Payroll and HR outsourcing in Vietnam

What does payroll and HR outsourcing cover in Vietnam?

Payroll and HR outsourcing means a provider runs the monthly payroll cycle and the HR administration that sits around it, while your company stays the legal employer. In Vietnam that cycle is heavier than in many markets: each pay period the provider calculates gross-to-net, issues an itemised payslip, withholds personal income tax, and declares and remits the three compulsory insurance funds and the trade-union fee. On gross salary those come to about 23.5% for the employer and 10.5% for the employee, as of October 2026.2

A full HR-outsourcing scope usually adds labour-contract drafting and filing, leave and overtime tracking, the statutory compliance calendar, and the annual personal-income-tax finalisation. What it does not change is who carries the legal duty: your entity remains the employer of record on paper, signs the labour contracts, and is the party a labour inspector or the tax authority holds responsible. The provider is your agent, not the employer. For the full breakdown of those employer on-costs and how the caps bite, see Vietnam payroll and employer costs.

When does outsourcing fit, and when do you need an EOR?

The single question that decides this is whether you already have a legal employer in Vietnam. Payroll and HR outsourcing assumes you do: you have incorporated an entity, it employs the staff, and you simply want someone else to run the mechanics. An employer of record (EOR) is the opposite case — it is for companies with no Vietnamese entity, because the EOR's own registered company becomes the legal employer and hires the worker for you.

The difference is not cosmetic. A payroll provider carries none of the employment liability; if a contract is unlawful or a contribution is underpaid, the exposure is yours. An EOR takes on that liability as the employer itself. So the choice is really between keeping the employment in-house and processing it (outsourcing) and placing the employment with a third party entirely (EOR). If you are weighing the co-employment or PEO framing, read what a PEO really means in Vietnam, where the same entity-or-no-entity line decides the answer.

What does payroll outsourcing cost in Vietnam in 2026?

Payroll-only outsourcing is the cheapest of these services, because the provider does the least: it processes payroll for an employer that already exists. Third-party sources report roughly US$15–80 per employee per month in Vietnam — nearer US$15–40 for boutique local firms and US$40–80 for regional providers — often with a monthly minimum for small headcounts, and base fees that may exclude personal-income-tax filing or the year-end finalisation. These are 2026 market observations, not our pricing; confirm scope and price with each provider.6

A full PEO or EOR fee sits well above that, because it buys more than processing. Third-party sources put PEO management fees in Vietnam at roughly US$150–650 per employee per month, and Vietnam EOR platform fees commonly around US$350–599 — in each case charged on top of gross salary and the employer's statutory on-costs.7 The gap reflects the extra the higher fee carries: either a layer of HR management (PEO) or the entire legal-employer role (EOR). For the sourced ranges and how to read them, see PEO cost in Vietnam.

What filings does a payroll provider handle for you?

The value of outsourcing in Vietnam is mostly in the filing calendar, which runs on three different rhythms and changed in 2026. A provider that misses a deadline exposes your entity, so the scope of what it commits to file matters more than the headline fee. The core obligations are below; the full year is set out in the Vietnam HR compliance calendar.

Two of these changed on 1 July 2026 and are where a stale provider most often slips. Withheld personal income tax is now declared quarterly by every employer — the old rule that tied the cadence to a company's VAT status was abolished — while social, health and unemployment insurance stay monthly.3 A credible provider also issues the payslip electronically, which the Labour Code permits (Art. 95), and keeps a bilingual version for any foreign hires.1

What are the data-protection duties on payroll and HR data?

Outsourcing payroll means handing a provider some of the most sensitive data you hold — salaries, bank details, identity numbers, dependants. Since 1 January 2026 that is governed by the Personal Data Protection Law 91/2025/QH15 and its implementing Decree 356/2025/ND-CP, which together replaced the earlier Decree 13/2023.45 Under that regime you remain accountable for the data even though the provider processes it, so the outsourcing contract has to set out what it may do with HR data, how it secures it, and what happens on exit.

Cross-border transfer is the sharp edge. Sending employee data abroad — to a parent company or an overseas payroll platform — normally requires a transfer impact assessment filed with the Ministry of Public Security within 60 days of the first transfer, though Decree 356/2025 exempts transfers made to manage staff across a multinational group.5 Confirm where your provider stores and processes payroll data before you sign; the detail and the exemption are set out in the PDPL and HR data in Vietnam.

How does EOR Vietnam cover payroll?

EOR Vietnam does not sell standalone payroll outsourcing, because our model answers the case where you have no Vietnamese entity: we employ the worker through our own registered entity, which makes us the legal employer, and payroll is simply part of that. As the employer we run the full cycle described above — gross-to-net, the itemised payslip, the roughly 23.5% statutory contributions, personal-income-tax withholding and its quarterly declaration, and the monthly social-insurance remittance — under our entity's codes, not yours.

Our service fee for this is a flat US$149 per employee per month for Vietnamese nationals — the same fee regardless of salary, seniority, role, location in Vietnam or headcount, as of October 2026. It is not a percentage of payroll. Foreign nationals who need a Vietnamese work permit are quoted separately. There are no setup, onboarding, offboarding, contract or payslip fees and no hidden fees; gross salary, the statutory employer contributions and any statutory or agreed employment payments are passed through at cost. A refundable security deposit equal to two months of the employee's employment cost is held for the engagement and returned at the end, less any unpaid amounts.

If you already have an entity and only need the processing run, payroll outsourcing is the right service and we will say so. If you do not, see how an employer of record works in Vietnam, or request a costed quote and we will tell you which model fits.