Introduction

Many small treasury teams are working with spreadsheets. They struggle to handle day-to-day operations efficiently and securely. In a recent Strategic Treasurer survey, more than 70 percent of finance professionals say that increased efficiency, shorter cycle time, and cost concerns are key drivers for automation. Let´s review the benefits of transitioning from spreadsheets to a cloud treasury management system.

Spreadsheets don’t grow with your business

Treasury teams often try to adapt their existing spreadsheets to expanded business needs. But spreadsheets have size and security limitations that are only compounded by relying heavily on a few tech-savvy authoring individuals. The more currencies, business units, banks, and interfaces involved, the more unstable the spreadsheet solution becomes.

Take a moment to think about the following questions:

  • When did you do the last manual backup of your treasury spreadsheet?
  • How much time does it usually take you to fix a broken formula?
  • What if your spreadsheet becomes corrupt?
  • What if the authoring Excel guru leaves the company?

As the business grows, so does the spreadsheet size. And complexity and risk also grow like a house of cards.

Spreadsheets take away time from higher-value activities

As companies grow in size or complexity – for example, through a company acquisition – simple bank account management and bank statement processing start consuming more and more of Treasury’s time.

Even if your Excel guru is able to add all bank relationships to your spreadsheets, the Treasury team has to update account balances on a daily basis, collecting data from every single bank portal.

Manual collection and updating is not only error-prone but takes your Treasury team’s time away from value-added analysis and reporting. With spreadsheets, you spend more time preparing your financial data than reviewing what the data is saying.

Spreadsheets cost you money

Data collection and cash position preparation take longer in a manual spreadsheet environment. This can cause costly delays in decision making. Missed investment opportunities, increased cash holdings as a buffer against miscalculation, overdrafts, and missed payment cut-off times are costs often associated with slow, manual processes.

Spreadsheets are more expensive than you think. They cost you money because they slow down your processes.

Your auditors don’t like your spreadsheets

Auditors ask many questions. How tricky they are for you to answer depends on your workflows and the technology you have in place. Using spreadsheets in Treasury can lead you to struggle to answer the following simple questions:

  • Who did what and when?
  • What ties to what?
  • Where is the audit trail?
  • How is unauthorised access prevented?
  • What is the disaster recovery plan?
  • Has it been tested?
  • Where is the documentation?

Spreadsheets are simple tools that expose your company to security risks and may cause audit failures.

If your treasury has outgrown spreadsheets, it’s time for a change in technology. Cloud-based treasury management systems centralise financial data and automate bank connectivity, helping treasuries to increase efficiency and security in daily operations.

At the same time, treasury technology is highly scalable, enabling the alignment of financial operations with a company’s growth plans. Finally, there are no excuses anymore for not investing in a solid treasury management system.