Nearshore Business Support · Finance · HR · Ops · Legal
Nearshore business support teams for finance, HR, and operations.
Your operations. Our team. One time zone.
Senior bookkeepers, FP&A analysts, HR generalists, recruiters, paralegals, and ops coordinators embedded into your nearshore back office from Costa Rica and Colombia. Not a shared service center. Not a virtual assistant. Real specialists, in your tools, on long-term contracts.
What this looks like at SMASH
Embedded specialists,
in your stack.
Most companies hit a wall around fifty headcount where the engineering team has grown but the back office has not. The controller is doing close, AP, AR, and audit prep alone. The head of people is scheduling interviews instead of running a hiring plan. The GC is reviewing standard vendor MSAs instead of doing strategic legal work. That is the moment nearshore business support augmentation starts to make sense.
Embedded means your staff accountant logs into your QuickBooks the same morning as your US controller, runs the same close cycle, and reports through the same dashboards. Your HR coordinator lives in the ATS and Workday alongside the US head of people. Your paralegal sits in the matter-management tool and on the legal-team Slack. The work product is indistinguishable from internal hiring; the employment is on us. Costa Rica and Colombia sit inside the US business day and English fluency is standard, not a stretch skill, across every embedded role.
This is the inverse of a virtual assistant arrangement. The talent is senior. The engagement is full-time. The contract is long-term. The integration is deep. The retention is years, not quarters.
Your Nearshore Back Office Team
Finance. People.
Legal. Ops.
Finance, accounting, HR, recruiting, legal, and operations: the back office functions that hold a growing company together. We staff them with senior nearshore specialists, not coordinators handed a coordinator title.
01
Finance & accounting
- /Bookkeepers
- /Staff accountants
- /Financial analysts (FP&A)
- /AP / AR specialists
- /Controllers
02
People & legal
- /HR generalists
- /HR coordinators
- /Recruiters / talent acquisition
- /Paralegals / legal assistants
03
Operations & data
- /Operations coordinators / specialists
- /Project managers
- /Data analysts
- /Executive assistants (chief of staff support)
Who starts here
Business support is how the partnership grows.
Most clients meet SMASH through engineering or CX. Twelve months later they have grown the embedded team to include a staff accountant in QuickBooks alongside the US controller, a recruiter inside their ATS, a paralegal supporting the GC. The same operating model that worked for engineering and CX works for nearshore back-office roles: senior talent, embedded in your tools, on long-term contracts, billed per role per month. The one-hire to eight-person team pattern almost always finishes with business support roles inside it.
Who this is for
Three back-office teams
we build, repeatedly.
01 / Finance team scale
Your controller cannot hire fast enough.
A growing company adds two embedded staff accountants and an FP&A analyst to support the US controller. They work in QuickBooks or NetSuite alongside the US team, close the books in the same cycle, and report on the same dashboards.
02 / People ops bandwidth
HR is a team of one with three open reqs.
An embedded HR coordinator and a recruiter join the people ops function. They live in the ATS, run candidate scheduling, manage onboarding ops, and free the head of people to actually do strategy instead of triage.
03 / Legal ops support
Your GC is drowning in contract review.
A paralegal handles first-pass review on standard contracts, redlines vendor MSAs against your playbook, and keeps the matter management system current. The GC keeps the work that needs a GC and offloads the work that does not.
Business Support FAQ
The back-office questions
we hear before kickoff.
Full general FAQ at /faq/. Below: the questions specific to this team.
Do your business support roles work in English?
Yes. Business support talent at SMASH is vetted on English fluency the same way engineering and CX are. Most have prior experience working with US clients directly. The same standard applies to written communication: emails, memos, financial commentary, HR documentation are written in clear US business English.
How do I hire nearshore accounting professionals?
Book a 30-minute discovery call. We map your close process, tools (QuickBooks, Xero, NetSuite, or Sage), and the roles you are missing, then propose a team composition and a placement timeline built around what you need first. The bookkeeper or staff accountant we place is the same person who stays on the account long term, not a rotating hire.
Can I embed a finance team member into my US accounting workflow?
Yes, and this is the most common business support engagement. Your embedded staff accountant logs into your QuickBooks Online, Xero, NetSuite, or Sage, runs the same close cadence as your US team, and reports through the same dashboards. They are managed by your controller, not by us.
What compliance does SMASH handle for business support roles?
Everything employment-related on our side. We employ each person directly in Costa Rica or Colombia, handle local payroll, benefits, tax withholding, and labor compliance. You sign a single services agreement with SMASH and pay one monthly invoice per role. You do not become the employer of record in any foreign jurisdiction.
What is an embedded business support team, exactly?
A dedicated finance, HR, legal, or operations professional who works inside your company, not inside a vendor's shared queue. They use your systems (QuickBooks, Workday, your ATS, your matter management tool), report to your team lead or controller, and stay on the account long term. SMASH handles the employment, payroll, and compliance side; you manage the work, same as you would an internal hire. It is a staffing model, not a project engagement or a managed service.
What is business support outsourcing, and is that what SMASH does?
We would push back on the word first. Outsourcing, sometimes called back office outsourcing, usually means handing a workflow to a shared vendor pool, billed per interaction or per ticket, with people you never meet running your books or your HR queue. What SMASH builds is different: a dedicated finance, HR, legal, or ops professional, employed by us, managed by you, working in your tools full-time. The person does not rotate off your account to work another client's queue. Same model as staff augmentation, applied to back office roles instead of engineering.
Why hire finance, HR, and legal support teams in Costa Rica and Colombia?
Time zone and language, mainly. Costa Rica and Colombia sit inside the US business day, so your close cycle, your hiring pipeline, or your contract queue does not wait on an overnight gap. English fluency is standard for the professionals we place, not a stretch skill, and most have direct experience working inside US finance, HR, or legal functions before joining SMASH. Business support and back office roles at SMASH are staffed from Costa Rica and Colombia specifically, the same direct-hire model we use for customer support.
How is this different from hiring a virtual assistant?
A virtual assistant typically handles task-level work on a part-time, transactional basis. Business support at SMASH is senior, full-time, embedded, and on a multi-year engagement. Your embedded staff accountant is a CPA-track professional with five to ten years of experience, not a generalist booking your calendar. Different talent, different model, different outcomes.
Are these roles full-time or fractional?
Full-time by default. Some clients start with fractional engagement for niche roles (a half-time controller for a small company, for instance) but the model is designed for full-time embedded staff. We do not split a single hire across multiple clients.
How much does a business support team cost?
Pricing is per role, per month, the same way you would budget an internal hire, not per transaction or per ticket. The number depends on the role (a bookkeeper is priced differently than an FP&A analyst or a controller), the function (finance, HR, legal, and ops price differently), and team size. We will walk through real numbers for your situation on a discovery call.
What tools do your business support people work in?
Yours. QuickBooks, Xero, NetSuite, Sage, Workday, BambooHR, Rippling, Greenhouse, Lever, Asana, Monday, Notion, Salesforce, HubSpot. Whatever your function already runs on. We do not bring a parallel tool stack.
Proof
One bookkeeper, three years later: a five-person finance pod.
A US services company started with a single embedded bookkeeper to support an overworked controller. Three years in, the SMASH finance pod had grown to five people including FP&A and AP/AR, ran every monthly close, and supported the controller through two acquisitions.
Phase 2 · coming soon
Real client.
Real metrics.
Real names.
We are finalizing client approvals to publish named case studies for this practice. Want a preview now? Ask on a discovery call.
Three teams. One operating model.
Also building another team?
Next step
Tell us what your
back office needs.
Thirty minutes. No pitch deck. We will sketch the business support team we would build for you, the roles to start with, the tool integration plan, and what each role would cost per month. If embedded is not the right answer we will say so.