A cash management platform provides a complete picture of your company’s cash flow. It automates treasury processes like payments processing and reconciling. Assess your needs and select a tool that meets the following key requirements. Ensure that the system scales with your growth and that it integrates seamlessly with accounting, ERP, and other systems.
Real-Time Visibility
The best cash management platform offer real-time visibility of the company’s overall liquidity. They provide a complete picture of cash inflows and outflows across all corporate operating, investing, and financing activities, as well as automatically uploading daily/weekly/monthly bank reports for overall cash balance visibility and faster reconciliation. They also include real-time tracking of the status of individual cash transfers (sent, in transit or delivered) and automatic matching of cash transactions provided in consolidated bank statements with those recorded in the general ledger. They support a wide range of pooling structures and transaction-based sweeping for greater control over interest expense.
The best solutions also allow clients to search and tag any type of cash management transaction data in a natural way to improve treasury reporting and analysis. They can also link to a client’s ERP system for streamlined, automated back-office processes and a single source of truth. The platform should also be able to scale as the company grows in number of bank accounts, currencies, and regulatory concerns.
Automated Counting
Although cashless payments are becoming more popular, businesses still need to handle physical money. That’s why it’s important to have a system that provides automation of the accounting processes, eliminating errors and streamlining workflows. A proper core banking solutions will take bank statements and instantly match or reconcile them with customer payments, simplifying money movement and providing a clearer picture of company funds. This will give businesses a higher level of transparency and allow them to make more informed decisions faster, allowing their business to stay competitive in the long run.
Advanced treasury solutions offer a variety of features including payment processing via API, ACH, RTP, and wires, and consolidated reporting for all inbound and outbound payments. Additionally, they provide a variety of dashboards to monitor pooling structures, and flexible download formats for reporting. They also allow for negative interest currency, back-dated sweeping and transaction-based sweeping. This provides companies with the flexibility they need to meet their unique business requirements.
Accurate Forecasting
Cash management processes are essential to ensure that companies are able to pay their bills on time. This helps them avoid late fees and penalties, maintain their credit ratings, and even strike better deals with vendors and lenders. The best cash management software will offer a variety of forecasting features. These include long-period forecasts, which allow businesses to see two or more months into the future. These are useful for treasury operations, debt and interest payment, liquidity risk management, and key date visibility.
Short-period forecasts are also important to help businesses stay on track with their payments and manage their inventory. These forecasts are useful for reducing accounts payable and streamlining collection of accounts receivable. Some cash management software will offer advanced forecasting features, including ML-based predictive analyses and forecasts. These will give users near-accurate insights into their business’s future financial performance and cash flow behavior. This will help them avoid last-minute cash surpluses and deficits.
Integration With Online Banking
Managing cash flows is crucial to a company’s financial stability. However, there are many factors that make up the overall cash management process. Identifying these elements will help you make the right decision for your business. Using bank feeds to download your banking data into Sage Intacct makes the reconciliation and accounting process much easier. Gone are the days of manual file imports and tedious adjustments and postings.
Using an automated cash management solution allows for easy scalability. It helps to record and retain a growing transaction data repository, and provides unified reporting for all cash inflows and outflows. Additionally, it offers efficient multi-bank connectivity and enables effective reconciliation processes, including automatic payment and receivables matching and cash flow forecasting. Moreover, it enables you to manage liquidity and plan operating, investing and financing activities in line with your desired liquidity thresholds. This is especially important during economic crises, such as the COVID-19 pandemic.
Conclusion:
Cash management platforms have emerged as indispensable tools in the world of finance. Offering real-time visibility, automation, and enhanced security, these platforms empower businesses to efficiently manage their liquidity and streamline their financial operations. As they continue to evolve, they are poised to play a vital role in shaping the future of financial management, providing companies with the tools they need to thrive in an increasingly complex and dynamic financial landscape
