Frequently asked questions
What a fractional backoffice service in Japan actually does, what it costs, where the licensed-professional line sits, and how engagements start and end.
You need someone running your backoffice (vendor emails, AP and AR, HR and HRIS, onboarding and offboarding, file organization, research on the rules that apply to you) but you don't need that person full-time yet. That's what fractional means. You get the work, scoped to the hours you actually need, billed monthly, scaled up or down as your team changes.
And unlike most outsourcing in Japan, everything I touch gets documented. The knowledge stays with your company, not with me.
The unglamorous stuff that keeps a company running. Vendor communication and management. AP and AR. HR admin and HRIS. Onboarding and offboarding, including the organizing, tracking, and coordinating around visas and relocation. Getting your contracts and corporate records in order so due diligence doesn't scare you. Stock option administration support, meaning the tracking and organizing side, not the legal side. File and folder organization. And research into the rules that apply to you, so you know what you're dealing with.
What's not in scope: anything that legally needs a licensed lawyer, tax accountant, sharoushi, or a judicial or administrative scrivener.
Japan reserves some work for licensed professionals, and that's the right call. Legal advice and contract drafting: lawyers. Tax filings and tax advice: certified tax accountants. Social insurance and labor filings: sharoushi. Commercial registration: judicial scriveners. I don't do any of that.
What I do is everything around it: preparing and organizing what those professionals need, coordinating the deadlines, tracking what's been filed, and making sure nothing falls through the cracks. When something needs a licensed opinion, I introduce you to my network of lawyers and scriveners. No markup, no middleman, no kickbacks.
No. This is operations work: getting things documented, organized, and running. Statutory filings and contract review must be handled by your own designated employee or a licensed professional. When I research the rules that apply to you, you get the facts you need, not professional advice.
Startups and small companies in Japan, primarily tech, AI, and SaaS, running as a KK or GK. That includes international founder teams, foreign-owned subsidiaries already here, and overseas companies opening a small Japan office. I work in English and Japanese, so it works even if nobody on your team reads Japanese paperwork. Other industries are fine too, just ask.
Yes. Setting up the entity itself is scrivener and lawyer territory, but almost everything after incorporation is operations. Vendor relationships, payroll coordination with your tax accountant and sharoushi, employment paperwork flow, onboarding your first hires, and getting your corporate records organized from day one.
Starting with a documented foundation is a whole lot cheaper than untangling an undocumented one two years later.
Yes, on the operational side. Due-diligence readiness is mostly unglamorous organization done early: contracts filed and trackable, corporate records complete, HR files consistent, vendor agreements findable, processes documented. I organize, track, and coordinate all of it, so when an investor or acquirer opens a data room request list, the answers already exist. The substantive legal review of documents stays with your counsel, as it should.
Yes. English at CEFR C2, Japanese at JLPT N1, and years of working with Japanese employment practice, visa procedures, and regulatory compliance. Japanese paperwork, vendors, and authorities on one side, English-speaking founders on the other, and no translation friction in between.
Three published rates. Fractional Backoffice is ¥6,500 an hour (¥7,150 with tax), ongoing and scoped to what you need. Blueprint Building is ¥800,000 (¥880,000 with tax) for the 12-week engagement, around 70 hours. Advisory Retainer is ¥13,000 an hour (¥14,300 with tax), minimum 2 hours a session.
At roughly 5 hours a week, fractional support runs about ¥1.56M a year. A haken worker costs ¥540K to ¥1.08M a year but is legally restricted in scope. A full-time hire runs ¥4M to ¥8M, plus roughly 15% social insurance and a ¥2M recruiter fee in year one.
Then let's talk. The published rates aren't the only way. If cash is short but the upside looks real, I'm open to a project fee, a success fee tied to revenue or profit, or tax-qualified stock options. Whatever gets you moving.
A haken worker is cheaper per hour. But they're legally restricted in what they can do, they run a checklist someone else wrote, and when the assignment ends, nothing stays behind. I bring the experience to decide what the checklist should be in the first place, and I document every process as I go. The work compounds and stays with your company after I leave.
Most outsourced providers in Japan (admin agencies, BPO firms, task-based outsourcers) get the task done but leave nothing behind. No documentation, no internal know-how, no plan to build one. I'm set up around the opposite outcome. Every process gets written down, you keep the documentation, and the whole point is to get you to where you don't need me anymore. When you hire someone in-house, they inherit a documented operating system instead of starting from scratch.
A 12-week engagement, three phases. Discovery, weeks 1 to 4: stakeholder interviews, process and document inventory, gap analysis, tool audit. You get a Gap Analysis Report and a Proposed Structure. Build, weeks 5 to 9: I draft your Corporate Function Map and handbook chapters, document the processes, and coach your team weekly. Transfer, weeks 10 to 12: final review, team training, onboarding support for whoever you hire to own this, handover and sign-off.
You end up with a documented operating system of 20 to 30 processes your company runs on its own. Best fit if you're around 8 to 12 people and ready to build something permanent.
By design. None of this is supposed to stick around forever. The point is to get you to where you don't need me anymore. When you hire someone in-house, I onboard them onto every process and document we built, then I step back. Knowledge transfer is a deliverable, not an afterthought. I'm not trying to make myself permanent.
Email contact@fractionalops.jp and tell me where your company is right now. Team size, who's handling what, and what's keeping you up at night. I'll tell you honestly which service fits, or whether you even need me yet. If the answer is that you don't, that's the answer you'll get.
This is operations work. Statutory filings and contract review must be handled by your own designated employee or a licensed professional. When something needs a licensed opinion, I introduce you to my network of lawyers and scriveners. No markup, no middleman, no kickbacks.