By Cemil, Managing Director of Argus Asia, the company behind Officaid.
Every software company says it uses its own product. Here is what that means for us, day to day.
Argus Asia is a small Singapore company with clients in four countries. We have the same back-office work as any business our size: invoices to send and chase, salaries to pay, CPF to contribute, tax and MOM records to keep, and customers we do not want to forget. All of it runs in Officaid. We have no spreadsheet on the side and no second system for payroll.
Invoicing in three currencies
This year we invoiced clients in the USA, Türkiye, Indonesia and Singapore, in SGD, USD and TRY. Each invoice goes out in the client's currency. Officaid records the exchange rate on the invoice and shows the total in SGD, so our books stay in Singapore dollars without a separate conversion sheet. When a payment comes in, we record it against the invoice and the receivables catch up.
The part I value most is not sending the invoice, but knowing what is still open. Before, that meant asking someone to check. Now I look at the list.
Payroll, CPF and the filings that come with it
Everyone at Argus Asia is paid through Officaid, end to end. Payroll works out each person's CPF and the contributions that go with it. It prepares the CPF payment file and the bank file for the salaries, and it records what was paid in the books.
At the end of the year, the IR8A data comes from the same payslips, so nobody types the year's salaries into a second form. Officaid is a certified One-Stop Payroll Vendor, which is why the submissions go from inside the app.
Each employee's record also has a Regulatory tab for MOM's Occupational Employment Dataset (OED): occupation, job title, duties, education and the rest. We keep it up to date as people join, change roles or leave, so when MOM asks, the answers are already there.
Leave, claims and the rest of HR
Our team applies for leave and submits claims in the app, and approvals follow the reporting line. Nobody chases a form by email, and I can see who is away and what is waiting for approval.
Keeping connections warm
The work that brings in the next invoice lives in the same place. Contacts and companies, the conversations we have with them, and each deal in the pipeline sit next to the invoices and the people. When a deal closes, the quotation becomes the invoice; we do not retype it. When I open a client, I see what we sent, what they paid and when we last spoke.
Why it matters to us
When something is unclear in Officaid, we notice, because it is our own payroll, our own invoices and our own filings. A lot of what changed in the product this year started as a small irritation on a Monday morning at Argus Asia.
If you run a small business in Singapore and recognise the list above, start a 14-day free trial. No credit card is needed.
