Budgeting for Singapore Market Research From Overseas, Including Currency, GST, and Quotes

I read the IRAS page on international services twice before I trusted my own summary of it (once on a Saturday with coffee, once on Monday with a highlighter, because the first pass left me unsure I had not skimmed past a condition). I did that for a reason. A budget for Singapore market research looks simple from a head office in Chicago, Manchester, or Melbourne: a quote arrives, finance converts it, procurement signs. Then the invoice shows a number that is not the number in the quote, and nobody can say quite why.

Here's the tension. Three things change what you actually pay for Singapore research after the scope is agreed: the currency on the invoice, whether Singapore's 9% GST is added, and the payment terms around due dates and bank charges. None of them sits in the headline price. A focus group programme that starts at SGD 12,000 (roughly US$9,400, £7,000, or A$13,400 at 30 October 2026 rates, and I checked those conversions twice) can cost you a different amount in your own currency without a single extra group being added. I think most budget surprises on overseas research start in these three lines rather than in the fieldwork, though I am working from published guidance and not from a survey of buyers.

The way I have started sorting these questions is into three layers. Let's call them Price, Wrapper, and Edges, though I am still working out whether "Wrapper" is the right word (your finance team probably says "commercial terms", which sounds duller and is almost certainly more accurate).

Most quote comparisons I have seen spend nearly all their attention on Price. The other two layers get a quick skim, if that. The sections below take them in order, starting with the one that moves without anyone touching the contract.

Currency, and why a strong Singapore dollar changes your budget

Prices on assembled.sg are published in Singapore dollars (SGD), so every conversion in this post is arithmetic you will redo on the day you pay. The Singapore dollar does not behave like most currencies. The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) runs monetary policy through the exchange rate rather than interest rates, managing the dollar against a trade-weighted basket of currencies (the S$NEER) inside a policy band. Its rate against any single currency, including yours, still moves. On 26 January 2026 it reached its strongest level against the US dollar since 2014, at around 0.79 US dollars per Singapore dollar. The conversions below use 0.78.

Does a strong Singapore dollar mean Singapore research is getting expensive for you? Partly. Ang Yuit, president of the Association of Small and Medium Enterprises, told The Star in July that a firmer Singapore dollar makes Singaporean offerings relatively more expensive overseas. Actually, that framing is too neat for a research budget. Your SGD quote did not change, and what moved is the cost of buying Singapore dollars, which you only discover on payment day if the quote is silent about timing.

Singapore's manufacturers handle this differently. Lennon Tan, president of the Singapore Manufacturing Federation, said in the same report that many long-term contracts reprice only when the exchange rate moves past an agreed threshold, so smaller swings are absorbed. Research projects rarely run that long, but the idea travels. Ask whether the quoted SGD price is fixed, how long it stays valid, and whether either side can reopen it after a sharp move. Researcher Hy Mariampolski, in a guide first published in Quirk's in 2000, says a qualitative estimate is typically valid for about three months (I would treat that as a habit, not a rule).

Approximate conversions at 30 October 2026 rates (1 SGD = 0.78 USD, 0.58 GBP, 1.11 AUD). Rates move daily. Figures exclude GST and bank charges.

These are from-prices, which is a polite way of saying floors. Actually, "floor" overstates the certainty, because scope sets the final figure. The focus group price covers recruitment, venue, incentives, moderation, recording, transcription, and a report, and the choice between focus groups and in-depth interviews moves a budget by thousands of dollars (our post on choosing between the two methods covers that trade-off).

GST, and whether it applies to you

Singapore's goods and services tax has been 9% since 1 January 2024, after a first step from 7% to 8% on 1 January 2023, according to the government's GoBusiness guidance. Whether it appears on your invoice is a separate question. The Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore lets suppliers charge 0% on certain international services, but its guidance on international services says plainly that not all services provided to overseas customers can be zero-rated. The conditions it lists turn on where the customer belongs and who directly benefits from the service. Separately, only GST-registered suppliers charge GST in the first place. I read the page twice (it is long, and mostly menu), and what I can state with confidence is narrower than I hoped.

Whether a given research project is zero-rated, standard-rated, or untaxed is a question for the supplier's GST position and your own tax adviser. I am a researcher, not a tax adviser, and nothing here is tax advice. So do the arithmetic for the worst case instead. If 9% applies, GST adds SGD 1,080 to a SGD 12,000 focus group programme (about US$845), SGD 720 to an online survey from SGD 8,000, and SGD 450 to eight interviews from SGD 5,000. If your company cannot recover Singapore GST at home, that is a real cost. I do not know the rule for your country, and it differs, so ask your finance team before the quote arrives, not after.

What you can control is the wording. Ask the supplier to print one of three lines on the quote: GST charged at 9%, zero-rated, or supplier not GST-registered. A quote with no GST line has simply postponed the question to invoice day. Buyers in sectors with formal procurement, banks and insurers for example (see our financial services research), tend to ask the GST question first, in my experience, though I could be generalising from a small sample.

Invoices, payment terms, and what lands in the bank

A research proposal should state its payment terms, including currency, due dates, and late fees, according to Mariampolski's guide, and I agree with every item on that list. I would add one more, which is who pays the bank charges. Wise, a payments provider with an obvious interest in the comparison, notes that an international transfer into a DBS account carries a SGD 10 incoming fee and that intermediary banks can deduct their own charges along the route, so the amount received can be lower than the amount sent. Treat the specific figures as a snapshot (fees change) and the pattern as stable. A hypothetical SGD 12,000 invoice that arrives as SGD 11,950 is a small gap on paper and a long email thread in practice.

So ask four things before you pay. Is the invoice in SGD or in your currency? Who bears the bank charges at each end? Is payment a single sum or split across milestones, and on which dates? What happens if payment runs late? Assembled's own terms are set out in each tailored quote (the published response times are 24 hours for an enquiry and 48 hours for a quote), and I would rather you read them in writing than rely on my summary here. Your accounts payable team probably knows which fields an invoice needs, such as your legal entity name and purchase order number, so send that list with your brief.

Reading the quote itself, line by line

Look, I know a six-row table is not exciting reading. It is the part of this post I would print.

A clear research brief shrinks the Edges layer more than any negotiation does, because most added costs appear to trace back to scope that changed after signing. For a SGD 12,000 programme, a 5 to 10 percent contingency means holding back SGD 600 to SGD 1,200 (roughly US$470 to US$940). ESOMAR and GRBN also publish a guideline for researchers and clients in primary data collection, written for those who commission research and covering focus groups, in-depth interviews, surveys, and mystery shopping. I would read it alongside your own procurement checklist.

What I would do before the quote arrives

Here's the order I would work in. Decide which currency your finance team prefers to pay in. Ask whether Singapore GST is recoverable where you are. Write a brief, so the Edges layer has fewer surprises. Then request a quote that shows currency, GST treatment, payment terms, validity, and change triggers on its face. If this is a first market entry, our guide to entering the Singapore market and market entry research page cover what comes before the budget, and our post on what research costs in Singapore covers typical ranges. The go-to guide explains how the whole process fits together.

I am still not sure whether quoting overseas buyers in their own currency would make their lives easier or only move the exchange-rate risk onto the supplier (suppliers who have tried it may disagree with each other). Either way, a quote that answers these questions in writing is cheaper for both sides than one that leaves them for the invoice.