In a volatile business environment, the general trend among foreign investors is to prioritize flexible outsourced operating solutions. Besides traditional specialized areas such as tax advisory or accounting, back office services are increasingly trusted by FDI companies in order to convert the fixed costs of salaries, insurance and recruitment for in-house operating staff into variable costs based on actual needs.
By outsourcing administrative tasks such as issuing e-invoices, reviewing contracts, preparing bank transfer orders or storing vouchers and records, a company optimizes its organizational resources. This article analyzes in detail what makes up a package of back office support for FDI companies, the benefits of reducing compliance risks, and the method for choosing a suitable service scope.
1. What Back Office Services Cover in Vietnam
Back office services are understood as a chain of administrative, corporate secretarial and legal compliance tasks. Although these tasks do not directly generate revenue, they play the role of the backbone that helps a company operate lawfully, maintain continuity and meet the prescribed deadlines.
Basically, a comprehensive back office services Vietnam package includes 03 core groups of tasks:
- Corporate Secretarial: Managing legal records and internal decisions, and complying with the Law on Enterprises.
- Office Administration: Managing vouchers, issuing invoices, supporting bank transactions and storing documents.
- Compliance Filings & Liaison: Submitting periodic reports and working directly with the competent state authorities.
Service scope note: Accounting – Tax and Payroll management are separate specialized areas, and are not within the scope of an ordinary administrative back office package. (Companies can also refer to Vina TPT’s accounting service and read the article FDI Accounting in Vietnam to understand the specific accounting obligations of FDI companies.)
2. Corporate Secretarial Tasks
Corporate secretarial work ensures that the company’s internal legal system is always standardized and fully compliant with the regulations of the Law on Enterprises:
- Drafting and managing the system of Meeting Minutes and Resolutions of the Members’ Council / Board of Directors and the General Meeting of Shareholders; updating the Register of Members / Register of Shareholders in line with the actual situation.
- In-depth advice on the rights and obligations of investors and the legal representative based on the Law on Enterprises and the company’s Charter.
- Drafting and managing internal governance documents such as Appointment Decisions, Notices, Authorizations and simple commercial/service contracts.
- Reviewing, checking the terms and tracking the validity progress of sales and purchase contracts and office/asset lease contracts.
- Carrying out the procedures to register changes to enterprise registration information (changes of shareholders/members, legal representative, increase/decrease of charter capital, change of head office address).
- Registering and notifying the company seal samples and managing the digital signature (USB Token / Digital Certificate).
As a result, every decision of the Members’ Council, the Board of Directors or the General Meeting of Shareholders is fully recorded, consistent with the registered records and ready to be provided when a state authority or partner requests it.
3. Office Administration Tasks for FDI Companies
Office administration work is designed to standardize the flow of vouchers and support the daily financial transactions of FDI companies:
- Collecting, classifying, checking the validity of and organizing the system of input invoices (office rental costs, utilities, service suppliers); issuing output e-invoices according to business needs.
- Preparing payment orders on the e-banking system (Internet Banking) for monthly operating expenses, salary expenses, Social Insurance contributions and taxes payable (the company retains the final approval right before the money is transferred).
- Receiving, checking vouchers and preparing expense reimbursement files for employees under the internal financial regulations.
- Managing clerical work, receiving and delivering mail, parcels and express-delivery documents.
- Systematically managing and storing both hard copies and soft copies of reimbursement files, personnel files and legal files; carrying out digitization and translation of documents upon request.
The company remains the final approver of every payment; the service provider only prepares the orders and records so that payments are made on time and with the proper vouchers. This separation helps the company save time on paperwork while keeping control of its cash flow.
4. Compliance Filings and Liaison with Authorities
Fulfilling compliance reporting obligations on time helps the company limit the risks of administrative violations:
- Preparing and submitting periodic reports to state management authorities according to the legal schedule: the Report on the Implementation of the Investment Project on the National Investment Information System and periodic statistical reports).
- Advising on setting up the set of vouchers and storage records needed to ensure tax compliance; working closely with the accounting department to provide figures promptly.
- Representing the company in transactions and explanatory meetings with specialized authorities such as the Department of Finance and the Management Board of Industrial Parks / Export Processing Zones (IP/EPZ); applying for new or updating operating licenses and certificates.
- Tracking and updating the Compliance Calendar and proactively sending reminders to the Board of Directors before important deadlines.
When reporting deadlines are tracked on a common calendar and reminded in advance, the management does not have to remember each deadline of each authority on its own.
5. What Back Office Services Help Your Company Optimize
Applying an outsourced back office solution brings many strategic benefits that help improve the company’s competitiveness:
- Optimizing operating costs: Converting fixed costs (salary, social insurance, recruitment costs, training for full-time administrative staff) into flexible variable costs based on the actual scope of work incurred.
- Saving management time: Freeing the management and the sales team from repetitive administrative work, helping them focus resources on market development activities and generating revenue.
- Limiting legal risks: Records and reports are handled by a team that understands the law, helping limit the risk of late filing, document errors or administrative penalties.
- Maintaining the continuity of the organization: Ensuring that the workflow runs smoothly without interruption even when there are changes in internal personnel. The record system is stored in a standardized way and is easy to look up during audits or tax inspections.
- Flexibly adjusting the scale: The company can easily expand or reduce the scope of work used at each stage of development of the investment project.
6. How to Choose the Right Back Office Services Package
Depending on the organizational model and the operating stage, a company can choose a service package with a suitable scope of work:
6.1. Newly Established FDI Company
- Context: The company has just received the Enterprise Registration Certificate (ERC) and needs to complete its initial organization.
- Recommended scope: Register the seal sample, set up the digital signature, prepare the Register of Members, issue the initial internal governance regulations, and set up a standardized record and voucher storage system from the first day of operation.
6.2. Company Without an Admin Team
- Context: The company wants to keep a lean staff structure and does not set up a separate Administration – Human Resources department.
- Recommended scope: Outsource all 03 groups of tasks as a full package: Corporate Secretarial, Office Administration and legal Compliance Reporting.
6.3. Company with an In-House Admin
- Context: The company already has in-house administrative staff handling basic office tasks.
- Recommended scope: Outsource on a supplementary modular basis for complex areas requiring high expertise: in-depth Corporate Secretarial work, periodic compliance reports and representation when working with state management authorities.
Note when choosing a provider: The company should clarify criteria such as the working language, the commitment to filing deadlines, the data security policy, the main point of contact (Single Point of Contact), and the payment approval process.
7. Back Office Services at Vina TPT
Vina TPT provides a comprehensive back office services solution, acting as a single point of contact that handles the full package of Corporate Secretary, Office Administration, and Legal Compliance tasks. Companies can easily integrate the back office package with Vina TPT’s Accounting and Payroll services to create a synchronized operational management system.
- With more than 20 years of practical experience accompanying more than 500 corporate clients, we clearly understand the common bottlenecks that FDI companies face when handling administration and compliance themselves: missing documents, missed filing deadlines, or work interruptions when internal staff resign. From this understanding, we build deadline tracking processes and clear task assignment so that work runs stably.
- Transparent quotations and clear definition of the work scope before implementation, so that the company knows which tasks are performed by Vina TPT and which tasks are handled by the internal department.
- When using the service, companies optimize the fixed costs of full-time administrative staff, reduce the risk of late or incorrect document submission, and free up management time to focus on business activities. Documents are stored systematically and are easy to retrieve during audits or inspections, while work is not interrupted when there are changes in internal personnel.
