Differences between Serviced Office and Virtual Office?

Under growing need for flexibility in business, modern workspaces design is undergoing a revolutionary change. A recent demand for remote business challenged the traditional rental office market, and provided serviced office and virtual office with the conditions to flourish. But then, what are the differences between serviced office and virtual office? How could you decide which option is a better one for your business? In this blog we will dive into the similarities and differences between virtual office and serviced office.

• Physical office entity

Serviced offices provide you with a location for conducting daily business activities. Serviced offices are inclusive office spaces that come with inclusions like business rates, utilities and Internet. You would also have a reputable address for your clients and customers to contact you. A serviced office is then suitable for those with small number of staff, and wish to work in an already-furnished workspace. 

On the other hand, virtual offices only provide you with a business address, but not a physical working space. Still, as there are more people are working as freelancers, or have just started their business, virtual offices would be perfect for those who work from home.

• Differences in type of services you could enjoy

Although services provide under the packages of different business centres differ, we could still take OneStart Business Centre’s virtual office packages, and serviced office packages as an example. 

In OneStart Business Centre’s serviced office packages, you could enjoy our comfortable working space at a lower rental price and more flexible contract terms, when compared to traditional rentals. We would provide you with all the basic office necessities, like printers, chairs, a safe, desks, and so on. Our receptionists could also answer calls for you upon requests. 

As for virtual offices packages, same as serviced office, OneStart Business Centre hopes to provide you with a more all-rounded professional aid in your business, so our receptionists would also help you to answer calls and collect mails. However, as virtual offices don’t come with a working space, facilities in our branches would not be opened for usage for virtual office’s customers. 

Unlike maybe some stricter Business Centre, OneStart Business Centre would still provide meeting rooms rental services for our virtual office’s customers. As we understand that even if you are not in need of a serviced office, there will still be times you need a room for meetings with clients. 

• Registered office address

As aforementioned in our first series about Virtual Office, According to the Hong Kong Companies Ordinance (amended in 2018), a registered office address of your company, will be the official address of your company. All companies registered in Hong Kong, must possess a registered office address. Mainly serving the function of, receiving statutory mail from the Hong Kong Government and any other legislative agencies. 

The Ordinance only required your office address to be situated within Hong Kong borders, but it doesn’t need to be the exact place where your company conducts your business activities! Therefore, as long as you are using a valid physical address, and not just a P.O. Box address, it can be registered as your office address.

As for serviced office, you could enjoy a comfortable working environment, with plush furniture and a view of Hong Kong’s hectic city landscapes. Serviced office differs from a shared office, where a shared office is an open public area with tables and chairs for different people to work at the same location. Serviced office, on the other hand, provides you with your own room as your office. You could store your files and documents, products and important business records in the room that we provide you with. We would also provide you with a personal safe for storing your important business documents.

• Legal commercial address

Virtual Office services providers, like OneStart Business Centre, have a valid physical address and a registered company service provider. A registered office address would be listed on the government record. Therefore, our registered business centre address could act as a registered office address. Our virtual address will be your mailbox, for you to receive any notices or mails from the Government, or even your online shopping invoices. While for serviced office, we are offering you a private office with Wifi and furniture for meetings or daily business operation. The room is for physical use only, not as a registered commercial address for your BR and company formation requirements.

• Facilities we offer

OneStart Business Centre aims to provide you with all the help you would need through our Virtual Office service. Therefore, other than telephone answering, we could also help you to receive Fax and mails.

Fax will be instantly scanned and sent to you through your email (depends on which package you’ve chosen). Upon any mail delivery to your dedicated mailbox, we would also send an email to notify you. You can come to our 24hrs centre to pick them up at any time.

For serviced office, OneStart Business Centre understands the needs of our customer, and have adopted a simplistic design at our serviced office working space. The office is equipped with basic office necessities, like working desks, cupboards for storage, individual phone and fax, air conditioners, printers and scanners. We could provide all you need for your dream office settings. Telephone lines are assigned per desk and fax lines are assigned per room. Therefore, if your team has more than one person, you could still assign telephone lines to different departments for different business needs.

• Flexibility for Virtual office and Serviced office

Once our agent receives your application of virtual office, we will check the validity of the BR (Business Registration) you provided us with. There should be a set of documents you received from the government, when you formed your company. After we have confirmed your BR, we will issue an invoice to your account. Once our office has successfully received your payment, your application would be processed to the next step. Our agent would activate your usage of the virtual office business address. The business address is now available for your company registration! 

For serviced office, since the number of offices in different business centre branches is fixed, there may be clients renting the offices already (in yearly contracts). Therefore, you need to call our hotline 35756888 or whatsapp our sales team to check if the serviced office is available at the moment. We have serviced offices for 1 person to maximum 6 people, with the rental prices vary from the sizes of room and locations. You can rent our serviced offices for 6-month contract or 1-year contract, and renew contracts which are also flexible and convenient.

Interested in OneStart Business Centre’s Virtual Office and Serviced offices? Phone in to our hotline 3575 6888 or WhatsApp our helpful consultants!