The usual response to “am I eligible for an ERP grant” is roughly this: you are registered in Singapore, have at least 30% local shareholding, and do less than S$100M in annual revenue or have fewer than 100 employees. Those are the headline tests for the Enterprise Development Grant (EDG) and the Productivity Solutions Grant (PSG), the two kinds of grants your typical ERP project will leverage from today. But that's not the full story, and that's why businesses that think they're eligible then hit roadblocks somewhere between the application-creation stage and the 6-to-8-week notice.
The basic test, and where it actually applies
Both use the same bedrock: the criteria you see defined for the standard SME in Enterprise Singapore, more or less. It must have the company registered and operating in Singapore. It must have at least 30% of equity owned directly or indirectly by Singapore Citizens or Singapore Permanent Residents, traced all the way to the ultimate natural owner.
And it must be based on a Group Annual Sales Turnover of S$100m, OR on Group employment size of 200. You have to make either the turnover OR the headcount test for that leg.
In the case of a business easily meeting all 3 criteria (eg. 60% ownership; $20m turnover; 40 employees), it’s clear-cut – you’re in comfortable SME territory for both EDG and PSG. It is only at the fringes that the issue typically appears and ERP project is usually the cause for businesses taking a hard and much-needed second look at their underlying structure and those edge cases are the ones that cause the hiccups.
Where "Group" quietly disqualifies businesses that look eligible
This is by far the biggest surprise for potential ERP applicants and one that usually isn’t emphasized as much as it should be in generic grant guides. It uses the so-called “turnover and headcount” test not on your Singapore entity, but at the Group level. All companies under common ownership are aggregated to calculate the headcount and revenue.
A local Singapore entity for an ASEAN business group may have 15 people on the ground in Singapore and S$8 million in Singapore revenue. It looks like a Small and Medium Enterprise individually based on these two metrics, easily meeting either criterion. However, if it is part of a regional parent with subsidiaries in three other countries, and with combined revenue of S$150 million, that Singapore entity would not qualify for a Singapore government grant (although it may qualify for similar programmes in Singapore or other locations). Yet it’s often the perfect type of company (Singapore’s subsidiary or RHC of a medium-sized ASEAN group) which wants to unify their financial and reporting processes for multiple entities across regions, and needs a grant solution to make that feasible.
You need to compare your Group revenue/headcount, not the Singapore company’s revenue/headcount, if your business is not an independently owned stand-alone Singapore enterprise.
Where local shareholding gets more complicated than "who owns the shares"
The local equity threshold calculation is not determined by who is legally registered as holding shares on a shareholder register. For instance, a 40%-owned Singapore company that is wholly owned by a Singapore incorporated investment holding company does not satisfy the test in and of itself, but by looking right through the intermediate company to who ultimately owns its shareholding (down to a final Individual Singapore Citizen and/or PR level).
It's surprising how often a company with an intermediate or complex layer structure is actually caught by the 30% ownership test. This includes companies that raised investment via investment holding companies or family trusts early in the startup process. Always get your company secretary and/or accountant to map out the 'ultimate' shareholding pattern for grant eligibility prior to making the assumption that the 30% threshold is met based on a superficial examination of your shareholding register.
So, a below the threshold company doesn't necessarily get no funding, but will usually only be able to go down to the lowest funding band, which results in lower grant funding (broadly 30% instead of 50%, albeit the proportions differ across both EDG and PSG) thus the grant math will change.
Meeting the criteria doesn't automatically mean an approvable project
This is the element many of the self-assessment tools neglect to cover, and it impacts ERP in particular more than other types of grant: the official EDG documentation lists application quality in terms of the scope of the project, the desired outcomes and the capacity of the service provider – in addition to the basic eligibility factors I've listed above. Since EDG doesn't maintain an approved list of providers, an ERP application by a vendor that has never delivered anything comparable here in Singapore, even if they meet all other criteria, will be inherently weaker. And don't neglect the financial Readiness Criteria: the EDG also checks that applicant companies have sufficient funding capacity to meet project costs.
That means Singapore SMEs, for example, that are otherwise compliant but with tight working capital or mid-restructuring may face issues, especially if the financial statements don't look robust.
While not presented as strict, minimum, hard and fast numbers, this is a key criteria that most of our clients should work closely with their finance team to properly reflect in their management accounts, in honesty, prior to making an application. Note: PSG will be subject to an additional 3 local employee threshold in the point of application requirement, where its implementation partners provide consultancy-based services rather than just software/equipment.
A quick timing check that voids eligibility outright
Ownership, turnover or funding status doesn’t play a factor – once your project is deemed to have ‘started’ for either scheme (which includes if you’ve started work; made any payment; deposit etc., to the vendor) or you have signed any contract with the vendor (even if it’s a letter of intent to guarantee implementation dates, while you’re still pulling the application together!) then it’s immediately ineligible. Check this against your own timescales because you’d be amazed just how many ERP projects fell foul by kicking off vendor demos or meetings to secure capacity, before confirming it.
Newly incorporated companies
If your business is newly incorporated, ownership, turnover and financial readiness will be measured based on where you are today and there is no requirement to have any trading history – a new company would still be eligible. The only difficulty that a company with a very poor financial record would likely experience would be with the financial readiness assessment, and it would be difficult to argue one way or another on that issue. The easiest thing to do in this instance would be to take it up with the Enterprise Singapore, or your grant consultant, prior to anything else.
Which scheme fits your eligibility profile
Once these initial baseline criteria are met, it essentially becomes a question of EDG versus PSG; typically, this depends on the actual nature and shape of your particular ERP project as opposed to pure eligibility. If it’s a fairly standard, more or less ‘out-of-the-box’ ERP with a few minor tweaks and on the ‘approved solutions’ page on GoBusiness Gov Assist, it may fit into PSG (quicker processing, capped at S$30,000 per firm per financial year). If it is a customised, large-scale implementation across several different entities, if a lot of custom workflow configuration is required, or if it centres on a wider operational change (e.g. A digital transformation), it is more likely to fall under EDG (no upper limit, but a full proposal is required and evaluation takes more time).
It’s worth noting there’s a new scheme to be launched in the back-end of 2026 that eventually combines the EDG and PSG grants with the MRA grant into a single activity-based application, called EDGE; this has not been launched and Enterprise Singapore’s specifics on what sort of ‘digitisation activities’ may fall under EDGE and its corresponding criteria is not yet available, but for those seeking project funding now, the criteria currently described for EDG and PSG is what applies.
What to check before you approach a vendor
Since a large portion of eligibility questions is linked to ownership structures and vendor expertise rather than just software, consider doing the following three steps BEFORE you try selecting someERP implementation companies: Clarify your Group-level turnover and headcount (not just assuming from share registers), trace back who is truly the ultimate Singapore company that owns your local Singapore company and ask all potential ERP vendors straight-up if they have previousSingapore ERP implementation track records of similar scope, as the track records will become part of the EDG application anyway.
For example, Odoo ERP implementation firms like SerpentCS (as well as many other Odoo partners) offerSingaporeand IRAS-compliantGST localization. That’s certainly a sensible capability to check for all ERP suppliers of any platform, similar to the other aforementioned tracking capability. Whether it’s a good fit depends on yourindustry andhow much customization is required, a question for a different assessment from grant eligibility itself.
The practical takeaway
Most Singapore SMEs likely to look for ERP projects will pass the headline test easily enough. What tends to trip people up are the points hidden below it – a Group total turnover figure that includes a non-Singaporean overseas parent, ownership that is not as easily traceable back to local ownership as may have been assumed, or a project staged in a way where the vendor contract has been agreed some two weeks prior. These are things that are simply missed with a simple checklist and ones where you will be doing better to dig that little deeper before starting to work a timeline built around grant funding you might not otherwise actually have.
FAQ
Either one is enough on its own. The test is Group Annual Sales Turnover not exceeding S$100 million, OR Group employment size not exceeding 200 workers. You don't need to pass both; meeting just one of the two satisfies that leg of the SME eligibility criteria for EDG and PSG.
Your whole group. This is the detail the blog flags as the biggest surprise for applicants: the turnover and headcount test is applied at the Group level, meaning your parent company and any other entities under common ownership are aggregated, not just your Singapore entity's own numbers. A Singapore subsidiary with S$8 million in local revenue and 15 staff can still fail this test if it sits under a regional parent whose combined group revenue is S$150 million.
It doesn't necessarily mean no funding at all. It typically means dropping to the lower, non-SME support tier, roughly 30% instead of 50% (the exact proportions differ slightly between EDG and PSG), which changes your grant maths meaningfully even though it doesn't disqualify you outright.
Yes. Ownership, turnover, and financial readiness are assessed based on your current position, not a trading history requirement, so a new company isn't automatically excluded. The one area that may be harder to satisfy is the financial readiness assessment, simply because there's less financial history to evaluate. The blog suggests raising this directly with Enterprise Singapore or a grant consultant early if this applies to you.
No. This is one of the blog's central points: EDG applications are also assessed on project scope, project outcomes, and the competency of the service provider, on top of the baseline eligibility criteria. Since EDG has no pre-approved vendor list, a proposal from a vendor with no comparable Singapore delivery history is a weaker application even from a company that meets every eligibility test. Financial readiness (the applicant's capacity to fund and complete the project) is assessed separately as well.
The blog frames this as an either/or decision based on the nature of the project rather than something you'd combine for the same cost items: a fairly standard, largely off-the-shelf ERP package on the approved solutions list points toward PSG (faster, capped at S$30,000 per company per financial year), while a customised, multi-entity, or larger-scale implementation points toward EDG (no fixed cap, fuller proposal, longer assessment).
Possibly, but it's not confirmed yet. EDGE is set to launch in the second half of 2026 and will eventually fold EDG, PSG, and MRA into a single activity-based application. Enterprise Singapore hasn't published the specific eligibility or funding details for digitalisation-type activities under EDGE yet, so for a project ready to proceed now, the current EDG and PSG eligibility criteria described in the article are what actually apply.
