The Division of Business and Administrative Support Services was created in 2008 when two functions that previously reported directly to the parks' superintendent, Safety and Concessions Management, were added to the Division of Administration. Following the consolidation of these park functions into the expanded (and renamed) Division of Business and Administrative Support Services, branch records were also consolidated. Records in this collection have been organized into series that reflect the work functions of the contemporary division.

Since the establishment of the National Park Service in 1916, the office of the Parks' superintendent has been responsible for the oversight of all park programs and the office remains the principal decision-making, contractual, and budgetary authority. With the growth of the agency, a number of fundamental work functions have been transferred to various support offices. The responsibility for tracking budgets and day-to-day bookkeeping has long been one of the primary duties of the Division of Administration. By the late 1980s, the Division consisted of four branches: budget, information management, personnel, and procurement. Budgetary records are well represented in this collection. The concessions office, responsible for the management of the numerous contractual relationships between the parks and the various private businesses operating within its boundaries, has moved several times over the past decades. At the outset of the Park era, the authority for signing contracts with concessioners resided with the Parks' superintendent. By the 1960s, when Park superintendents began having management assistants, the work fell largely to them. By the late 1980s, Sequoia and Kings Canyon's concessions office had grown to five permanent employees with a branch chief reporting directly to the Parks' superintendent. In 1995, the branch became a division, the Division of Planning and Concessions Management, under the leadership of William Tweed. By 1997, the office was dissolved as a freestanding division and was moved back under the Office of the Superintendent. Until 2006, some special use permits, environmental compliance and land issues were managed through the concessions office. With the expansion of environmental compliance workload and increasing complexity and political sensitivity regarding land issues, those functions were moved under the newly established Deputy Superintendent. For much of its history, the Parks' safety office has consisted of one employee reporting directly to the Parks superintendent; from 1992-2002, Gary Bornholdt was the Parks' Safety Officer. Before its transfer to the current Division of Business and Administrative Support Services, the Parks' safety office was part of the office of the Deputy Superintendent or directly for the Superintendent.