Hiring one foreign worker: the order, the cost, and the clock you cannot see

The most expensive mistake in hiring a foreign worker is not filling in a form incorrectly. It is bringing the person in first and sorting the paperwork afterwards.

Because the order locks. And because the violation count starts running from the day that person enters Indonesia, not from the day someone raises it.

The order: employment permit first, visa second

A work visa application requires a supporting document from the manpower authority as an attachment. Which means "just get the KITAS" without the employment permit has no basis to be filed at all — not slower, but impossible.

If someone offers you a shortcut that skips this stage, what is being offered is not a shortcut.

The "Notifikasi" document no longer exists

The foreign worker rules changed completely on 1 April 2021. The document called Notifikasi, still widely mentioned online, in old guides, and in service offers that were never updated — no longer exists.

Today the approval of the foreign worker utilisation plan (RPTKA) is itself the recommendation for the visa and the stay permit.

This is a quick way to date the information you are reading: if a guide still lists "Notifikasi" as a step, that guide is more than five years old.

Your entity type can close the door before you start

Two things to check before you spend anything:

• A PT Perorangan (individual limited liability company) cannot employ foreign workers.
• An individual employer is prohibited from employing foreign workers at all.

If your entity is either of those, the form has to change first — and that is its own project with its own timeline. Checking takes five minutes; discovering it late can cost you a quarter.

The cost that is most often left out of the budget

There is a foreign worker compensation fund of US$100 per position, per person, per month.

Three things about that figure change how you budget it:

• It is paid up front for the whole permit period, not monthly. A two-year permit means US$2,400 per person, paid in one go at the start.
• Payment is a condition for the permit to be issued, not an invoice that can follow later.
• A foreign worker working less than a month is still charged a full month. So placing someone for ten days is not a third of the price.

Note the unit as well: per position. The cost attaches to the position filled, not to the person. Writing position titles loosely at the planning stage has a direct effect on what you pay.

On the immigration side there are separate state charges for the limited stay permit, per application, according to its validity — among them Rp3,000,000 for one year and Rp5,000,000 for two years. The limited stay visa itself is Rp500,000 per application.

Those figures exclude anyone's professional fees. What we list here is only the state charges we can show you the source for.

The renewal clock is not the date you are thinking of

This is the part that catches even well-run companies.

Renewal of the employment permit must be filed at the latest 30 working days before its term ends — roughly six calendar weeks.

And a stay permit cannot be extended beyond the permit underlying it. So your clock is not the expiry date on the stay permit card; it is the employment permit's expiry date minus 30 working days.

If your calendar only records the date on the card, you are recording the wrong date.

One more note: a permit for temporary work cannot be extended at all. If the placement turns out to need continuing, what is required is not a renewal but a fresh application — with a fresh timeline.

What nobody can promise you

Across this whole chain, only two time limits genuinely bind the agencies, and both are short: the feasibility assessment result within two working days of the assessment session, and verification of the candidate's data within two working days.

What is not regulated is when that assessment session gets scheduled. That is the largest variable.

On the immigration side there is likewise no deadline for issuing a visa in the worker category. Even the physical stay permit card only has an earliest bound — printed and distributed no earlier than three working days after the permit is issued, and collectable no earlier than fifteen working days after issuance — not a latest bound.

The honest consequence: what can be promised is the filing date, not the issue date. Anyone quoting you an issue date is giving you an estimate, not a certainty — and should say so.

A business visa is not a shortcut to working

A visit visa for business purposes has firm activity limits.

Permitted: discussions, negotiations, site visits, and signing agreements.

Not permitted: selling goods or services directly, and receiving payment or wages from any party in Indonesia.

This limit is often crossed without bad intent — someone from head office comes to "help out for a bit" at the outlet, or joins in closing a sale. Better to hand the person that limit in writing before they travel than to explain it by phone after a question at the airport.

Practical limits worth knowing:

• Initial stay of 60 days, extendable by 60 days each time, with a total not exceeding 180 days.
• An extension can only be filed at the earliest 14 days before the stay permit ends, and protection from late-day counting only applies after the application is filed and paid.
• A multiple-entry visa cannot be converted into a limited stay permit. If there is any chance the person will go on to invest or work in Indonesia, the visa type has to be chosen differently from the start.
• Ten-year validity is not available on a first application. The first grant is at most five years.
• A single-entry visa must be used within 90 days of issue. After that the visa lapses and the state charge is not refunded — so applying before the schedule is firm is itself a risk.

Visa-free visits and business travel cards are faster and cheaper, but their stay permits cannot be extended and cannot be converted into another stay permit. If your schedule can move, that route risks becoming a dead end mid-visit.

Overstaying: from a money problem to not a money problem

Overstaying is charged at Rp1,000,000 per day.

Past 60 days, paying is no longer an option. What applies is deportation and a re-entry ban, which can run up to ten years.

For a company the consequence does not fall only on that person: someone under a ban cannot be placed in Indonesia again, even if they are the one who knows the work best.

Standing as guarantor is not a formality signature

A guarantor company bears the repatriation cost of the foreign worker it guarantees, and the guarantor must be the employer itself.

So the guarantee signature is not an administrative matter to be delegated unread. It is a financial obligation standing on its own.

For business visit visas, the good news: for most applicants a guarantor or sponsor is not required at all. That obligation remains only for stateless persons, holders of travel documents that are not national passports, and nationals of certain countries. If someone offers you guarantor services you do not need, that is an unnecessary cost.

How violations are counted: per position, per person, per month

Employing a foreign worker without a permit is counted per position, per person, per month — and the count starts from the day that person enters Indonesia, not from the day it is discovered.

That is what makes "we will tidy it up later" an expensive decision. Every month of waiting is not a deferred cost but an added one.

What you can do yourself, today

1. Check your entity type. If it is a PT Perorangan, or if the employer is an individual, stop every other plan first — the door is not open yet.
2. Write down the exact position titles to be filled. The permit and the cost attach to the position. One loosely worded title changes both the figure and the scope.
3. Calculate the compensation fund now: US$100 × the number of months of permit validity × the number of people. Put it in the budget before you sign an employment contract or promise a start date.
4. Build one calendar with three dates per person: employment permit expiry, stay permit expiry, and passport expiry. The first one is the trigger.
5. From the employment permit expiry, count back 30 working days. Mark that day as the renewal deadline — not the expiry date.
6. For every person arriving on a business visit visa, hand them one page of activity limits before they travel. Two columns is enough: permitted, and not permitted.
7. Do not apply for a single-entry visa before the schedule is firm. It lapses in 90 days and the state charge is not refunded.
8. Name one person in your company who holds this calendar. An obligation with no name behind it is an obligation that gets missed.

Those eight steps fit in one afternoon, and five of them close the most expensive risk — not document risk, but the risk of a person already in Indonesia while the permit is not.

Written 2026-07-30. Rules change — if you are reading this long after that date, confirm before you act on it.