You are not hiring a consultant. You are hiring a finance team.
Most engagements put two people in your business: a senior interim CFO who owns the standards, the numbers and the outside relationships, and an embedded Financial Controller who is in your office several days a week making the close actually happen. Your CFO works in Thai with your accountants.
- Interim CFO
- 4 to 10 days per month
- Financial Controller
- 2 to 3 days per week
- Where
- On site in Bangkok,
hybrid elsewhere - Working languages
- Thai, English, French
- Accountability
- One line. The CFO owns it
- Intensity
- Front-loaded, steps down
- Total cost
- Below one permanent hire
Finance work divides into two kinds, and they need different people
Senior judgement
Reporting standards, controls design, the accrual and revenue recognition policy, banking and lender relationships, board and investor communication, the sale-readiness narrative, and telling the owner the thing nobody else will. This is a few days a month of genuinely senior time.
Execution density
The monthly close itself. Bank and capex reconciliations, accounts payable and receivable cadence, supplier statement reconciliations, the payment run, chasing the fifteen small things that make a close land on time, and sitting with your accountant while they learn a new process. This is several days a week of hands-on presence.
Almost every finance function that is struggling has plenty of one and none of the other. Usually there is execution without standards, because the team is capable but nobody senior has told them what good looks like. Sometimes it is the reverse: an experienced owner or a group CFO who knows exactly what should happen and has nobody to make it happen.
The argument for the pair
One person cannot do both, and pretending otherwise is how engagements fail
Ask a single senior resource to carry the judgement and the execution and you get one of two outcomes: thin senior coverage because they are buried in reconciliations, or thin execution because they are in meetings. We have seen both, and the second is worse because it looks fine until month end.
It costs less than one permanent senior hire
Two coordinated part-time resources, priced by the days each actually works, come in below the fully loaded cost of a single permanent Finance Director in Bangkok or Singapore. You are buying two skill levels and paying for neither of them full time.
Your existing team gets supervised daily, not visited monthly
A CFO who appears for two days a month cannot change how a finance team works. Someone in the office three days a week can. The Controller is the reason processes actually change rather than being recommended and then quietly abandoned.
The intensity steps down as the work gets done
Engagements are front-loaded. Both resources are heaviest in the first three months, then step down as the close stabilises and your own people take over. You are not locked into the launch intensity for the life of the engagement.
One accountable line
Two people, one engagement, one person answerable for delivery. You are not managing two suppliers or refereeing between them.
The part almost nobody else can offer
Both partners work in Thai. In this market that is rare, and it changes what an engagement can actually achieve.
Your accountant is thinking in Thai
Thai statutory accounting has its own vocabulary, its own forms and its own logic, and your bookkeeper learned all of it in Thai. A finance lead who works only in English is receiving a translation of the numbers, and translations lose exactly the detail that matters.
The Revenue Department conversation happens directly
Queries, audits and clarifications are conducted in Thai. Handled through an intermediary they take weeks and lose nuance. Handled directly they take days.
Coaching only works in the language people think in
You cannot train a Thai accountant into a better process through an interpreter. The upskilling that makes an engagement end well depends entirely on being able to sit next to someone and explain why, in their language.
Nothing is lost between your books and your board
Your team works in Thai. Your shareholders, lenders or European head office read English or French. We hold both ends, which means the group pack and the statutory books stay reconciled instead of drifting apart.
A typical first thirty days
Week 1: land and diagnose
One-to-ones with every person in the finance team. A review of the last three monthly closes. A punch list of issues ranked by severity. Systems access. The Controller starts on site immediately.
Week 2: stabilise the basics
A written close calendar with target dates and named owners. A working RACI for the team so everyone knows what they own. First weekly bank reconciliation. Payment approval workflow designed.
Week 3: cash and compliance
Rolling 13 week cash forecast live and refreshed weekly. Statutory compliance calendar published across every entity. First supplier statement reconciliations against the largest vendors.
Week 4: controls and first review
Reconciliation procedures documented and tested. Finance brought into contract review rather than seeing agreements only at payment stage. Thirty day status review with you.
How the pairing works
Do we always get both people?
Not always. A company with clean bookkeeping that needs a monthly review and a sounding board may need the CFO alone. A company rebuilding its close, integrating an acquisition or preparing for a sale needs both. We tell you which after the free health check, and we will say so if you only need one.
How much time does each person spend?
A typical intensive engagement is the CFO for four to ten days a month and the Controller for three days a week. A lighter one is the CFO for two to five days a month and the Controller for one to two days a week. Both step down as the function stabilises.
Does the Controller replace our accountant?
No. Your accountant or bookkeeper keeps their job. The Controller sets the standard for what they produce and by when, works alongside them, and closes the gaps in how they were trained. In most engagements the aim is that your own person can eventually run the close alone.
Is the Controller actually in our office?
In Bangkok, yes, on agreed days. That physical presence is the point. Outside Thailand the rhythm is usually remote with periodic visits, agreed at the start rather than discovered later.
What happens when the engagement ends?
The Controller documents the processes as they are built, so what you are left with is a written way of working rather than a dependency. We also help hire and coach the permanent Chief Accountant or Finance Manager who takes over. An engagement that cannot end has not worked.
Can you supply just a Controller?
Occasionally, where a company already has a capable finance lead and simply needs execution capacity. It is not the usual shape, because most of the value comes from the two working together, but we will do it where it genuinely fits.