South helps growing companies find, hire, and pay top Latin American talent. Build high-performing teams in 21 days or less.
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Hire a finance manager who owns your budget, runs your forecast, and gives you numbers you can actually make decisions on. South places vetted, full-time finance managers from Latin America who work your US business hours and cost 30 to 60 percent less than a comparable US hire. Most placements close in two to four weeks, with no large upfront fees and a relationship you own directly.
A finance manager is the person responsible for financial planning, budgeting, forecasting, and reporting that turns raw accounting data into decisions. They build and own the operating model, run the monthly budget-versus-actual process, manage cash flow, and translate financial results into clear guidance for founders and department heads. They sit between the bookkeeping that records what happened and the strategy that decides what happens next.
The role is distinct from accounting. An accountant or controller ensures the books are accurate and compliant, closing the month, reconciling accounts, and producing GAAP financials. A finance manager takes those closed numbers and asks the forward-looking questions: Are we on plan? Where is the variance coming from? What does the next two quarters of cash look like? Should we hire that headcount? The accountant tells you what happened; the finance manager tells you what it means and what to do.
In a typical SaaS, professional services, or fintech company, a finance manager owns several core processes. They run financial planning and analysis, maintaining a three-statement model and a driver-based operating model. They lead the budgeting and reforecasting cycle, working with department heads to set and track targets. They produce the monthly reporting package and board materials, including the metrics that matter for the business, ARR, MRR, net revenue retention, CAC, LTV, gross margin, burn, and runway for a SaaS company, or utilization and realization for services. They manage cash flow and working capital, and they often own vendor spend, headcount planning, and unit economics analysis.
The tools are consistent. Finance managers live in Excel or Google Sheets for modeling, work inside an ERP such as NetSuite, Sage Intacct, or QuickBooks for actuals, and increasingly use FP&A platforms like Mosaic, Cube, Pigment, or Planful to connect the model to the source data. They pull from billing systems like Stripe or Chargebee, and they often build reporting in tools like Looker or Tableau. A strong finance manager is fluent in all of it and skeptical of any number they cannot trace back to a source.
What separates a good finance manager from a great one is judgment and communication. Anyone can build a model. The valuable finance manager builds a model people trust, explains variance in plain language, flags risks before they become problems, and gives a founder the confidence to make a hiring or pricing decision. They are a thinking partner with a spreadsheet, not a spreadsheet operator. For an early or mid-stage company, this hire is often the difference between flying blind and running on real visibility.
Hire a finance manager when the founder or a part-time accountant is no longer enough to run the numbers. Early on, a founder runs the model in a spreadsheet and an outsourced bookkeeper closes the books. That works until it does not. When budgeting becomes a real cross-team process, when investors want a proper reporting package, or when the founder is spending nights in Excel instead of running the company, it is time for a dedicated finance manager.
The clearest trigger is decision velocity slowing down because of financial uncertainty. If you are hesitating on hiring, pricing, or spend decisions because you do not have a reliable forecast, that uncertainty is costing you more than the salary. A finance manager who can model scenarios quickly and confidently lets you make those decisions faster and better, which compounds across the whole business.
Fundraising and board governance are also triggers. If you are raising a round, an institutional investor will expect a credible model, clean metrics, and a finance person who can defend the numbers in a room. If you have a board, they expect a consistent reporting package. A finance manager owns both. This role often works alongside an FP&A analyst who handles the deeper modeling and a financial controller who owns the close, with the finance manager tying it together.
Who should NOT hire yet: a pre-revenue or very early company with simple finances does not need a full finance manager. If your monthly numbers fit on one page and your forecast is a single spreadsheet, a financial analyst or even a strong bookkeeper plus a fractional CFO covers you for less. Do not hire a finance manager to do data entry or basic bookkeeping; that is over-hiring for the work and the person will be bored and gone within a year. Wait until financial planning is genuinely a job, not a task.
Modeling skill is table stakes, so test it directly rather than trusting a resume. Give a candidate a realistic prompt, build a simple revenue model with these assumptions, or find the error in this broken model, and watch how they work. A strong finance manager structures a model cleanly, separates assumptions from calculations, builds it so others can audit it, and sanity-checks the output. Messy, unauditable modeling is a real and disqualifying red flag.
The bigger differentiator is business judgment. Anyone competent can produce a forecast; the valuable finance manager knows which numbers matter and why. Ask a candidate to explain what drives the business they last worked at, what they would watch most closely, and how they would advise a founder weighing a big hire against runway. You are listening for someone who thinks like an operator, not just a calculator.
Communication is the third pillar and the most underrated. A finance manager who cannot explain variance in plain language, or who buries the insight in a forty-tab workbook, fails the job even with perfect numbers. Have them walk you through a model or a result out loud. The good ones lead with the conclusion, then support it. The weak ones narrate the spreadsheet.
Who should NOT hire yet, on the candidate side: avoid pure accountants who have only ever closed books and never owned a forward-looking forecast, and avoid investment-banking-style modelers who can build a beautiful LBO but have never operated inside a real company's messy data. The role needs someone who has lived in the gap between the model and reality. Someone who would pair well with your accounting manager and could grow toward head of finance is the profile to look for.
A US finance manager costs roughly 9,500 dollars per month in base salary, often more once benefits, bonus, and equity are loaded in, and considerably more in major markets for someone with strong SaaS FP&A experience. Through South, a comparably skilled Latin American finance manager costs around 4,450 dollars per month, a savings of roughly 53 percent for equivalent capability.
The gap reflects cost-of-living and currency differences across markets like Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, and Mexico, not a difference in skill. Latin America has a deep bench of finance professionals trained at multinationals, Big Four firms, and the region's growing startup ecosystem, many of whom have worked directly with US companies, US GAAP, and US-style FP&A processes. A finance manager who is well paid by local standards still costs far less than the US equivalent.
This is one of the higher-leverage roles to hire regionally, because the cost gap is large in absolute dollars. The monthly savings on a single finance manager can exceed 5,000 dollars, which over a year is a material line item for a growing company. You are not buying a cheaper, weaker hire; you are buying the same modeling skill, the same metric fluency, and the same business judgment at a structurally lower cost.
A realistic all-in comparison: a US finance manager can cost 140,000 to 190,000 dollars per year fully loaded. The South equivalent typically lands in the 50,000s to low 60,000s annually, with no recruiting agency markup and no large upfront placement fee. For a finance team adding multiple roles, the savings can fund an entire additional analyst or controller.
Time zone overlap matters more for finance than people expect. A finance manager who works your business hours can sit in your planning meetings live, get on a call when the board package needs a last-minute change, and partner with department heads in real time during the budgeting cycle. Finance is collaborative and deadline-driven, and a finance manager in Sao Paulo or Bogota working US hours operates as a true team member, not a delayed handoff.
The finance talent pool in Latin America is deep and credentialed. The region produces large numbers of finance and accounting graduates, many trained at multinationals and Big Four firms, and a growing share have direct experience with US GAAP, US SaaS metrics, and US FP&A tooling. English proficiency among this professional tier is strong, and they are accustomed to the rigor and communication norms of US finance work.
Cultural and business alignment is high. Latin American finance professionals working with US companies understand the cadence of US board reporting, the directness expected in executive communication, and the metric-driven culture of US startups. That alignment reduces friction in a role where trust in the numbers and the person presenting them is everything.
Hiring through South removes the operational and compliance burden. South sources, vets, and screens candidates on modeling, FP&A process, metric fluency, and communication, then delivers a shortlist. You own the relationship directly, with no opaque agency layer. This pairs naturally with hiring a financial modeler or an FP&A analyst from the same region to build a complete, time-zone-aligned finance function.
South places full-time, dedicated Latin American finance managers with US companies, and the process is built for speed and signal. You tell us your business model, your ERP and FP&A stack, the metrics that matter to you, and the seniority you need. We source from a pre-vetted pool, screen candidates on financial modeling, budgeting and forecasting, metric fluency, and executive communication, and hand you a shortlist that fits rather than a stack of resumes to evaluate.
Because candidates arrive pre-vetted on the skills that matter for finance, your interview loop is short and focused on judgment and fit rather than basic competence. Most placements close in two to four weeks. There are no large upfront fees, cost savings versus a US hire typically run 30 to 60 percent, and you own the relationship from day one. Your finance manager works your hours, joins your planning meetings, and operates as a full member of your finance team.
If you are building out a finance function, South can help you staff it coherently in a time-zone-aligned way, pairing a finance manager with an FP&A analyst, a financial controller, and other roles so planning, reporting, and close all run cleanly. Book a call with South and we will map your finance needs to a shortlist of vetted Latin American finance managers you can interview within days.
A US finance manager costs around 9,500 dollars per month in base salary, often more all-in. Through South, a comparably skilled Latin American finance manager costs roughly 4,450 dollars per month, a savings of about 53 percent. There are no large upfront fees, and the savings reflect regional cost-of-living differences, not lower capability.
Yes. The region has a deep pool of finance professionals trained at multinationals and Big Four firms, many with direct experience in US GAAP, US SaaS metrics like ARR and net revenue retention, and US FP&A tooling. South screens specifically for fluency with your business model's metrics.
Latin American finance managers work US business hours because the region shares or closely overlaps US time zones. They join planning meetings live, partner with department heads during budgeting in real time, and turn around board materials same-day. Finance is collaborative and deadline-driven, so that live overlap is a real advantage over distant offshore options.
An accountant or controller ensures the books are accurate and compliant. A finance manager takes those numbers forward: budgeting, forecasting, variance analysis, cash planning, and turning results into decisions. If you need someone to tell you what the numbers mean and what to do, you need a finance manager.
Most placements happen in two to four weeks. Because South maintains a pre-vetted pool and screens candidates on modeling, FP&A process, and communication before you interview them, your hiring process is short and focused on judgment and fit rather than basic qualification.
South places finance managers with experience across Excel and Google Sheets for modeling, ERPs like NetSuite, Sage Intacct, and QuickBooks for actuals, and FP&A platforms like Mosaic, Cube, Pigment, and Planful. We match candidates to your specific stack so they ramp quickly.
The region has the perfect mix of everything you want in remote employees: English skills, shared time zones, hard-working, and depth of talent. They are already accustomed to working remotely for top US startups and Fortune 500 companies.
Absolutely! The US and Latin America have basically the same time zones. No Latin American city is more than two hours ahead of EST.
Every hire is sourced based on your exact needs. They will arrive ready to support your business right away. They can do basically any tasks done remotely, but we recommend starting them as support so your team has more bandwidth for high-value strategic tasks.
All types of roles - customer service, executive assistant, sales, accounting, email marketing, lead generation, content writers, operations, social media marketing, and more!
You can pay directly through us (most popular) or we can connect you with one of our payroll partners.
You don't have to deal with any American labor laws / taxes when hiring full-time remote contractors. They aren't US-based, so no visas or sponsorships to deal with either.
We recommend market pay which varies for each role. See our salary guide and success stories for some ideas.
Then, we have two different models:
Staffing (most popular) - We charge a small monthly fee for each employee's monthly salary to make the process hassle-free. The fee covers sourcing, recruiting, admin, payroll, compliance, ongoing support, and a free replacement if necessary at any point. There are no cancellation fees or minimum commitments. You only pay if you make a hire.
Headhunting - A one-time simple fee once we've found the perfect candidate. This comes with a 120-day replacement guarantee.
For both options, you only pay something if we find you someone great that you want to hire.
Yes, we only recruit for full-time and we strongly recommend full-time hiring if you can. Stability (full-time & long-term) is highly sought after abroad. The top caliber candidates are only looking for full-time work.
You're also going to spend time training and getting them up to speed on your processes. It would be a waste to do that over and over again with new people all the time.
We recommend training new hires on one thing at a time.
For example, once they get up to speed on lead generation, you can add the next role writing blog posts or whatever you'd like. You can definitely overlap roles until you have enough work for multiple people.
The cost of living is much less in Latin American countries. Many of our employees are able to own homes, raise families, provide for their parents, and have in-home help of their own with their salaries.
If you aren't happy with your hire in the first 120 days, we will work with you to conduct a second round of search for the same role for free.
Just email us at Hello@HireInSouth.com and we will get back to you with an answer as soon as possible.
