Virtual Office Space · Box 01

What a virtual office is

business.gov.au, the government’s website for business, names a virtual office service as one way to have a postal address other than your principal place of business, “for convenience or privacy”. It also suggests that a professional service could rent a co-working space or virtual office monthly before committing to a more expensive space.

General informationThis page compares official address rules from business.gov.au, ASIC and the Australian Business Register. What a particular service includes is set out in that service’s own terms, and this page describes none of them.

Where the phrase appears

On the official pages read for this guide, “virtual office” turns up on business.gov.au, in two practical places. ASIC’s and the ABR’s own address pages don’t use the phrase at all: they talk about street addresses, PO Boxes and whose premises an address belongs to.

The first place is business.gov.au’s page on business addresses, under the postal address. Its point is that the principal place of business usually doubles as the postal address, yet a PO Box or a virtual office service can take that role for convenience or privacy, which it suggests suits people who work from home and would rather keep their home address to themselves.

The second is its page on choosing a business location, which asks what the simplest space is that a business can try. Its examples are renting a commercial kitchen by the hour to sell food, a market stall to sell clothes, and, for a professional service, a co-working space or virtual office rented monthly.

One business, several addresses

The phrase makes more sense once the addresses are separated. When you register a business in Australia you put down one or more business addresses, and which ones depend on the business structure.

Principal place of business. The main place where you run your business: a street address in Australia, not a post office box. It is typically your home address if you run the business from home, and its location decides which state or territory’s tax rules you follow.
Registered office. Only companies need one. It is where the government sends a company’s important legal or official mail, so a PO Box won’t do: it has to be an Australian street address. Sharing it with the principal place of business is allowed, not required; business.gov.au notes that some companies use their accountant’s or lawyer’s address.
Postal address. Sometimes called the contact address or service of documents address: the address for mail you can’t receive online, such as some government letters, customer enquiries and supplier invoices.

What another address can stand in for

Can be elsewhere

Where the rules allow an address that isn’t the business’s own premises

A postal address: business.gov.au names a PO Box or a virtual office service.
A company’s registered office: it needn’t be where the company conducts business. ASIC’s example is the accountant’s office, with the owner’s written consent kept on record.
A company’s contact address, which can be a PO Box.
A business name’s service of documents address: a physical street address or a PO Box in Australia.
An ABN’s postal address: a tax or BAS agent’s address, a PO Box, or the main business address.

Where the business is

Where the rules ask for the place the business actually runs

A company’s principal place of business: “the main address where your company conducts business”, physical and not a PO Box.
A business name’s principal place of business: the main place you carry out business, a physical street address in Australia, not a PO Box.
An ABN’s main business address: not a PO Box or a tax or BAS agent’s address. The ABR says it needs the physical street address of the business.
An ABN application’s business locations: the physical locations of all premises the enterprise operates, unless disclosing them would risk someone’s safety.

Privacy is a reason the rules recognise

business.gov.au’s suggestion is aimed at people who run a business from home and would rather not give out their home address. ASIC makes the same point for business names: if you are worried about your home address being published online, don’t use it as your service of documents address, and use a PO Box or your accountant’s address instead.

Some protection is built in. On the business names register, an individual whose place of business is their home has only the suburb, state or territory and postcode shown. On ABN Lookup, the main business address appears only as a state and postcode; the street address itself is not public. Where publishing a detail would put someone’s safety at risk, both ASIC and the ABR have a process to ask for it to be hidden, set out in business names and their addresses and addresses for an ABN.

Before an address goes on a form

Four questions the official pages raise, whoever provides the address:

Is this field one that needs a street address, such as a registered office, a principal place of business or an ABN business address?
If it is someone else’s premises used as a company’s registered office, is the owner’s written consent on record, and has ASIC been told they consented?
Will this address be public on the companies register, the business names register or ABN Lookup?
Who will update ASIC and the ABR when it changes? Each expects to hear within 28 days.

The next box, registered office and principal place of business, follows a company’s two required addresses step by step.