more details on Direct Debit deductions and FAQs 


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Want to learn more about how PayrollHero can help you get your Singapore time, attendance, scheduling and payroll setup? Contact us for a one on one demo.

What is Singapore’s Central Provident Fund (CPF) All About?

singapore cpfIn Singapore, there a government fund call the CPF of The Central Provident Fund. It is a social security system that enables working Singaporeans and Permanent Residents (PR) to set aside funds for later in life. It also has a healthcare, home ownership, family protection and asset enhancement portion.

How does the CPF system work?

Both employees and employers make monthly CPF contributions. These contributions go into three accounts:
singapore cpf contributionsAs Singaporeans live longer, there is a need for a reliable stream of income to meet living expenses. Statistics have shown that today, 1 in 3 Singaporeans aged 65 is going to live to age 80 and 1 in 2 is going to live to age 90 and beyond.

To learn more about CPF check out their website.