Every GST-registered business in Singapore will eventually have to send its invoice data to IRAS through InvoiceNow. Most owners I speak to have heard this, filed it under “deal with it later”, and moved on.
Fair enough. But there is a detail in the official paperwork worth knowing now, because it changes when “later” should be.
The catch in 45 seconds
The short version: the free InvoiceNow packages are real, but today's official list only runs to March 2027, and three providers already stop then. Work out your own phase date before you choose one.
The part everyone gets right
InvoiceNow can genuinely cost you nothing. Thirteen accredited providers offer a complete free-of-charge package to GST-registered businesses. IRAS’s own wording is that the full package is free, with no conditions attached. That is unusually plain language for a tax authority, and it means what it says.
So the headline is true: for a lot of small businesses, the software cost of complying with this is zero.
The part almost nobody mentions
Free-of-charge packages are available up to 31 March 2031. But the current list only applies until 31 March 2027. IRAS has said the list covering April 2027 onward will be published later.
And three of the thirteen providers on today’s list already state an end date of March 2027.
That is a meaningful difference. If your business is in the 2030 or 2031 phase — and most larger ones are — then picking a provider today whose commitment stops in about six months means doing this twice. Once to comply. Once to replace the thing you chose to comply with.
Why this is a timing question, not a software question
Here is the trap. The instinct when a compliance deadline appears is to move early and get it off the desk. That instinct is usually right.
It is wrong here, if moving early means locking into something that expires before your actual deadline does.
Think of it like taking a lease on a warehouse. A cheap six-month lease is a bargain if you need six months. It is an expensive mistake if you needed five years, because you pay twice for the move.
The sequence that actually works is boring: find out your date first, then choose. A business facing 1 April 2028 and a business facing 1 April 2031 should not be making the same decision today, and right now most of them are.
What to actually do
Work out your date. It depends on your total supplies in Box 4 across the accounting periods that ended in 2025, and it lands somewhere between April 2028 and April 2031. If you registered for GST part-way through 2025, that figure gets annualised first, which moves a lot of businesses a full year later than they expect.
Check what you already run. If your accounting package is already on the accredited list — and many common ones are — this may be a settings change rather than a purchase. Worth ten minutes before anyone sells you a project.
Then look at the free packages, with the expiry dates in front of you rather than behind you.
The cost nobody budgets
None of these packages cover the work. Cleaning up customer records so every one carries a valid identifier. Mapping your invoice fields to the required format. Working out what happens to your credit notes, your multi-entity billing, the customer who insists on a PDF.
That effort is almost always larger than the software cost. It is also the only part you cannot get for free, from anyone, at any price.
Free software, paid effort. Budget accordingly.
Which phase does your business actually fall into — 2028, or 2031? If you have not checked, that is the ten-minute job for this week.
Working on something similar? Connect with me on LinkedIn and tell me what you are working on. I read and reply to every message, and the questions people send become the next guides.
Related reading: Seventy Firms Are Selling You the Same Thing · Your Accounting Software Might Not Be on the List
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