Five signs your company has outgrown its company secretary app

A company secretary app is good at what it’s built for: incorporating quickly, filing the annual return, reminding you of deadlines. For a company with one or two shareholders and nothing unusual going on, that is enough.

These are the five points where it stops being enough.

1. You’re about to raise money

Investors’ lawyers will ask for your registers, your share history and the resolutions behind every share issue. Gaps nobody noticed for years surface in the middle of due diligence, when you have the least time for them. A round also brings work that doesn’t fit a standard package: new share classes, changes to the constitution, a shareholders’ agreement to reflect in the records. See what investors’ lawyers ask for.

2. You’re giving shares or options to your team

An option pool needs shareholder approval, plan rules, grant letters and a register of who holds what. Each exercise later means a share issue and an ACRA filing, and there is tax for the employee to plan for. This is ongoing work for someone who knows your cap table. More in ESOPs in Singapore: when the tax hits.

3. You’re bringing people to Singapore

Passes for founders and senior hires depend on how the company is set up and how the pay package is structured, especially where equity is a large part of it. It helps when the team filing the pass already knows the company and runs its payroll. See structuring an equity-heavy offer for an Employment Pass.

4. Someone else now relies on your records

A parent group that consolidates your numbers, an investor with a board seat, an auditor: each needs answers from someone who knows the company’s history. If your contact changes every few months and every question starts from the beginning, you end up doing the remembering for your provider.

5. Your questions no longer fit a form

Buying another company. A founder leaving with unvested shares. Overseas customers withholding tax they don’t need to. None of these is a ticket category. Each needs someone who has read your constitution and your shareholders’ agreement before answering.

What to look for next

• A named person who stays with your company from year to year.
• A team that reads your documents before preparing the paperwork.
• Company secretarial and accounting together, so your ACRA and IRAS deadlines stay in step.
• A clear handover: appointed before your old secretary steps down, with your records reviewed on arrival.
• Registration with ACRA as a corporate service provider.

Switching is simpler than most directors expect. Here is what moves with you when you leave an online provider.

This article is general information, not legal or tax advice, as at November 2026.