.svg)
Hiring offshore bookkeepers helped us scale our CFO practice, boost margins, and stay focused on strategy. Here’s how we built the team (and why it worked).
Fractional CFO services are on the rise as more businesses look for strategic financial leadership without the commitment overhead of an in-house executive. As your CFO practice grows, the volume of transactional accounting work (reconciliations, AP/AR, payroll support) increases proportionally. This rapid growth provides both opportunities and challenges, especially around scalability and operational efficiency.
To manage this expansion effectively, many CFO practices are turning to offshore solutions. At Kordis, we started our CFO practice with an entirely U.S.-based accounting team. But two years ago, we took a strategic leap by hiring our first offshore bookkeeper. Today, we are happy to have a skilled, agile team of six offshore accountants from Argentina supporting our growth.
While offshore bookkeepers often cost 40% to 70% less than equivalent talent in the U.S., our primary focus has never been on finding the cheapest labor. It’s about building a high-quality, aligned, and sustainable team. The biggest missteps in international hiring often originate from a bargain-hunting mindset, in order words, from being cheap. This leads to high turnover, misalignment, and burnout.
At Kordis, we take a different approach. We hire with intention and invest in our people. Our offshore team members are paid well (often above market rates compared to other CFO firms that hire offshore) because we’re not just hiring for tasks, we’re building long-term partnerships. We want our team to feel valued, stay engaged, and grow with us. Our team member’s satisfaction isn’t just tied to the work, they’re happy to be part of the culture and well-supported in their compensation.
While keeping our offshore team well-compensated, we save closer to 50% per hire. Thus, we have:
>higher margins on client work
>more competitive pricing models and
>the ability to reinvest.
Bringing on a strong offshore team has helped us boost profit margins without cutting corners or compromising the quality of our work. With lower labor costs and a dependable team handling execution, our senior folks can stay focused on higher-value, strategic work. We can serve more clients, keep pricing competitive, and still come out ahead. The extra margin gives us room to invest in better tools, team development, and continued growth, all while running a healthier, more scalable business.
For fractional CFOs building financial practices, hiring the right overseas bookkeeper isn’t a cost-cutting strategy, it’s a deliberate move toward growth.
Offshore bookkeepers are far more than ledger clerks. They’re agile, tech-savvy problem-solvers. As a CFO firm, we serve a wide range of clients across different industries, so we look for team members who can quickly adapt to different needs, tech stacks, and workflows.
Our team in Argentina fits that mold perfectly. They are versatile and have worked with platforms like QuickBooks, SAP, Ramp, and Airtable. Many of them come from top firms like Accenture, Ecolab, Deloitte Argentina, and KPMG Argentina. In Latin America, these companies often hire talented folks early in their careers, provide great training, but pay them very little. After a couple of years, they’re well-trained, hungry for growth, and ready to move on to better opportunities, which makes them a perfect fit for firms like ours.
We’ve hired skilled accountants who take full ownership of the end-to-end bookkeeping for our clients. That includes everything from managing the general ledger to handling full month-end closes across multiple accounts, preparing financial statements, and even stepping into more strategic work, like building new SOPs or improving client workflows.
Cultural alignment can make or break remote teams. In Argentina, we’ve found a shared sensibility with U.S. business culture, especially around ownership, communication style, and team engagement. At Kordis, sports are a big part of our culture, and our Argentine teammates have brought even more energy to this dynamic. We wrap up our weekly syncs talking about players, transfers, and the latest sport drama. We have fun, our team bonds and everyone feels more connected across borders.
Argentina is just two hours ahead of Eastern Time, which means we operate in near real-time. Our team doesn’t work in silos or on a 24-hour delay. We collaborate live on Slack, jump into impromptu video calls, and resolve issues instantly. This eliminates the typical friction of asynchronous communication and boosts both responsiveness and team cohesion. While Argentina and Brazil are further east, many other Latin American countries (such as Mexico, Colombia, and Peru) share the same or similar time zones as the U.S., offering even more time zone alignment when sourcing offshore talent.
If you think that offshore hiring is only for large businesses, then you’re wrong.
These are the factors we took into consideration when we decided to hire offshore. Use it as a checklist to examine if you’re in need of an offshore bookkeeper.
If any of the signs above sound familiar, it could be time to explore what offshore talent can do for your practice. Whether you’re just starting or already experiencing the challenges of growth, hiring the right offshore bookkeeper can help you free up capacity, increase profitability, and build a firm that runs with both excellence and efficiency.
At Kordis, hiring offshore wasn’t a shortcut for us, it was a tipping point. This move fundamentally changed how we operate and it’s been one of the best strategic decisions we’ve made. With the right people and intentional systems, we have been able to scale faster, serve better, and grow a more profitable business.
If you’re serious about growing your fractional CFO practice, then now could be the time to think globally, hire intentionally, and set your business up for long-term success.
