Why Treasury Teams Fall Behind (And 3 Ways to Fix It)
You spend hours pulling reports, consolidating balances, and updating forecast models only to be asked for a new scenario your spreadsheet wasn’t built to handle. Files live in too many places. Timing is always tight. And strategic work keeps getting pushed to “later.”
No time to read? Here are the 3 fixes if you're stuck in reactive treasury ops
- Standardize and automate one recurring report – connect directly to banks/ERP, use templates, add version tracking.
- Make your forecast rolling and driver-based – tie to actuals, track variance, layer in scenarios.
- Centralize cash visibility – pull real-time balances via API, tag restrictions, build dashboards by region/entity.
Plenty of tactics and tips below. Keep reading to see how teams are actually doing it and where you should start.
If it feels like you're reacting more than planning, you're not alone. This guide is for treasury practitioners stuck in operational loops and looking for a practical reset.
We'll walk through three of the most common operational bottlenecks: reporting, forecasting, and cash visibility. Instead of comparing tools, we’ll look at how these processes get stuck, and what practitioners are doing to get ahead.
1. Reporting: Always a Step Behind
Reporting should create clarity, but for most treasury teams, it’s a time sink. Pulling data from portals and systems. Formatting spreadsheets. Rerunning reports when assumptions shift. Requests from CFOs like "can I see this by currency?" add pressure, not insight. Here's what's happening:
- Data is pulled manually, with inconsistent timing
- Reports vary by user and often require rework
- There’s no audit trail or consistent format
- Review cycles are reactive, not strategic
Here's how to fix it:
Start by picking one report that repeats every week or month (i.e. your weekly cash position or liquidity summary) and turn it into a standardized reporting template your team can reuse. This eliminates inconsistencies in format, definitions, and timing, which are often a hidden cause of rework.
From there, explore whether you can establish direct connections to your core data sources, typically your banks and ERP systems. Setting up a bank API or ERP integration allows you to automate the collection of balances, transactions, and payables data. This removes the need for manual consolidation and reduces the risk of data fragmentation, one of the most common causes of version confusion and late reporting.
Once those connections are in place, build in real-time or scheduled refreshes so that reports stay up to date without intervention. This is what moves reporting from reactive to proactive, supporting real-time reporting that leadership can rely on at any time, not just after close.
To improve auditability and reduce delays during review cycles, implement version tracking and change logs. An audit trail doesn’t just help during reviews; it also builds trust in your data and protects your team from the “who changed this?” scramble.
Finally, consider whether your reporting can support treasury KPIs like forecast accuracy, cash visibility by entity, or days to close. When your reports reflect the metrics leadership is already watching, they move from operational outputs to strategic inputs.
Taken together, these steps move reporting from a bottleneck to a backbone, something your team can build on instead of work around.
Choosing the right system is key to automating recurring reports—this checklist helps you evaluate what will actually make a difference.
2. Forecasting: Always Rebuilding
Forecasting should help you plan ahead, but too often it feels like starting over. Most models are built for one specific time frame and live in static spreadsheets. As conditions shift, so do assumptions, but adapting the model means unraveling fragile formulas. When CFOs ask for scenario planning or “what if” views, teams often scramble to rebuild from scratch. Recognize these scenarios?
- Forecasts are built on static timelines, not business drivers
- Inputs come from scattered sources—AP reports, email threads, past spreadsheets
- Scenarios require duplicating models, risking broken links and formula drift
- There’s no rolling view or feedback loop to improve accuracy over time
Here’s how to fix it:
Start by grounding your forecast in key business drivers like DSO, vendor payment terms, or revenue cycles. Driver-based forecasting reduces manual inputs and makes your assumptions easier to explain and update. Next, integrate actuals using direct ERP feeds or structured templates. The goal isn’t perfect precision—it’s building a rolling forecast that adjusts as conditions change.
To improve confidence in your projections, set up a variance analysis process. Each week or month, compare actuals to forecasted values, log the gaps, and note why they happened. This introduces a feedback loop that sharpens your model over time and arms you with context when questions arise.
When leadership asks for things like delayed receivables or accelerated hiring, you shouldn’t have to start over. Use a centralized forecast model with built-in scenario logic. That way, you can layer in assumptions and show the impact immediately, without duplicating files.
Over time, forecasting becomes less about defending a number and more about supporting decision-making. By building models that flex and learn, you help the organization respond faster, with more confidence in the outcomes.
3. Cash Visibility: Always a Day Late
Seeing your company’s true cash position should be easy, but in practice, it’s fragmented. Each bank has its own portal. Some balances update at different times. And regional or entity-level visibility often requires logging into multiple systems or assembling data by hand. By the time you’ve got the full picture, something’s already changed. Do any of these sound familiar?
- Cash data is siloed across systems, bank portals, and business units
- Prior-day statements are often the only reliable input
- There’s no consolidated view by region, currency, or entity
- Visibility into restricted vs. available cash is unclear
Here’s how to fix it:
Begin by centralizing cash data across all banks using APIs or structured upload processes. These connections allow you to pull prior-day and intraday balances into one location without relying on emailed statements or file downloads. This is the first step toward achieving full cash visibility.
Next, build a dashboard that reflects what matters most to your team: cash by entity, by region, by currency. Tag balances as restricted or unrestricted, and track sweeps or intercompany movements where applicable. These visibility filters let you answer leadership’s questions without chasing data.
Set up alerts for significant balance shifts, unusual activity, or concentration risks. The point isn’t just knowing what’s in the account, it’s being able to act on it in real time.
As your environment becomes more complex, consider layering in pooling structures or notional arrangements. This adds sophistication, but only once the foundational visibility is in place.
In the end, cash visibility isn’t just a control function—it’s a strategic one. When treasury can show a trusted view of liquidity on demand, it reduces uncertainty and strengthens the role of finance in enterprise planning.
Treasury work will always be dynamic. The numbers change. The requests shift. The constraints tighten. But when every day feels like a reaction, it’s worth asking: what are we optimizing for? Speed? Accuracy? Or alignment?
Getting ahead doesn’t mean doing everything faster. It means designing your workflows to reflect what matters not business drivers that reflect real-world changes: clarity, trust, and time to think. When reporting creates alignment, when forecasts adjust with confidence, and when cash visibility is constant, your team stops chasing and starts advising.
It’s not about replacing tools overnight. It’s about picking one place to shift from manual to meaningful. One recurring report. One fragile forecast. One view of cash that your CFO can trust without delay.
Small changes compound. And over time, they reset how treasury shows up: not as a responder, but as a strategic partner with foresight, not just hindsight.
We're here if you want to talk about where to begin.
