Singapore has no relieving letter convention. What departing employees need is a certificate of service confirming role and dates, and, where warranted, a testimonial. What employers need is a clean record of the notice served, the handover completed, and the settlement paid within the right deadline — which for a resignation is three working days, not the next payroll run.
Resignation and Certificate of Service
Acknowledgement, handover and testimonial
Singapore has no relieving letter convention. What departing employees need is a certificate of service confirming role and dates, and, where warranted, a testimonial. What employers need is a clean record of the notice served, the handover completed, and the settlement paid within the right deadline — which for a resignation is three working days, not the next payroll run.
| Item | Detail |
|---|---|
| Employee | [NAME], [JOB TITLE], employee number [NUMBER] |
| Date of joining | [DATE] |
| Resignation received on | [DATE] |
| Contractual notice | [PERIOD] |
| Notice served in full? | [Yes / No — shortfall of ______] |
| Last day of employment | [DATE] |
| Final payment due | Within 3 working days where notice was served, or within 7 days where it was not |
| Work pass held | [No / Yes — tax clearance and withholding apply] |
| Certificate of service issued | [DATE] |
1. Acknowledgement of Resignation
[COMPANY NAME] Date: [DATE]
[EMPLOYEE NAME], [JOB TITLE]
Dear [FIRST NAME],
Acknowledgement of your resignation
Thank you for your letter of [DATE]. I acknowledge your resignation from the position of [JOB TITLE].
Notice and last day. Your notice period is [PERIOD], running from [DATE]. Your last day of employment will be [DATE]. [Where notice is waived or shortened] At your request, the Company has agreed to [waive / shorten] your notice period, and your last day will instead be [DATE]. [Where the employee will not serve notice] As you are not serving your notice period, salary in lieu for the unserved period of [PERIOD], amounting to S$ [AMOUNT], will be recovered from your final payment in accordance with your contract.
Payment. All sums due to you will be paid within [three working days / seven days] of your last day. A statement will be provided.
Handover. Please complete the handover set out in the schedule with [NAME] before your last day, and return all Company property, records, devices and credentials by [DATE].
Your continuing obligations. Your obligations of confidentiality continue after your employment ends, without limit of time. [Where covenants apply] The restrictive covenants in your contract also continue to apply, and I have enclosed a copy for your reference so that there is no misunderstanding about their scope. If you would like to discuss whether a particular role would engage them, please raise it with me — the Company would rather have that conversation now than later.
[Where a work pass is held] Work pass and tax clearance. Your pass will be cancelled with effect from [DATE]. Because you are not a Singapore citizen, the Company must complete tax clearance and is required by law to withhold all monies due to you until a clearance directive is received. We will explain the process and timeline separately. Please give us your forwarding address and bank details before you leave.
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These notes accompany the template and explain the drafting choices, the compliance points and the mistakes most often made with this document. They appear as a final page in the Word file, intended to be deleted before the document is executed.
Where an employee resigns and serves the required notice, all sums due are payable within three working days of the last day. Where they resign without serving notice, within seven days. Processing a resignation settlement through the following month’s payroll is late, and it is the most common salary complaint brought against otherwise well-run employers.
The relieving letter is a convention of other jurisdictions. Singapore practice is a certificate of service confirming role and dates, and optionally a testimonial. Employers who receive a request for a relieving letter, usually from a departing employee whose next employer is overseas, can issue the certificate of service and explain that it is the local equivalent.
The certificate states dates and roles and nothing more. The testimonial is discretionary and should only be issued where the assessment is genuinely positive. A deliberately tepid testimonial — technically accurate, conspicuously unenthusiastic — is understood by every reader and is more damaging to the employee than a refusal, while exposing the employer to an argument about bad faith.
The certificate template includes a reason-for-leaving row that can simply be omitted. Where the departure was contentious, stating a reason invites dispute about its accuracy; where it was straightforward, "resignation" is unobjectionable. Decide deliberately rather than completing every row by habit.
A reference given to a prospective employer must be accurate and fair. An unfair or misleading reference can expose the employer to a claim from the former employee, and an inaccurately favourable one to a claim from the recipient. Route all reference enquiries through one named person, keep a record of what was said, and stick to what can be evidenced.
Where an employee leaves without serving notice, the Company may recover salary in lieu for the unserved period, subject to the contract. Deducting it from the final payment is permitted, but the total deducted in a salary period remains subject to the statutory limit. Where the shortfall exceeds what can be deducted, the balance is a debt, not something to be withheld indefinitely.
Agreeing to release an employee early is often sensible and costs little goodwill. But it should be recorded as an agreement, with the revised last day stated, because it changes the payment deadline and the leave accrual. An informal "just go on Friday" leaves both sides guessing.
For a non-citizen employee, the obligation to withhold all monies pending tax clearance arises on resignation exactly as on termination. Employers associate the process with dismissals and are caught out by a resignation with a short notice period, where the one-month filing window has already closed.
The acknowledgement letter encloses the covenants and invites the employee to raise any question about scope. This is deliberate. Covenants are enforceable in Singapore where reasonable, and a former employee who breaches one because they had forgotten its terms serves nobody. A conversation before they accept a role is far cheaper than an injunction afterwards.
Item 9 of the handover asks for written confirmation. Data on personal cloud storage, personal email and messaging applications is the category that survives every offboarding process and is the hardest to address after the person has gone.
Where the employee holds an office in the Company or a related corporation, resignation from employment does not automatically vacate it, and the resignation must be filed. Note that a sole director cannot resign leaving the office vacant.
Resignations frequently reveal problems that no internal process surfaced — a manager, a workload pattern, an unreported harassment issue. Make the conversation genuinely optional and genuinely confidential, and record themes rather than attributed comments.
Where the response to a resignation is a counter-offer, understand what actually prompted the departure first. An increase that addresses a symptom leaves the cause in place, and the same resignation usually arrives some months later, by which point the replacement search starts from zero.
A former employee having to send three emails for a certificate of service is a small failure that is remembered and repeated. Issue it with the final settlement.
Reflects Singapore law current as of {{DATE OF USE}}. Payment deadlines, deduction limits, tax clearance obligations and work pass cancellation timelines all change — confirm the current position, and note that a review of the Employment Act is under way with proposals expected in the second half of 2026.
This is a ready-to-use template provided for convenience. Laws and requirements change, and every situation is different — please have it reviewed by a qualified professional (a lawyer, corporate secretary, or accountant as relevant) before you rely on it.