The clock starts at separation
Not at the end of your pay period, and not when your approval chain finishes. Peru gives 48 hours. Argentina gives four business days. A normal semi-monthly US cycle misses both without anyone noticing.
Free tool
Latin America offboarding checklist and final pay deadlines
Pick the country, the engagement model, and the last working day. Get a dated runbook across six workstreams, the statutory settlement deadline in that market, and what it costs to miss it.
Every other hiring tool helps you start an engagement. This one covers the end, which is where a US buyer is most exposed and least prepared.
- Free to use
- Eleven markets, primary sources linked
- No signup required
Runbook builder
Build the exit
Eleven Latin America markets, three engagement models, five reasons an engagement ends. Copy or download the finished runbook as text.
Build your runbook
Set the market, the model, and the last day
Every date below is calculated from the last working day and against the statutory settlement clock in the country where the person works.
Settlement due on termination, on September 30, 2026. 23 steps across 6 workstreams.
Your offboarding runbook
Colombia, last day September 30, 2026
In Colombia the final settlement is due on termination, which lands on September 30, 2026. Article 65 of the Codigo Sustantivo del Trabajo adds one day of the worker's last daily wage for every day of delay. For workers earning above one legal minimum wage the day-per-day sanction runs for up to 24 months and is then replaced by interest at the maximum certified rate. For workers at or below one minimum wage the 24 month cap does not apply.
What US buyers miss in Colombia
Article 65 is the most expensive clock in the region for a slow foreign payroll cycle, because the meter runs per day of delay rather than as a fixed fine. A settlement held for a routine 30 day approval cycle costs roughly an extra month of wages on top of the amount itself.
Your engagement model
LavaStaff Managed Hire carries payroll and compliance, directly or through a vetted EOR partner. The statutory settlement, the exit paperwork and the deregistrations sit with the provider. What stays with you is everything a provider cannot do from outside: the decision, the notice, the access revocation, the equipment, and the handover.
This kind of exit
The most expensive and most predictable exit. Statutory severance, notice or payment in lieu, and the accrued package are all in scope, and the amounts are knowable in advance.
Decision and notice
Fix the last day, put the reason in writing to the standard the country requires, and tell the people who have to act on it.
- September 16, 2026 (14 days before): Fix the last working day and write down the reason You. Put the effective last day and the reason in writing internally before you tell anyone else. Every downstream deadline in this runbook is measured from that date, so an informal or moving last day makes the statutory clock unknowable.
- September 16, 2026 (14 days before): Give your provider written notice of the exit and the date You. The provider carries the employment relationship, so it cannot run its side of the clock until you have told it in writing. Send the intended last day and the reason on the day you decide, not on the day you announce.
- September 17, 2026 (13 days before): Confirm the contract terms that override the defaults Shared. Read the actual agreement for notice, post-termination obligations, confidentiality survival, and any bonus or commission that vests or lapses on exit. Contract terms sit on top of the statutory baseline and are the most common source of a surprise at settlement.
- September 18, 2026 (12 days before): Agree in writing which side does what Shared. Managed Hire covers payroll and compliance, directly or through a vetted EOR partner, which puts the settlement, the exit documents and the deregistrations on the provider. Access, equipment and handover stay with you because only you hold those systems. Confirm the split before the last day so nothing sits in the gap between you.
- September 20, 2026 (10 days before): Serve notice, or pay in lieu, in the required form Shared. Most of these markets require written notice with a defined minimum period, and allow payment in lieu instead. Choose deliberately: paying in lieu shortens the exposure of a person who still has system access, which is often worth more than the notice pay saved.
Handover and continuity
Get the work, the context and the credentials out of one person's head before that person stops answering messages.
- September 18, 2026 (12 days before): List everything only this person can do You. Systems they alone administer, vendor relationships in their name, recurring tasks nobody has watched, and any account where they are the sole recovery contact. This list is the actual scope of the handover and it is always longer than the job description.
- September 20, 2026 (10 days before): Name the receiving owner for each item You. A handover with no named receiver is a handover into a document nobody opens. Assign each item to a person, not to a team, and have the receiver confirm they can perform the task unaided before the last day.
- September 20, 2026 (10 days before): Ask for the replacement pipeline if the seat continues You. If the role is still needed, the shortlist can be running while the exit completes. The two processes are independent and running them in series is the main reason a planned exit leaves a seat cold for a month.
- September 25, 2026 (5 days before): Run the handover sessions while the person is still engaged You. Recorded walkthroughs of the systems they own, with the receiving owner driving and the departing person watching. Reverse the usual direction: the point is to prove the receiver can do it, not to watch the expert do it one last time.
- October 14, 2026 (14 days after): Hold a short retrospective on why the seat ended You. Separate the person from the system. Scope drift, an unclear definition of done, a missing manager, and a genuine mishire all look identical at the exit and lead to completely different fixes for the next hire.
Equipment and assets
Recover or write off company property that is sitting in another country, where shipping it back is often worth less than the machine.
- September 23, 2026 (7 days before): Inventory company property and decide its route home Shared. Laptop, monitors, phone, security keys, and anything else you funded. Decide now between recovering it, buying it out at book value, or writing it off, because cross border return shipping plus customs frequently exceeds the residual value of a two year old machine.
- September 28, 2026 (2 days before): Back up and transfer local work Shared. Anything that exists only on the person's machine moves to shared storage before the machine is wiped or returned. Do this before access is revoked, not after, because a revoked account usually cannot upload.
- October 7, 2026 (7 days after): Confirm equipment recovery or the agreed alternative Shared. Close the loop in writing. Either the equipment is in transit with a tracking number, or the buyout is priced and settled, or the write off is recorded. An open equipment item is the most common reason an otherwise complete exit stays open for months.
Access and security
Revoke everything on a schedule you decided in advance, following the personnel termination control in NIST SP 800-53 (PS-4).
- September 23, 2026 (7 days before): Inventory every account, system and credential You. Work from your identity provider, then check what it does not cover: shadow SaaS signed up with a work email, shared logins in a password manager, API tokens and personal access tokens, SSH keys, cloud console access, third party vendor portals, and anything where they are a billing or recovery contact.
- September 30, 2026 (Last working day): Revoke access on the last day, on a defined schedule You. NIST SP 800-53 PS-4 asks organizations to disable access within a period they defined in advance rather than deciding case by case. Disable the identity provider account first, then revoke tokens, keys and sessions, since disabling the account alone does not always kill an active session or a long lived token.
- October 1, 2026 (1 days after): Reassign the things the account was holding You. Mail and calendar delegation, file ownership, on-call rotations, domain and vendor billing contacts, code repository ownership, and any two factor recovery method registered to their device or phone number. Deleting the account without reassigning these is how a routine exit becomes a lockout.
- October 14, 2026 (14 days after): Retain access to the records the person controlled You. PS-4 also expects the organization to keep access to information formerly controlled by the departing individual. Confirm mail, documents and repositories are readable by a named owner before any account is deleted rather than merely suspended.
Final pay and settlement
Calculate, approve and pay the statutory settlement inside the country's clock, which is the single most expensive thing to miss.
- September 18, 2026 (12 days before): Model the statutory severance before you commit to a date Shared. Severance, notice or payment in lieu, and the accrued package are all knowable in advance in these markets. Price them before the conversation, not after, so the number you present is the number you pay.
- September 25, 2026 (5 days before): Calculate the settlement and get it approved Shared. Model every component before the last day and route it through whatever approval your finance process requires. In Colombia the clock is on termination, and no ordinary US approval cycle fits inside it if it starts after the person has already left.
- September 30, 2026 (Last working day): Pay the final settlement inside the on termination window Provider. The liquidacion falls due at the termination of the contract, covering outstanding wages, cesantias and their interest, proportional prima de servicios, and proportional vacation. Article 65 of the Codigo Sustantivo del Trabajo adds one day of the worker's last daily wage for every day of delay. For workers earning above one legal minimum wage the day-per-day sanction runs for up to 24 months and is then replaced by interest at the maximum certified rate. For workers at or below one minimum wage the 24 month cap does not apply.
Paperwork and filings
Produce the documents and registrations that close the relationship, several of which are obligations in their own right.
- October 1, 2026 (1 days after): Issue the Liquidacion, plus a certificado de trabajo on request Shared. An itemized settlement. Article 57 numeral 7 separately obliges the employer to give a certificate stating the dates of service, the type of work performed, and the salary earned.
- October 1, 2026 (1 days after): Complete the registrations the exit triggers Provider. Deregistration from the social security system through the PILA contribution filing.
- October 5, 2026 (5 days after): Get written confirmation the exit is closed You. Ask the provider to confirm the settlement was paid, the exit document was issued, and the registrations were completed, with dates. That confirmation is what you keep, and it is the record that matters if anything is questioned later.
Exit document
Liquidacion, plus a certificado de trabajo on request. An itemized settlement. Article 57 numeral 7 separately obliges the employer to give a certificate stating the dates of service, the type of work performed, and the salary earned.
Registrations and filings
Deregistration from the social security system through the PILA contribution filing.
Sources for Colombia
Planning baseline only, not legal advice. LavaStaff is not a law firm or a tax adviser. Collective agreements, sector rules and the terms of an individual contract all change these figures. Confirm the specific exit with qualified local guidance, or work through a provider that carries the employment relationship on your behalf.
Why it matters
The deadline is the part that surprises people
The penalty is not a rounding error
Colombia charges a day of wages for every day of delay, up to 24 months. Brazil charges a full month of salary. Uruguay adds 10 percent automatically. These attach to the delay, not to the underlying dispute.
Most of an exit is not legal at all
Access, equipment, and handover fail quietly and none of them appear in a labor code. They are the reason a legally clean exit still leaves an orphaned system and a laptop nobody can find.
A US employer has a mental model of what happens when someone leaves. The last day is agreed, the final paycheck goes out with the next ordinary payroll run, and anything unusual gets sorted out over the following weeks. In most US states that model is roughly correct, and where it is not, the rule is usually a matter of days rather than hours. Nothing in that experience prepares a founder for the fact that in Peru the settlement is legally due 48 hours after the relationship ends.
This is the single most common way a well-run nearshore engagement produces an expensive ending. The company did nothing wrong in substance. It agreed a fair severance, treated the person decently, and intended to pay in full. It then ran the payment through a normal approval chain, a normal international transfer, and a normal accounts payable cycle, and arrived three weeks after a deadline it did not know existed. In Colombia that delay has a price attached to it under article 65 of the Codigo Sustantivo del Trabajo: one day of the worker’s last daily wage for every day of delay. Three weeks late is roughly an extra month of wages on top of everything already owed, and the meter runs for up to 24 months for workers earning above one minimum wage, without that cap for workers at or below it.
The structure of these penalties is worth understanding, because they are not designed like US late fees. They generally do not scale with the size of the underlying error and they usually do not care whether the employer acted in good faith. Uruguay’s article 29 of Ley 18.572 adds 10 percent of the amount owed automatically from the moment it becomes demandable, whether or not the employer was disputing the figure. Brazil’s article 477 paragraph 8 of the CLT charges a flat fine of one month of salary, and charges it even where the money arrived on time but the termination documents did not. The lesson those two rules teach together is specific and useful: pay the undisputed portion inside the window and argue about the remainder afterwards, because holding the entire settlement while a disagreement gets resolved is the most expensive available option.
The clocks
Statutory final settlement deadlines across eleven markets
Reviewed August 2026 against each country's labor code and social security statute. The builder above applies these to your own last working day.
48 hours
Peru, the tightest clock in the region
4 days
Argentina, business days from separation
10 days
Brazil, Chile, Dominican Republic, Uruguay
24 months
How long Colombia's day-per-day penalty can run
The eleven markets fall into three groups. The first group sets a short numbered deadline measured from the end of the relationship. Peru gives 48 hours for the liquidacion de beneficios sociales under the consolidated CTS law, and requires a certificacion de cese in the same window so the worker can withdraw the CTS already deposited with their bank. Argentina puts the final settlement on the ordinary wage deadline in article 128 of the Ley de Contrato de Trabajo through article 255 bis, which is four business days for monthly paid staff, and the article applies whatever the cause, including a resignation. Chile allows ten business days under article 177 of the Codigo del Trabajo.
The second group works on a flat ten day calendar clock, and pairs it with a defined penalty. Brazil’s article 477 paragraph 6 of the CLT requires both the payment of the verbas rescisorias and the delivery of the documents evidencing that the termination was communicated to the competent authorities, within ten days. Article 86 of the Dominican Codigo de Trabajo puts the notice indemnity and the auxilio de cesantia on a ten day clock and charges a day of wages for every day of delay. Uruguayan labor credits become demandable ten days after the relationship ends and attract the automatic 10 percent surcharge.
The third group does not set a numbered grace period at all, which is easy to misread as leniency. Mexico, Colombia, Costa Rica and Guatemala treat the accrued amounts as due at separation. In Colombia that is precisely why article 65 exists: because there is no grace period, the delay itself is the violation from day one. Mexico is the most forgiving of the four in practice, since the Ley Federal del Trabajo sets no numbered window and the worker has a year under article 516 to bring a claim, but the obligation still arises at separation rather than at the convenience of a payroll calendar.
Ecuador sits slightly outside the pattern because its binding obligation is a filing rather than a payment date. The acta de finiquito must be itemized concept by concept, paid, and registered through the Ministry of Labour’s Sistema Unico de Trabajo within thirty days of the end of the contract. An employer that pays the correct amount privately and never registers the acta has an open exposure it believes it has closed, and unregistered settlements are a standard finding in a labor inspection.
What this adds
What a generic checklist cannot do
Real dates from the statutory clock
Enter a last working day and the settlement deadline is calculated in that country's own units, business days where the statute says business days, calendar days where it says calendar days.
Three inputs that actually change the answer
The country, who is the employer of record, and why the engagement is ending. A resignation, a for-cause dismissal and a trial period exit are genuinely different runbooks, not the same list with a different heading.
Six workstreams, one owner each
Decision, handover, equipment, access, settlement and filings, each step assigned to you or to your provider so nothing sits in the gap between the two.
The workstreams
Six things happen at once, and only two of them are legal
Decision and notice
Fix the last day, put the reason in writing to the standard the country requires, and tell the people who have to act on it.
Handover and continuity
Get the work, the context and the credentials out of one person's head before that person stops answering messages.
Equipment and assets
Recover or write off company property that is sitting in another country, where shipping it back is often worth less than the machine.
Access and security
Revoke everything on a schedule you decided in advance, following the personnel termination control in NIST SP 800-53 (PS-4).
Final pay and settlement
Calculate, approve and pay the statutory settlement inside the country's clock, which is the single most expensive thing to miss.
Paperwork and filings
Produce the documents and registrations that close the relationship, several of which are obligations in their own right.
Legal risk gets the attention because it has a number attached. In practice the workstreams that fail most often are the ones with no statute behind them, because nothing external forces them to happen on time. Nobody sends a notice when a departing engineer was the only person who could deploy the billing service, and no authority charges a penalty when the mail delegation on an ex-employee’s account was never reassigned and a vendor renewal notice goes unread for a year.
Access revocation is the workstream where remote engagements differ most from local ones, and where the order of operations matters more than the speed. NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5 control PS-4, the personnel termination control, asks organizations to disable system access within a period they defined in advance, terminate or revoke all authenticators and credentials, retrieve security-related organizational property, and retain access to the information the individual formerly controlled. That last clause is the one teams skip. Disabling the identity provider account is not the same as killing an active session, and it is certainly not the same as revoking a long lived API token, an SSH key, or a personal access token that authenticates independently of the account. Meanwhile, deleting the account outright before reassigning file ownership, mail and calendar delegation, on-call rotations, vendor billing contacts and two factor recovery methods is how a routine exit becomes a lockout on your own infrastructure.
Equipment recovery deserves a deliberate decision rather than a default. Return shipping a laptop from Bogota or Sao Paulo, plus customs handling, frequently costs more than the residual value of a machine that is two or three years old, and the hardware spends weeks in transit while nobody can use it. The three honest options are recovering it where the value justifies the freight, selling it to the departing person at book value, or wiping it remotely and writing it off. Any of the three is defensible. What is not defensible is leaving the item open, which is the most common reason an otherwise complete exit is still on someone’s list six months later.
The handover workstream has one rule that changes its success rate more than any other: run the sessions in reverse. The standard approach has the departing person demonstrate the systems they own while the receiver watches, which proves only that the expert is still an expert. Having the receiver drive while the departing person watches and corrects proves the thing you actually need, which is that someone else can do the work unaided, and it surfaces the undocumented step while there is still somebody to ask about it.
Documentation
The document that ends the relationship, market by market
Every one of these markets has a named instrument that closes the employment relationship, and in several of them the document carries an obligation of its own, separate from paying the right amount. Getting the money right and the paperwork wrong is a real and reasonably common failure mode.
Two rules are worth knowing before you write anything. In Costa Rica, article 35 of the Codigo de Trabajo requires the termination letter to set out the facts relied on in a pointed, detailed and clear way, delivered in person or filed with the Ministry of Labour within ten calendar days if the worker refuses to receive it. The facts written into that letter are the only facts the employer can argue in court afterwards, so a vague letter permanently narrows the defense. A letter that says restructuring cannot later be expanded into a misconduct case. Mexico works on similar logic through article 47 of the Ley Federal del Trabajo, which requires written notice stating the exact conduct and dates on a for-cause dismissal, filed with the labor tribunal within five business days if the worker refuses to accept it. The notice is the case.
Argentina’s article 80 certificate is the most litigated single item in a regional exit and among the cheapest to get right. The employer must produce a certificate of employment and of social security contributions made; the worker can formally demand it once thirty days have passed, and the employer then has two business days. Missing that demand triggers an indemnity equal to three months of salary, and it does so independently of whether the settlement itself was calculated and paid correctly. Chile adds a requirement with no US equivalent through article 162: a dismissal does not actually terminate the contract if the worker’s pension and social security contributions are not fully paid up at that moment, and the employer keeps owing wages until it clears the arrears and gives notice that it has done so. That one has to be checked before a last day is set, not after.
48 hours
Peru
Liquidacion de beneficios sociales. 48 hours is the tightest clock in the region and it is measured from the end of the relationship, not from the end of your pay period. In practice the settlement has to be calculated and approved before the last day, because there is no version of a US approval chain that completes inside two days after it.
4 business days
Argentina
Certificado de trabajo y de aportes (LCT art. 80). The article 80 certificate is the most litigated single item in an Argentine exit. It is cheap to produce on the day and expensive to produce late, because the three month indemnity does not depend on whether the settlement itself was paid correctly.
10 business days
Chile
Finiquito. Chile has a rule with no US equivalent. Under article 162 a dismissal does not actually end the contract if the worker's pension and social security contributions are not fully paid up at that moment, and the employer keeps owing wages until it pays the arrears and gives notice that it has done so. Confirm contributions are current before you set a last day, not after.
10 calendar days
Brazil
Termo de Rescisao do Contrato de Trabalho (TRCT). Since the 2017 labor reform under Lei 13.467 the union homologation step is gone, including for workers with more than a year of service. Foreign buyers still budget time for it and then discover the real constraint is the flat ten day clock, which does not pause for a scheduling problem on your side.
10 calendar days
Dominican Republic
Liquidacion de prestaciones laborales. The 48 hour reporting rule for a for-cause dismissal is separate from and much tighter than the ten day payment rule, and missing it converts a defensible dismissal into an unjustified one regardless of what the worker actually did.
10 calendar days
Uruguay
Liquidacion final. The 10 percent surcharge is automatic and does not require the worker to prove anything or the employer to have acted badly. Disputing an amount does not pause it, so paying the undisputed portion on time and arguing about the remainder is materially cheaper than holding the whole settlement.
30 calendar days to complete registration
Ecuador
Acta de finiquito. Ecuador is the market where the filing is the obligation, not just the evidence of it. Paying the right amount privately and never registering the acta leaves the employer with an open exposure it believes it has closed.
On separation
Mexico
Finiquito, or liquidacion on a no-cause dismissal. On a for-cause dismissal, article 47 requires written notice stating the exact conduct and dates. If the worker refuses to accept it, the employer must file it with the labor tribunal within five business days. A cause that is not written into that notice generally cannot be introduced later, so the notice is the case.
On termination
Colombia
Liquidacion, plus a certificado de trabajo on request. Article 65 is the most expensive clock in the region for a slow foreign payroll cycle, because the meter runs per day of delay rather than as a fixed fine. A settlement held for a routine 30 day approval cycle costs roughly an extra month of wages on top of the amount itself.
On separation
Costa Rica
Carta de despido (art. 35). The facts written into the article 35 letter are the only facts the employer can argue in court later. A letter that says restructuring cannot be expanded into a misconduct defense once the case starts, so a vague letter permanently narrows the defense.
On separation
Guatemala
Liquidacion, plus a constancia laboral. The article 82 indemnity is calculated on the average of the last six months of wages, not on the final salary. A recent raise, a commission heavy quarter, or a bonus paid inside that window moves the number, which is why exits budgeted from the current base rate come in short.
Engagement model
Who owns the exit depends on who is the employer
The runbook forks on this input because the answer to “whose deadline is it” genuinely changes. Under LavaStaff Managed Hire, payroll and compliance are handled by LavaStaff, directly or through a vetted EOR partner, which puts the statutory settlement, the exit documentation and the deregistrations on the provider side. That is the part a buyer cannot easily run from another country, and it is also the part with the penalties attached. What stays with the client is everything that lives inside the client’s own systems: making the decision, giving notice, revoking access, recovering equipment, and getting the work handed to a named person. No provider can do those from outside, and the most common failure in a managed engagement is an item that both sides assumed the other had.
Under Direct Placement the client employs the person, so the client owns all of it, including the clock and the penalty for missing it. That is a reasonable trade when you have an entity and a local payroll provider in the market. It is a poor one when the first time anybody reads the local termination rule is the week the exit is already happening.
The contractor path deserves a separate word, because it is where confident buyers are most often wrong. A genuine independent contractor exit runs on the agreement: the notice clause, the final invoice, the wind-down obligations, and the intellectual property and confidentiality terms that survive termination. The statutory settlement does not apply on its face. What makes this fragile is that termination is usually the moment the classification gets examined for the first time. Full time hours, exclusivity, a set schedule, a company-funded machine and direct day-to-day supervision are the facts that get weighed, and they are weighed against how the engagement actually ran rather than how it was papered. Where those facts look like employment, the exposure on exit is the statutory package this tool would otherwise be showing you, plus back contributions. LavaStaff is not a law firm, an EOR in its own right, or a tax adviser, so the useful move here is to take local advice before the last day rather than after it.
Questions
Offboarding a Latin America hire
How long do I have to pay a final settlement in Latin America?
It varies from 48 hours to about ten days, and it almost never matches a US payroll cycle. Peru requires the liquidacion de beneficios sociales within 48 hours of the end of the relationship. Argentina gives four business days under article 255 bis of the Ley de Contrato de Trabajo. Chile gives ten business days under article 177 of the Codigo del Trabajo. Brazil, the Dominican Republic and Uruguay each work on a ten day clock. Mexico, Colombia, Costa Rica and Guatemala treat the amounts as due at separation rather than setting a numbered grace period. The practical consequence is the same everywhere: the settlement has to be calculated and approved before the last working day, because no ordinary approval chain completes inside these windows once the person has already gone.
What happens if I pay a Latin America final settlement late?
The penalty is usually larger than US employers expect, and in some markets it keeps growing. Colombia applies article 65 of the Codigo Sustantivo del Trabajo, which adds one day of the worker's last daily wage for every day of delay, running up to 24 months for workers earning above one minimum wage and without that cap for workers at or below it. The Dominican Republic applies the same day-per-day structure under article 86. Brazil charges a flat fine of one month of salary under article 477 paragraph 8, and charges it if you deliver the termination documents late even when the money arrived on time. Uruguay adds an automatic 10 percent surcharge under article 29 of Ley 18.572, regardless of good faith or whether the amount was disputed. Peru accrues legal interest and exposes the employer to a SUNAFIL inspection finding.
Do these rules apply if I hired an independent contractor?
Not on their face. A genuine contractor relationship is governed by the contract, so the notice period, the final invoice terms and the wind-down obligations come from what both sides signed rather than from the labor code. The complication is that termination is usually when the classification gets examined. If the engagement ran as full time, exclusive, schedule-bound work on a company machine under direct supervision, the facts look like employment whatever the agreement says, and a recharacterization brings the statutory package with it. That is worth taking advice on before the exit rather than after it. LavaStaff is not a law firm or a tax adviser, so treat this tool as a way to know which questions to ask.
Who handles offboarding when you hire through a managed staffing provider?
The split is worth agreeing in writing before you need it. LavaStaff Managed Hire handles payroll and compliance, directly or through a vetted EOR partner, which puts the statutory settlement, the exit documentation and the deregistrations on the provider side. What cannot move is everything that lives inside your own systems: the decision itself, the notice, revoking access, recovering equipment, and getting the work handed to a named person. The runbook above assigns each step to one side or the other so nothing sits in the gap between you. Under Direct Placement the client employs the person and therefore owns all of it, including the statutory clock.
What documents close an employment relationship in Latin America?
Each market has a named instrument and it is more than a receipt. Mexico uses a finiquito, or a liquidacion where the dismissal is without cause, itemized concept by concept and signed by both parties. Chile uses a finiquito that must be ratified before a labor inspector or notary, or signed electronically on the Direccion del Trabajo platform. Ecuador uses an acta de finiquito that has to be registered through the Ministry of Labour's Sistema Unico de Trabajo, which makes the filing itself the obligation rather than just the evidence of it. Brazil uses the TRCT together with the FGTS release. Argentina requires the article 80 certificate of employment and contributions, which carries a three month indemnity if it is not produced after a formal demand. Colombia and Guatemala require a work certificate on request.
How quickly should I revoke system access when a remote hire leaves?
On a schedule you decided in advance rather than one you improvise on the day. NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5 control PS-4 asks organizations to disable system access within an organization-defined period, revoke all authenticators and credentials, retrieve security-related property, and retain access to the information the individual formerly controlled. The order matters more than the speed. Disabling the identity provider account does not necessarily kill an active session, a long lived API token, an SSH key, or a personal access token, and deleting an account before reassigning mail delegation, file ownership and two factor recovery methods is how a routine exit turns into a lockout on your own systems.
Should I ship a laptop back from Latin America?
Frequently not, and it is worth deciding deliberately rather than by default. Cross border return shipping plus customs charges on a two or three year old machine often costs more than the residual value of the hardware, and the machine spends weeks in transit while nobody can use it. The three realistic routes are recovering it where the value justifies it, selling it to the departing person at book value, or writing it off and wiping it remotely. What matters is that you pick one and close it in writing, because an open equipment item is the single most common reason an otherwise finished exit stays open for months.
Is this tool legal advice?
No. The deadlines, penalties and exit documents shown are planning baselines drawn from the national labor codes and social security statutes linked on each country's card, reviewed in August 2026. Collective bargaining agreements, sector-specific rules, judicial interpretation and the terms of an individual contract all change how these rules apply to a specific exit. LavaStaff is not a law firm, an EOR in its own right, or a tax adviser. Use this to plan the sequence and to know which questions to ask, then confirm the specifics with qualified local counsel or through a provider that carries the employment relationship on your behalf.
Keep going
Related tools
Ready To Move
Need the seat filled again, or a cleaner setup next time?
LavaStaff places vetted Latin American talent and handles payroll and compliance under Managed Hire, directly or through a vetted EOR partner. Tell us the role and we will come back with candidates and a clear view of who carries what.