Raffles Consulting Services
Use an EDGE concurrent-activities register to separate costs, suppliers, outcomes and evidence across parallel applications.
EDGE concurrent activities can be practical when a company is undertaking distinct projects, but parallel applications create a basic control risk: the same supplier work, staff time, licence or outcome can appear in more than one file. Enterprise Singapore permits simultaneous applications for different activities and prohibits duplicate support for the same eligible expenses. A cost-conflict register makes that separation visible before submission.
List every live and planned activity
Create one row for each EDGE application, approved project and unsubmitted proposal. Include the activity name, reference number, supplier, business owner, start and end dates, approved or requested costs, claim date and current status. Add earlier EDG, MRA or PSG projects that touch the same operation because the current FAQ also restricts support for the same project across those programmes.
Use official records rather than team memory. Reconcile the list with BizSG receipts, Letters of Offer, purchase orders and finance records. A project that a department regards as finished may still have an open claim or continuing deliverable, which matters when assessing whether a new activity is genuinely separate.
Define a separate business outcome
Write one testable outcome for each activity. For example, a digital solution may reduce manual booking entry, while a market-entry activity may validate and enter one overseas market. If two rows use the same outcome, management should question whether they are separate activities or one project divided for convenience.
The official EDGE FAQ says each application is tied to a single activity and different activities may run concurrently. It does not turn overlapping work into distinct work. The operating boundary must exist in the project itself, not only in the form labels.
Break quotations into cost lines
Enter every supplier line with description, amount, tax treatment, payment milestone and the application to which it belongs. Split bundled proposals before submission. A line called implementation services can conceal discovery, configuration, training and support that overlap with another vendor or project.
Assign a unique cost-line identifier and carry it into the purchase order, invoice review and claim file. Where one supplier serves two activities, request separately priced scopes and deliverables. If a shared cost cannot be allocated on a defensible basis, do not charge it to both projects.
Map people and time without double counting
Name the internal owner and key employees for every activity. Record critical workshops, testing, training and market work on one calendar. The purpose is operational: parallel projects can fail when the same employees are expected to attend two implementations while maintaining daily service.
If staff time or wages are relevant to an activity, define the source records and period. The same hour cannot support two outcomes. Keep grant calculations separate from ordinary resource planning so that an internal estimate is not mistaken for an eligible claim item.
Check suppliers, systems and deliverables
Compare supplier statements of work side by side. Highlight repeated discovery, project management, data migration, licences, reports and training. Two vendors can use different names for the same task. Ask each supplier to describe inputs, outputs, dependencies and exclusions in plain language.
Do the same for systems and data. If two activities change the same workflow or rely on one integration, state which project owns the work and which merely consumes the result. The approved cost ledger guide provides a detailed control for the approved supplier and claim file.
Record conflict decisions
Give each possible overlap a status: separate, allocated, removed, dependent or unresolved. Add the reviewer, evidence and decision date. A verbal assurance from a supplier is not enough. The record should explain why two similar lines do not represent duplicate support.
Escalate unresolved items before submission or acceptance of a Letter of Offer. Removing a duplicate after payment may not restore the company’s budget or timetable. Where scope changes after approval are proposed, read the current rules first because vendor changes can require termination and a fresh application.
Use the register through delivery
Review the register at project kickoff, before each payment and before every claim. Match invoices and deliverables to the unique cost-line identifiers. Update dependencies when one project is delayed. Preserve rejected invoices and corrections so that the final file explains the accounting trail.
Finance should check the grant register against the general ledger and bank evidence. Project owners should check it against accepted deliverables. This two-way review detects both duplicate cost allocation and payments that lack the expected business result.
Make a portfolio decision
Parallel EDGE activities are sensible only if the company can fund and govern them. The programme is reimbursement based, so the applicant must manage cash flow and complete the work before a claim. Compare the combined commitments with available people, working capital and management attention.
Use the EDGE programme directory to confirm current activity requirements, then approve the portfolio as a whole. A clean conflict register should make it easy to see what each project buys, who owns it and why no cost is being supported twice.
Add a dependency calendar
A cost register should be paired with a dependency calendar. Show when one activity must deliver data, equipment, trained users or market findings before another can proceed. Include supplier lead times, management reviews and claim deadlines. This makes indirect overlap visible: two costs may be separate, yet both projects can still depend on the same migration, employee or customer sample and become impossible to complete together.
Review the calendar monthly and whenever an activity changes. Record the effect of delay on other projects without shifting unsupported work between budgets. If one activity is paused, decide whether dependent work can continue within its own approved scope. Preserve the original and revised sequence so that later invoices and completion evidence can be understood in the context in which management accepted them.
A reliable EDGE concurrent-activities register turns a collection of forms into one managed investment portfolio. It protects the company from duplicate costs while exposing the practical workload of delivering several projects at once.