Your deadline depends on how much your business sold in 2025
Every GST-registered business in Singapore will eventually have to send its invoice data straight to IRAS through InvoiceNow, the national e-invoicing network. The rollout has already started. New voluntary GST registrants have been in scope since 1 April 2026, and the last group follows by 1 April 2031.
Which year you land in isn’t a choice. It’s set by your total annual supplies in calendar year 2025, and IRAS is notifying existing businesses of their date directly. This guide covers when yours falls, what you actually have to send, what it costs, and the one funding rule that catches businesses out.
GST InvoiceNow at a Glance
| Highlights | Details |
|---|---|
| What it is | Sending invoice data to IRAS via the InvoiceNow network, built on the international Peppol standard |
| Who it covers | All GST-registered businesses, phased in from 1 Nov 2025 to 1 Apr 2031 |
| Already live | All new voluntary GST registrants since 1 Apr 2026 |
| Your date | Set by total annual supplies in calendar year 2025 (Box 4 of your GST return) |
| What you send | Standard-rated, zero-rated and exempt supplies, plus standard-rated and zero-rated purchases |
| Cost | Free solution packages run to 31 Mar 2031; cash grants of S$1,000 to S$25,000 |
| Who’s out | Certain overseas entities and reverse-charge-only registrants |
The date itself is the easy part. The work sits in the system change. Your accounting software has to be accredited, connected, and switched on before your deadline.
Larger businesses integrating their own ERP are told to allow 3 to 12 months just for the connection to IRAS. Leaving it to the quarter before is how a compliance date turns into a scramble.
Table of Contents
- What is e-invoicing in Singapore?
- What is the GST InvoiceNow requirement?
- How Peppol and InvoiceNow fit together
- GST InvoiceNow deadlines: the full timeline
- Who is in scope, and who is excluded
- What data you actually have to submit
- How to comply, in four steps
- Grants and free solutions
- What happens if you miss your deadline
- Cross-border invoices and foreign-currency spend
- FAQs
What Is E-Invoicing in Singapore?
E-invoicing means sending an invoice as structured data that another finance system can read directly. That replaces the PDF or paper copy someone would otherwise have to key in by hand.
In Singapore it runs on InvoiceNow, the nationwide e-invoicing network. IMDA describes it as the direct transmission of invoices in a structured digital format from one finance system to another. The network is built on Peppol, an international standard. IMDA has been Singapore’s Peppol Authority since May 2018, and began accrediting solution providers in 2019.
Three terms get used interchangeably, and it helps to keep them apart:
- E-invoicing is the practice: exchanging invoices as data instead of documents.
- InvoiceNow is the network Singapore uses to do it.
- The GST InvoiceNow Requirement is the IRAS rule that makes it compulsory for GST-registered businesses, phased by size.
Any business can join InvoiceNow voluntarily, whether or not the GST rule has reached it yet. The rest of this guide covers the rule, because that’s the part with a deadline attached.
What Is the GST InvoiceNow Requirement?
The GST InvoiceNow Requirement is a rule that GST-registered businesses must use InvoiceNow-Ready Solutions to send their invoice data to IRAS for tax administration. It’s a joint initiative between IRAS and IMDA, and it follows a pilot that ran from September 2020 to June 2023.
The important thing to understand: this is not a new way of billing your customers. It’s a new way of reporting to IRAS, and it happens in the background of software you’re already using.
What Changes Versus a PDF Invoice
Today you probably email a PDF and your customer types it into their own system. Nothing is transmitted anywhere else.
Under InvoiceNow, your invoice moves as structured data from your finance system to theirs, and a copy of that data goes to IRAS automatically. IRAS describes this as adding a “5th corner” to the standard four-corner e-invoicing model, where the fifth corner is the tax authority.
Why IRAS Is Doing This
The stated payoff is a shorter compliance loop on both sides. IMDA points to shorter GST audits and faster refunds, because IRAS already holds the invoice data rather than requesting it from you after the fact.
It also catches a specific kind of error. Some solutions run a validation check that flags suppliers wrongly charging GST when they aren’t GST-registered, and alerts the sender before the invoice goes out.
For your side of it, structured data removes the re-keying step. Your customer’s system reads the invoice directly instead of someone typing a PDF into accounts payable.
What Happens If You Don’t Use E-Invoices at All
This is the part most businesses get wrong. The requirement covers your invoice data, not just your e-invoices.
If you issue a paper or PDF invoice to a customer who isn’t on the network, or you ring up sales through a point-of-sale system, that data still has to reach IRAS. It goes as a “solution-extracted” invoice once you record the transaction in your accounting system. Being off the network doesn’t put you out of scope.
📖 Related reading: unsure how expenses you bill onward are treated for GST? Our guide to disbursement versus reimbursement covers which one attracts GST and why.
How Peppol and InvoiceNow Fit Together
Peppol is the international standard the network runs on. In Singapore, Peppol is simply called InvoiceNow; they’re the same thing. IMDA has been Singapore’s Peppol Authority since May 2018, which means it certifies the Access Point Providers that connect businesses to the network.
Because it’s an international standard, you can send and receive e-invoices with overseas businesses too, as long as they’re on Peppol. OpenPeppol publishes the full list of countries that have adopted it, which covers much of Europe alongside Australia, New Zealand, Japan and Malaysia.
What this means in practice: you don’t deal with Peppol directly. You choose an InvoiceNow-Ready Solution, and it handles the connection for you. Your business then registers a Peppol ID, which is what other businesses use to route invoices to you. If you want to check whether a supplier or customer is already on the network, you can search the SG Peppol Directory.
GST InvoiceNow Deadlines: The Full Timeline
Most of this timeline is new. Until early 2026, only voluntary GST registrants were in scope. Then on 26 February 2026, at the Ministry of Finance Committee of Supply Debate, the requirement was extended to every GST-registered business in Singapore, rolling out progressively from April 2028 to April 2031.
IRAS expects that to bring about 90,000 more businesses onto the network. It reissued its e-Tax Guide on 9 March 2026 specifically to write the new phases in, which is why anything you read dated 2025 has an incomplete timeline.
The requirement is now phased in over six years, with mandatory participation in the following order. These dates come straight from IRAS’s e-Tax Guide (Second Edition).
| From | Who has to comply |
|---|---|
| 1 Nov 2025 | Companies registering for GST voluntarily within 6 months of incorporation |
| 1 Apr 2026 | All new voluntary GST registrants, whatever their incorporation date or business structure |
| 1 Apr 2028 | All new compulsory GST registrants, plus existing businesses with total annual supplies ≤ S$200,000 |
| 1 Apr 2029 | Existing businesses with total annual supplies ≤ S$1,000,000 |
| 1 Apr 2030 | Existing businesses with total annual supplies ≤ S$4,000,000 |
| 1 Apr 2031 | Existing businesses with total annual supplies > S$4,000,000 |
Note the shape of it. The smallest businesses go first, in 2028, and the largest go last, in 2031. That’s the opposite of most tax rollouts, and it catches people out.
The reasoning is in the announcement. Smaller businesses can onboard with minimal cost and effort, because the accounting packages they already use make up the vast majority of InvoiceNow-Ready solutions.
Larger businesses run more complex enterprise systems and need to fit the change into their IT refresh cycles, so they were given the longer runway.
How Your Date Is Calculated
Your phase is fixed by your total annual supplies made in all prescribed accounting periods ending in calendar year 2025. That’s Box 4 of your GST return: standard-rated (Box 1), plus zero-rated (Box 2), plus exempt supplies (Box 3).
It’s total supplies, not profit, and not just your taxable sales. A business with thin margins on high turnover can sit in a later phase than its size suggests.
If Your 2025 Returns Don’t Cover a Full Year
If your GST returns ending in 2025 don’t add up to a full 365 days, you’re allowed to extrapolate to a 365-day equivalent and use that figure instead.
IRAS’s own worked example: a company with S$1.5 million of supplies across 328 days calculates S$1.5 million × 365 ÷ 328 = S$1,669,207. That sits under S$4 million, so its date is 1 April 2030.
You’ll Be Told, but Check Anyway
IRAS is notifying businesses registered before 2026 of their implementation date, and publishes an implementation date calculator you can use in the meantime. Worth running it yourself rather than waiting for the letter, because the lead time on connecting a system is measured in months, not weeks.
📖 Related reading: for the other IRAS dates your company is working to, see our guide to corporate tax in Singapore and its filing deadlines.
Who Is In Scope, and Who Is Excluded
Almost every GST-registered business is in scope. There’s no turnover threshold that exempts you: the S$200,000, S$1 million and S$4 million bands decide when you comply, not whether.
Only two groups are genuinely excluded.
Overseas Entities
Two sets of overseas businesses sit outside the requirement. Those that have to appoint a local section 33(1) agent for their GST matters, and those registered under the Overseas Vendor Registration regime, both Pay-only and full.
If you bill overseas clients or pay foreign suppliers, being cross-border doesn’t get you out of this. It’s your GST registration in Singapore that decides, which is also what makes details like the SWIFT/BIC code on a supplier invoice worth keeping tidy.
Two cases that sound similar but are not excluded, and do have to comply:
- A foreign-incorporated company with a local branch or establishment in Singapore
- A Singapore business with an overseas branch or establishment
Reverse-Charge-Only Registrants
If your business is liable to register for GST solely because of reverse charge rules on imported services or low-value goods, you’re excluded.
The word doing the work is “solely”. If you make some reverse-charge transactions but registered for GST for other reasons, you’re in scope like everyone else.
GST Groups and Divisions
Implementation dates for members of new and existing GST groups haven’t been announced yet; IRAS says they’ll be communicated later. When they are, a group can transmit data member by member or on a consolidated basis through its representative member, whichever is easier.
📖 Related reading: paying suppliers outside Singapore? Our guide to paying overseas suppliers from Singapore covers the payment rails and what each one costs.
What Data You Actually Have to Submit
The rule is simpler than it looks. You submit everything you report in your GST return, minus a short list of exclusions.
What goes to IRAS:
- All standard-rated supplies
- All zero-rated supplies
- All exempt supplies
- All standard-rated purchases
- All zero-rated purchases
What’s left out: transactions that have no real underlying supply or purchase and exist only for GST reporting. Deemed supplies such as free goods, reverse charge supplies, import permits, exempt financial services, and exempt digital payment tokens. Out-of-scope items such as third-country sales and purchases from non-GST-registered suppliers are also excluded.
If any single line on an invoice falls within scope, the entire invoice has to be transmitted. IRAS’s example is a tax invoice covering both a refundable security deposit (out of scope) and lease rental (standard-rated). Because the rental is in scope, the whole invoice goes.
The Four Submission Types
| Type | What it covers | How it’s sent |
|---|---|---|
| 1A | Your sale, made on the InvoiceNow network | Peppol invoice, near real-time |
| 1B | The matching purchase your customer records | Solution-extracted |
| 2 | Your sale made outside the network (PDF, POS, simplified invoice) | Solution-extracted |
| 3 | Your purchase made outside the network (including petty cash) | Solution-extracted |
Types 2 and 3 are the ones to plan around. They’re the paper and PDF trail you already have, and they now need to be recorded in an InvoiceNow-Ready system rather than a spreadsheet.
When It’s Due
Peppol invoices (Type 1A) reach IRAS in near real time, automatically. Everything else is submitted on a regular cycle you configure, weekly or monthly.
The hard deadline for all types is the earlier of the date you file the relevant GST return and that return’s filing due date. So if you file early, your invoice data has to be in early too.
Small mercy for anyone worried about mismatches. IRAS accepts that the data you submit won’t always tie exactly to your GST return. It names timing differences, deemed supplies and partial input tax claims as legitimate reasons.
You won’t be penalised for those, provided you keep proper records and can produce them on request. Records have to be kept for at least 5 years, and that now includes storing Peppol invoices as machine-readable XML.
📖 Related reading: clean submissions start with clean claims. Our template-led guide to building a company expense policy covers what staff need to capture and when.
How to Comply, in Four Steps
- Check whether your accounting software is already InvoiceNow-Ready.
IMDA publishes an accredited InvoiceNow-Ready Solution Provider (IRSP) list, and it’s long. Xero, SAP, Sage, AutoCount, Financio and dozens of local packages are on it. If yours is listed, you may only need the feature switched on.
- If you run your own ERP, engage an Access Point Provider.
Businesses on SAP S/4HANA, Oracle NetSuite, Microsoft Dynamics or an in-house build connect through an IMDA-accredited Access Point rather than a packaged solution. IRAS tells these businesses to allow 3 to 12 months for the connection.
- Register on the network and get your Peppol ID.
Your solution provider or Access Point handles this, registering your UEN in the SG Peppol Directory. You can search that directory to see which of your own suppliers and customers are already on the network.
- Switch on GST InvoiceNow Submission and run a test.
This is the step that actually makes you compliant. Enable the GST InvoiceNow Submission feature in your solution and confirm data is reaching IRAS before your mandate date, not on it.
After that, issuing an e-invoice is just invoicing. You raise it in your accounting software as usual, and instead of exporting a PDF, you send it to your customer’s Peppol ID. The transmission to IRAS happens on its own.
If You Invoice From a Spreadsheet
Plenty of small Singapore companies bill from an Excel template or a Google Sheet, email the PDF, and file the copy in a folder. No accounting package, no ERP, nothing to switch on.
If that’s you, a spreadsheet won’t meet the requirement. Invoice data has to be submitted from an InvoiceNow-Ready Solution, and a spreadsheet isn’t one. Steps 2 and 3 above don’t apply to you either, because those are for businesses with their own ERP.
Your path is shorter than everyone else’s. Adopt one of the free-of-charge packages covered in the next section, and it becomes your accounting software and your submission route in one move. Those packages are free with no conditions and run to March 2031.
The real change to plan for isn’t the technology. It’s that you’ll be recording invoices in a system rather than a sheet.
Two things worth knowing before you pick one. Taking a free package means you can’t claim the S$1,000 grant, for reasons covered below.
And you don’t need to be on the network to be in scope. PDF invoices to customers who aren’t connected still get submitted as solution-extracted invoices. Moving off the spreadsheet is the requirement, not moving all your customers onto Peppol.
📖 Related reading: still choosing a system? Our roundup of the best expense management software in Singapore compares what SG finance teams are running.
Grants and Free Solutions
Onboarding doesn’t have to cost anything, and this is where the numbers have moved recently. There are two routes: take a free solution package, or pay for a subscription and claim a cash grant. They’re mutually exclusive, so it’s worth reading both before you sign anything.
Free Solutions Now Run to 2031
IMDA’s list of free-of-charge packages for GST-registered businesses, updated 28 July 2026, now runs from 1 April 2025 to 31 March 2031. The full package is free with no conditions attached, from providers including Activants, AutoCount, Billbay, Datapost, Link4 and Rockbell.
The window used to close in March 2027. It was extended, so a March 2027 date is out of date wherever you come across it.
The Cash Grants
| Grant | Amount | Who it’s for |
|---|---|---|
| GST InvoiceNow Transition Grant | S$1,000 | GST-registered businesses with total annual supplies ≤ S$4 million in CY2025 |
| GST InvoiceNow Transition Grant | S$5,000 | Businesses above S$4 million integrating their own ERP via an Access Point |
| InvoiceNow Queen Bee Grant | S$25,000 | Businesses over S$4 million turnover with 200+ suppliers or customers and a custom ERP |
Both transition grants are fixed payouts, not reimbursements, so you get the full amount regardless of what you actually spent. There’s no formal application: you submit proof of cost through a claim form, and payment lands via PayNow Corporate roughly 2 months later. The S$1,000 grant runs from 1 July 2026 to 31 March 2030, or until the pot is empty.
The Free-Solution Trap
The catch sits in the eligibility rules, and it’s a genuine fork in the road.
If you take a free solution, you can’t claim the S$1,000 grant. The grant exists to defray a subscription cost, and a free package has no cost to defray. You also can’t claim it if you’re already subscribed to any IRSP, even if you never switched GST InvoiceNow on.
Moving from a free package to a paid one to claim the grant is worse than it sounds. You have to de-register from the network, delete your account, and wait 3 months before subscribing. If that wait-out period ends after your mandate date, you don’t qualify at all.
One more group misses out. Businesses that voluntarily registered for GST on or after 1 April 2026 aren’t eligible for the S$1,000 grant, because adopting InvoiceNow was a condition of their registration rather than early adoption.
So the decision is straightforward. Free package, or paid subscription plus S$1,000, but not both.
📖 Related reading: setting up the finance stack from scratch? Our comparison of the best business accounts in Singapore covers what to open alongside your accounting software.
What Happens If You Miss Your Deadline
For voluntary GST registrants, the consequence is spelt out plainly: InvoiceNow adoption is an additional condition of voluntary registration, and registrants who are non-compliant may have their GST registration revoked.
That’s a bigger deal than a fine. Losing GST registration means losing the ability to claim input tax on your purchases.
For everyone else, IRAS hasn’t published a penalty schedule. The legislative amendments covering all remaining GST-registered businesses are still to be enacted, so the enforcement detail for later phases isn’t public yet. Anyone quoting you a specific fine for a 2029 deadline is guessing.
The practical risk is less dramatic and more likely. Your accounting system isn’t ready, your Access Point integration slips, and you spend the quarter before your deadline paying for urgent work. Work you could have scheduled calmly a year earlier.
📖 Related reading: for the mechanics of moving money to overseas suppliers and what banks charge, see our guide to telegraphic transfers in Singapore.
Cross-Border Invoices and Foreign-Currency Spend
One knock-on effect is worth planning for, and it has nothing to do with software.
Once your purchase data flows to IRAS transaction by transaction, the Singapore-dollar figure you record against a foreign-currency invoice stops being a private bookkeeping detail. It’s data you’ve submitted.
That matters because the amount you record is the amount you actually paid. If the card or account you paid with added a foreign exchange markup, that markup is baked into your recorded cost.
Most Singapore business credit cards charge a foreign-currency fee of around 3.25%, made up of roughly 2.25% from the bank and 1% from the card network. On S$100,000 of annual foreign-currency costs, that’s about S$3,250 sitting inside numbers you’re now reporting to IRAS.
The same logic applies to what you pay suppliers abroad, where an overseas remittance carries its own spread on top of the invoice value.
This is where YouBiz does useful work alongside your InvoiceNow setup rather than instead of it.
YouBiz charges real 0% FX fees on foreign card spend, at the Mastercard wholesale rate. That rate closely tracks the mid-market rate, so the figure landing in your books is the true cost of the purchase rather than the cost plus a markup.
You can also hold and exchange 8 currencies (SGD, USD, EUR, GBP, JPY, HKD, AUD and CHF), and pay overseas suppliers in 20 currencies reaching 150+ countries from the dashboard.
YouBiz isn’t an InvoiceNow solution, and it doesn’t transmit invoice data to IRAS. That job belongs to your accredited IRSP or Access Point. What YouBiz does is make the spend side clean before it gets there. Statements connect to Xero, which is itself on IMDA’s accredited IRSP list, so card transactions land already categorised in the same system that handles your submission.
For deeper detail on the money side, see our breakdown of YouBiz exchange rates versus the banks and our comparison of the best multi-currency business cards in Singapore.
FAQs
No. It’s mandatory for GST-registered businesses only, phased in between 1 November 2025 and 1 April 2031. If your business isn’t GST-registered, you can still join InvoiceNow voluntarily to cut the manual work out of invoicing, but nothing compels you to. One catch: if you register for GST voluntarily now, adopting InvoiceNow comes as a condition of that registration.
There isn’t one that exempts you. Turnover bands of S$200,000, S$1 million and S$4 million decide which year you have to comply, not whether you have to. Separately, compulsory GST registration in Singapore still kicks in at S$1 million of taxable turnover.
An IMDA-accredited provider that connects your finance system to the InvoiceNow network and passes your invoice data on. If you use off-the-shelf accounting software from an accredited provider, the Access Point sits behind it and you never deal with it directly. If you run your own ERP, you engage one yourself.
Yes. InvoiceNow changes how invoice data reaches IRAS, not your obligation to bill your customers or to meet the usual GST content requirements on a tax invoice. Business-to-consumer sales aren’t carried on the network, but the invoice data for in-scope consumer sales still has to be submitted to IRAS.
You’re still covered, and you still have to submit. Invoices issued or received outside the network get recorded in your InvoiceNow-Ready solution and sent to IRAS as solution-extracted invoices. You can check who’s already connected by searching the SG Peppol Directory.
Voluntary GST registrants who don’t comply may have their GST registration revoked, which IRAS states directly. For businesses in the 2028 to 2031 phases, the legislation is still to be enacted, and no penalty schedule has been published, so treat any specific fine figure you see quoted as speculation.
It can be free. IMDA’s free-of-charge packages for GST-registered businesses run to 31 March 2031 with no conditions attached. Paid providers charge either per transaction or by subscription, and businesses taking the paid route may be able to claim a fixed S$1,000, S$5,000 or S$25,000 grant depending on size and setup.
Get the Date Right, Then Get the Data Clean
The GST InvoiceNow Requirement isn’t a tax change. Your GST rate, your returns and your filing deadlines all stay exactly where they were. What changes is that IRAS starts seeing your invoices at transaction level instead of as a quarterly summary.
Find your date, either from IRAS’s notification or its implementation date calculator, and pick your solution early enough that the connection is boring rather than urgent. Then decide the free-package-versus-grant question before you sign anything, because you can’t have both.
The data you submit is only as clean as the spending behind it. YouBiz gives your company free multi-currency corporate cards, real 0% FX fees on foreign card spend at the Mastercard wholesale rate, unlimited 1% cashback on eligible spends, and statements that connect straight to Xero. Over 10,000 finance teams run on it.
It won’t file anything for you. It just means the numbers reaching your accounting system are the real ones.
Applying takes under five minutes via Singpass, with approval in one to two business days and a virtual Mastercard live in the app straight after.
This guide is general information, not tax advice. Dates, grant terms and thresholds can change, so confirm your company’s position with IRAS or a qualified tax adviser before acting.
