The invention discloses a process method for treating residual oil. A hydrogenation pretreatment unit, a coking device, a hydrogenation treatment unit and a catalytic cracking device are provided; the hydrogenation pretreatment unit comprises a hydrogenation pretreatment reaction area and a hydrogenation treatment reaction area; the process method comprises the following steps: performing a reaction on a residual oil raw material by using the hydrogenation pretreatment unit, and performing oil fractionation so as to obtain light fraction and heavy fraction, feeding the heavy fraction into the coking device for treatment so as to obtain coked gasoline, coked diesel oil and coked wax oil, mixing the light fraction with the coked wax oil and hydrogen, passing through the hydrogenation pretreatment reaction area and the hydrogenation treatment reaction area which are connected in series, performing gas-liquid separation on a reaction effluent of the hydrogenation treatment reaction area, circulating vapor phase back to the hydrogenation pretreatment reaction area and/or the hydrogenation treatment reaction area, directly feeding liquid phase into the catalytic cracking reaction area for a catalytic cracking reaction, and separating a catalytic cracking reaction effluent, thereby obtaining a dry gas, a liquefied gas, catalytic cracking gasoline fraction, catalytic cracking area diesel oil fraction, catalytic cracking area recirculation oil and catalytic cracking area oil slurry. Due to adoption of the process method disclosed by the invention, the stable operation period of a device can be prolonged.