What you legally can't
delegate offshore
Most offshore staffing content is a list of what you can hand over. This is the other list — profession by profession, the work that has to stay with your licensed or registered people, and why. It is short, and it is the part that matters.
We are a staffing company, so this page argues against our own interest in places. That is deliberate. The single most common reason an offshore arrangement goes wrong in a regulated Australian business is not a bad hire — it is a capable person being given work that legally required a licensed one, usually because nobody wrote the line down.
The good news is that the line is narrower than most owners fear. In almost every profession, the regulated act is a small fraction of the hours: the lodgement, the recommendation, the signature, the assessment. The preparation that leads up to it — often eighty per cent of the clock — is not regulated at all.
What follows is the boundary as it applies in each profession we staff, with the regulator named so you can check it yourself rather than taking our word for it. Where you are unsure, ask your own licensee, professional body or adviser: this is a practical map, not legal advice.
Who this is for
✓Worth your time if
- You are in a licensed, registered or regulated profession
- You are considering offshore support and want the line before you hire
- Your licensee or professional body needs a written arrangement
- You already have offshore staff and have never documented the boundary
✕Probably not if
- You are in an unregulated business — the boundary is commercial, not legal
- You want a definitive legal opinion — get one from your own adviser
- You are looking for a way around a registration requirement — there is not one
Where the line sits, and who draws it
The regulated act in each profession, and the regulator that governs it. Everything else in the role is generally delegable with proper access control.
Providing a BAS service for a fee, or advising on one, requires TPB registration. An offshore team member can reconcile, code, clear suspense and produce a complete reconciliation pack. Your registered agent reviews, signs and lodges. The preparation is most of the work; the lodgement is the regulated part.
Same principle, higher stakes. Returns can be prepared to review stage with full workpapers. The return is reviewed, signed and lodged by your registered tax agent, who takes responsibility for it.
Credit assistance and the not-unsuitable assessment are the licensed broker's, full stop. Applications can be assembled, documents collected, files submitted and lenders chased. Any conversation about product, structure, rate or suitability is regulated advice.
Personal advice can only be provided by an authorised, qualified adviser. Data collection, provider follow-up, research collation, document production from your templates and implementation tracking are not advice. The strategy and the recommendation are.
Recommending cover or sums insured is licensed advice. Renewal preparation, quote collation, claims administration and certificates are not. Placement decisions stay with the broker.
Unqualified legal practice is prohibited and not a grey area. Documents, forms, discovery, chronologies and bundles can be prepared under solicitor supervision. Advice to a client, privilege determinations and anything signed or filed stay with your solicitors.
Separate from the above and stricter. Trust accounting is regulated and externally audited in every state. No offshore team member has access, holds authority, or is involved in any trust transaction.
Searches, condition diarising, settlement statement preparation and document chasing travel. Advice on a contract term, settlement authorisation and trust money do not.
Arrears chasing, maintenance coordination, inspection paperwork and levy notices are administration. Signing leases on the principal's behalf, appraising, negotiating rent, entry and inspections, and trust transactions require a licensed agent.
Claiming, bookings, invoicing, plan tracking and note chasing are administrative. Anything participant-facing, the clinical content of notes, incident and restrictive practice determinations, and the provider portal itself require your screened, qualified staff.
Reception, booking, billing, claiming and records administration travel. Clinical advice, triage beyond a written protocol, interpreting results and item-number determination on clinical grounds stay with practitioners.
Enrolment processing, records, LMS administration and evidence gathering are administration. Assessment judgement, training delivery and validation judgements require qualified trainers and assessors.
Timesheet collection, entry, checking and pay run preparation travel. How the award applies to your business is your responsibility as employer; the STP declaration and payment authorisation must be made by your authorised person.
Take-offs, quote assembly, programme updates, RFIs, variations and claims preparation travel. Building advice, method and buildability, safety decisions, SWMS approval and certification require licensed and present people.
Four rules that apply in every profession
Regardless of industry, these four hold. If you remember nothing else from this page, remember these.
- Registration is personal and cannot be supervised into existenceYou cannot supervise an unregistered person into providing a registered service. Supervision changes the quality of the work, not its legality.
- Money out is never delegatedNo offshore team member holds bank authority, a payment token, or trust account access. They prepare the payment file; your authorised person releases it. This is the one rule with no exceptions in any profession.
- Preparation travels; the signature does notThe reliable test: if the output requires someone to attest to it — a lodgement, a declaration, a recommendation, a certificate — the attesting act stays with the person whose registration or licence it is.
- Write the line down before the first dayEvery failure we have seen came from an undocumented boundary, not a defiant employee. A capable person with no written line will make a reasonable decision, and reasonable is not always compliant.
How to structure the arrangement safely
The same five steps regardless of profession. None of them are expensive; all of them are usually skipped.
Name the regulated act in writing
One page. What specifically requires your registration or licence, and who in your business performs it. If you cannot write this, that is the finding — get advice before you hire, not after.
Check your licensee or professional body first
Many licensees have explicit outsourcing, data-location and system-access policies, and some require notification or approval. This takes one email and prevents the only genuinely bad outcome.
Scope system access to the role, not the person
Named user, least privilege, no shared logins, and nothing that touches money movement or the regulated act. Most compliance risk in practice is an access problem wearing a compliance costume.
Build the escalation path, and make using it the expected answer
Your team member needs a comfortable way to say "a licensed person will answer that". If escalating feels like failure, they will guess instead — and a guess is what creates the exposure.
Review the first month, then keep a check step permanently
Review everything early, then move to spot-checking. Never remove the authorisation or attestation step, no matter how good they get. That step is not about trust; it is what the regulation requires.
Delegating the interpretation along with the work
This is the failure mode across every profession on this page, and it never looks like a mistake at the time. You hand over the work without documenting how the rules apply to your business. A capable person applies a reasonable reading. Six months later that reading is consistent, confidently applied, embedded in hundreds of files — and if it is wrong, the liability is yours, not theirs. The fix costs an hour: write down how the award applies, which item numbers cover which service, what your GST treatment is for the ambiguous cases, what your notice periods are. It is the document most regulated small businesses do not have, and the one that makes offshore support safe.