Build a team in Bali the compliant way. Emerhub employs your Indonesian staff legally, with proper contracts, BPJS, and THR, and sponsors the right work permits for foreign hires, all without you setting up a PT PMA. As enforcement on the island tightens, it's the clean alternative to the gray-zone setups that used to be the norm.
An employer of record is a licensed Indonesian company that employs your team on your behalf. Emerhub signs the employment contract, runs payroll, registers and pays BPJS Kesehatan and BPJS Ketenagakerjaan, pays the mandatory THR, withholds PPh 21 tax, and meets the rest of what Indonesia's Manpower Law asks of an employer. Your team works for you exactly as they would otherwise. What changes is whose name the authorities see as the employer.
It solves a specific problem. As a foreign company or founder, you can't put someone on an Indonesian payroll without a local entity, and setting up a PT PMA runs into months of registration, foreign-ownership rules, and a large capital commitment. An employer of record removes that step. Emerhub already holds the entity and the registrations, so you can have someone employed and working here in about a week, and set up your own PT PMA later if it makes sense.
For years, a lot of business on the island ran informally: local staff paid cash with no BPJS, and foreigners working on tourist visas or stretching an investor KITAS to cover day-to-day operations. That window is shutting. A dedicated immigration task force now patrols Canggu, Seminyak, and the other hotspots, workspaces and villas have been raided, officers check social media for signs of work, and hundreds of foreigners were deported from Bali in the past year. On the labor side, employing staff without BPJS or below the regional minimum wage carries criminal penalties, not just fines. An EOR is the way to put both halves of your operation on the right side of the line.
Three ways to put a team on the ground in Bali, with different trade-offs in speed, risk, and cost. For most founders and foreign companies hiring their first few people here, the employer of record is the one that gets them working fastest and compliantly.
| Informal / contractors | Your own PT PMA | Emerhub EOR | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Setup time | Immediate, but exposed | Months: OSS, capital, foreign-ownership rules | About a week |
| Compliance risk | High: BPJS and wage breaches are now criminal | Lower, once correctly run | Carried by Emerhub as the legal employer |
| HR & payroll | Handled by you, informally | Needs an in-house or outsourced local function | Fully managed, BPJS, THR, and tax included |
| Foreign work permits | Not addressed; a real risk | You sponsor your own, once running | We sponsor work KITAS for eligible roles |
| Upfront cost | Low, with hidden exposure | High: capital commitment, licensing, HR setup | A flat monthly fee per employee |
| Best for | Genuinely independent, short projects | Large or permanent operations | Hiring full-time staff now, entity later |
The split is clean: Emerhub takes every legal employment obligation, and you keep everything that makes the role yours. Indonesia's mandatory employer contributions (BPJS Kesehatan and the four BPJS Ketenagakerjaan programs) add around 10 to 13% on top of salary, plus the THR, the religious-holiday allowance that works like a statutory 13th month. The compliance side is the side we own.
When you already have the person, onboarding runs in about a week. When you need us to find them too, recruitment adds a couple of weeks at the front.
We map your hiring need: the role, the salary against local benchmarks, the start date, and whether you have a candidate or want us to source one. If the hire is a foreign national, this is where we check the role against the list open to foreigners and plan the work permit.
We draft a compliant Manpower Law contract, register the employee with BPJS Kesehatan and Ketenagakerjaan, and onboard them under Emerhub as the legal employer. For a foreign hire, we run the RPTKA and work KITAS in parallel. Your team member starts work for you while the paperwork sits correctly with us.
We run payroll on schedule, remit the BPJS contributions, withhold PPh 21, and pay the THR when it falls due before the religious holiday. Your employee is paid accurately and on time, every cycle.
We handle the tax filings and the statutory remittances on their deadlines, keep you current as rules and minimum wages change, and stay reachable for both you and your employee. If the operation grows into its own PT PMA, we set that up and move everyone across.
Our pricing is simple: 10% of the total monthly cost to employ someone, their salary plus the BPJS contributions and the prorated THR, with a floor of $49.99 and a ceiling of $250 per employee per month. Set a salary below to see the fee and the all-in monthly cost.
For estimate purposes only. Figures shift with exchange rates and current statutory rates, so talk to our team for an exact quote.
Indonesia's mandatory employer contributions (BPJS Kesehatan, JHT, JKK, JKM, and JP) add roughly 10% on top of salary, with the BPJS Kesehatan and JP bases capped at IDR 12M and IDR 11.09M respectively, plus a prorated month of THR. The calculator uses 2026 rates at roughly Rp 16,800 to the dollar; we confirm exact figures on a quote. Salary and statutory costs are billed alongside the fee and passed through transparently, with no setup fee and no entity to register. It's the most affordable EOR pricing in the market.
Send us the role and the target salary, and we'll come back with the exact monthly cost and how soon we can have someone working for you.
We employ, pay, and support your team with our own Bali staff, not a chain of third-party subcontractors. When something needs sorting with BPJS, the tax office, or immigration, it's our people doing it.
Emerhub has operated in Indonesia since 2011, and Bali has been part of that from early on. The local compliance knowledge here is deep, not borrowed from a head office somewhere else.
For foreign hires in roles open to them, we sponsor a proper work KITAS through the entity, so their work rests on the right permit rather than an investor KITAS or remote-worker visa stretched to cover it.
Where a new PT PMA takes months, your first hire under our EOR can be working in about a week, with BPJS registered behind them.
When the operation grows enough to justify a local company, we set the PT PMA up and transfer your employees across, so the EOR is a bridge, not a dead end.
A flat per-employee fee, 10% of the cost to employ and capped at $250, that stays well below the global platforms, with the statutory costs passed through transparently.
The questions founders and companies ask before hiring through an employer of record in Bali.
Yes. Through an employer of record, Emerhub becomes the legal employer of your Bali team, so you employ people compliantly, with Manpower Law contracts, BPJS, and THR, without registering your own PT PMA. It's the fastest legal way to put a team on the ground here, and the clean alternative to informal arrangements that enforcement is now targeting.
The fee is 10% of the total monthly cost to employ someone, their salary plus the BPJS contributions and the THR, starting at $49.99 per employee and capped at $250 no matter how senior the hire. For many local Bali salaries the fee sits near the floor, and the cap keeps it predictable for senior roles. The salary and statutory costs are billed alongside it and passed through transparently, with no setup fee and no capital to put down.
An investor KITAS authorises your role as a shareholder or director of the PT PMA that sponsors it; it isn't a general license to perform any work, and it doesn't make informal hiring compliant. As enforcement tightens, the clean approach is to employ your team through a proper employer, which the EOR provides, and to make sure your own activities sit on a permit that actually covers them. We can advise on which permit fits what you're doing and sponsor a work KITAS where one is needed.
Yes, for roles that are open to foreigners. Indonesia keeps an official list of positions closed to foreign nationals, but for the open ones, mostly management, technical, and specialist roles, we run the RPTKA work plan and sponsor a work KITAS (E23) through the entity. That puts the foreign hire on the correct footing rather than relying on a visa that doesn't authorise the work.
Yes. THR (Tunjangan Hari Raya) is a statutory religious-holiday allowance, equivalent to one month's salary for employees with a year or more of service and pro-rated below that, paid before the relevant religious holiday each year. We accrue it monthly in payroll so it never lands as a surprise, then run the payment and the filings around it.
An EOR is the licensed, fully documented version of what informal hiring tries to skip. The employee has a Manpower Law contract, BPJS registration, the correct regional minimum wage, and the THR; the employer (Emerhub) carries the legal obligations and the criminal exposure that has begun to attach to unregistered employment in Indonesia. The trade-off is a small monthly fee in exchange for a clean, defensible footing.
When you already have your candidate, onboarding through our EOR takes about a week: contract, BPJS registration, and start. For a foreign hire, the work KITAS adds a few more weeks because the RPTKA runs alongside. When you also want us to find the person, recruitment adds roughly two weeks at the front.
Yes. The EOR is designed as a bridge: when the operation grows enough to justify a local company, we set up the PT PMA, plan the foreign-ownership structure correctly, and transfer your employees across with continuity of service. The transition is run by the same team, so nothing about the team or the role changes other than the entity on the contract.
A free, no-obligation call: thirty minutes with our Bali team to scope the role, model the cost on real numbers, and map a realistic start date for your first hire.