Introduction
A company that has brought accounting in-house in Vietnam and hired its first accountant sooner or later runs into a question: is a one-person setup still enough? In our earlier article, “Your First In-House Accountant in Vietnam: Who to Hire,” we set out that the first in-house hire needs to be a Chief Accountant (Kế toán trưởng, hereafter “CA”) level professional who can run, on their own, the work that had been handled by an accounting firm.
The more capable that first person is, the more the company tends to lean on them. Bookkeeping, payments, invoicing, tax filings, dealings with the accounting firm, reporting to headquarters — before you know it, almost all of the accounting work has piled onto one person. This is not a rare situation.
In the short term, it looks like things are running fine. But once the monthly close starts slipping little by little, payment checks fall behind, or no one can respond when that person is away, the limits of a one-person setup begin to show. This article looks at when to hire your second accountant in Vietnam, and at the profile that complements your first hire.
1. The Real Danger of a One-Person Accounting Setup
The risk of a one-person setup is not simply that the person is “busy.”
In Vietnam, day-to-day accounting is threaded through with fine-grained tax checks and supporting-document management. Confirming that VAT invoices (e-invoices) are correctly issued and received, evidence for bank transfers, documents related to payroll, social insurance, and personal income tax (PIT), and back-and-forth with the accounting firm. This kind of detailed work tends to concentrate on one particular person.
That person may hold all the internal rules and past history in their head, while those around them are in a state of “we don’t know what is being checked, or how far.” Invoice checking and document filing look like simple tasks, but they connect directly to the company’s tax risk — so a state where the substance lives only in one person’s head is more precarious than it appears.
If a leave of absence or resignation happens in that state, it is not just that the work stops; the company itself loses its grip on what accounting is actually doing. For managers at foreign-invested companies, this is the scariest part of a one-person setup. On top of that, when accounting is one person, no one checks what that person has processed. Mistakes or fraud are caught late.
2. The Moments When You Sense “It Might Be Time for a Second”
Whether you should consider a second hire tends to reveal itself in certain moments. When several of the following start to overlap, it is worth pausing to think.
First, when the monthly close date has been drifting later, little by little. If the close ran smoothly when the first hire arrived, but delays have become the norm as the workload grew, that is a sign you are approaching the limit of what one person can run.
Next, when the first hire is so consumed by day-to-day work that they cannot get to what you actually want from them. You want a CA-level first hire spending time on tax judgment, headquarters liaison, and improving the setup — but they are buried in bookkeeping and payments and cannot reach it. If this continues, you need someone to carve the day-to-day work off to.
Overtime and weekend work becoming the norm is another sign not to overlook. Left alone, it leads to the first hire’s exhaustion and departure. On the signs of an accountant quietly wearing down, our separate article “Five Symptoms That Your Vietnam Accounting Team Is Not Functioning” is also worth a look.
And when accounting stops the moment the first hire takes leave. Payments stall, no one knows where documents are, no one can respond. This is quite dangerous from a business-continuity standpoint. How much a CA’s extended absence can shake accounting is something we also touch on in “When Your Chief Accountant Goes on Maternity Leave.”
Business expansion — a new site, more clients, the start of imports and exports — also drives up the accounting workload. When you feel the accounting setup is not keeping up with the growth of the business, it is around the time to consider adding a person.
3. The Second Hire Doesn’t Have to Be Another CA
A common misconception in hiring a second accountant is the thought, “the current CA looks overloaded, so let’s hire another person like them.”
Of course, if the budget is ample and you are hiring a future successor candidate, that is an option. In practice, though, rather than lining up two CA-level people, carving the day-to-day work off the first hire’s plate tends to work better in more cases.
For example, the first hire takes tax judgment, monthly and annual close, headquarters liaison, and dealings with the accounting firm and auditors. The second hire handles bookkeeping, issuing invoices, preparing payment documents, expense settlement, bank-related paperwork, and document filing. When roles split this way, the first hire can spend time on review and judgment, and the second hire, rather than shouldering the whole picture at once, can grow while owning a defined area.
That said, the point to watch is not to think the second hire “only needs to do data entry.” They do not need to be CA level, but neither is it fine to have someone who only performs simple tasks. As noted, Vietnamese accounting ties each piece of day-to-day work to tax risk. Unless the person can process invoice requirements, payment evidence, and the deductibility of expenses with a degree of understanding, the first hire ends up re-checking everything, and the load does not actually ease. “Not CA level, but able to run day-to-day work with a grasp of the tax and accounting basics” — this is about the level you want in a second hire.
Depending on the company’s industry, you may want specific experience in the second hire. Cost accounting for a manufacturer, import-export and customs for a trading company — hiring someone to cover an area where the first hire is thin.
Note, too, that even someone with strong practical skills may not suit the launch of a two-person setup. For instance, someone who ran things freely as a sole accountant in a previous job may feel resistance to working under an existing CA, receiving review. Whether they can accept a division of roles and work while sharing information is a point worth looking at when hiring.
4. What to Decide Before You Hire
Once you have decided to hire a second accountant, there are things worth sorting out before you hire.
The most important is to decide, before hiring, which work the first and second hires each handle and where they coordinate. Bring someone in while this is vague, and you get duplicated work and gaps after they join. Designing the division of work in consultation with the first hire is the realistic approach.
In that sense, we recommend involving the first hire in the hiring process. The second hire is someone the first hire will work with day to day, and reflecting the first hire’s views helps the team click sooner. For the first hire, it also plants the sense of “having my own team” and offers a chance to build management experience.
The moment a second hire joins is also a good opportunity to document and standardize the work held in the first hire’s head. Organizing the processing that had become person-dependent into a form anyone can follow stabilizes the two-person setup and prepares you for adding more people down the line.
On compensation: if the second hire is centered on day-to-day work, the level differs from the first hire (CA level). That said, if you are hiring a future management candidate on the premise of development, showing a path of treatment that grows with them helps retention.
5. When It’s Better Not to Hire a Second Yet
On the other hand, there are situations where adding a person is not the best move. Before jumping from “busy” to “add a person,” it is worth checking that you are not in one of the following states.
When the first hire’s work is not yet organized. Bring someone in while it is undecided what gets handed to whom, and it just adds to the first hire’s coaching burden. Sometimes it is not the volume of work but simply an inefficient way of doing it. In that case, reviewing the workflow or improving how the accounting software is used can resolve it.
When the division of roles with the accounting firm is still vague, it is better to sort that out first. If it is undecided who — in-house or outsourced — handles what, bringing in a second hire leaves work floating.
Also, when the first hire has no intention of leading a team. If they are the type who finds coaching and dividing work a hassle, a second hire will struggle to function. Before hiring, it is important to ask the first hire what they themselves want.
Adding headcount is a decision with cost. Before moving to hire, taking one look at “are we truly short of people, or is the work simply not organized?” leads, in the end, to a leaner setup.
Closing Thoughts
Whether to hire a second accountant is a decision about moving from a one-person setup to accounting that supports itself. A slipping monthly close, an overloaded first hire, accounting stopping during leave, business expansion — when these moments overlap, it is around the time to consider it.
In hiring, rather than lining up another person just like the first hire, hire someone who complements them. And before adding headcount, take one look at whether the work itself is organized. Hold onto these two, and a two-person setup produces more than a simple headcount increase. We hope this article helps as you take your accounting setup in Vietnam to its next stage.
FAQ
Q1. What if we don’t yet have the budget for a second hire?
Even if you cannot hire a full-time employee right away, there are ways to lighten the first hire’s load. Outsourcing payroll to a specialist provider, broadening the accounting firm’s support only during peak periods, covering some tasks part-time. What matters is spreading the load in some form before the first hire is completely worn down.
Q2. How should the roles of the first and second hires be split naturally?
The basic form is the first hire (CA level) taking tax, close, headquarters liaison, and review, and the second hire taking day-to-day bookkeeping, payments, invoicing, and document filing. But the best split changes with industry and workload. Deciding the division before hiring and consulting the first hire, and organizing things so the two areas don’t overlap and no gaps appear, is the knack for running a two-person setup well.
