The essence of cash management is to optimise the use of available funds in a company. This includes encouraging debtors to pay on time and reducing expenses. Typically, this involves collecting and analysing data on a daily basis. It can include analyzing bank accounts, setting up and updating forecasts and interpreting indicators.
Payables
Corporate banking services provide small businesses with a range of financial tools to help them grow and meet their growth objectives. These include everything from bank accounts and credit facilities to cash management and trade finance. A good cash management strategy can help a company avoid problems and achieve its business goals. It can ensure that all bills are paid on time and that there is enough money to invest in opportunities. It can also help a company avoid debt and improve its credit rating. A sound cash management strategy can give a startup a solid foundation for future growth, especially during periods of economic uncertainty or when funding rounds are harder to secure.
A good cash management in corporate banking strategy requires accurate forecasting of revenue and capital needs and efficient payment systems. It should also enable a company to meet its financial obligations, including paying salaries, taxes, and suppliers. It should also allow a company to take advantage of low interest rates by investing excess cash.
Receivables
Companies must manage their cash inflows and outflows to maintain financial stability. These flows involve thousands of daily decisions across the company, from CFOs managing the books to warehouse managers ordering spare parts to accounts-payable specialists making payments. A company with high profits can still have problems if it cannot settle short-term debts, and insufficient cash flow is the leading cause of sleepless nights for business owners. Without sufficient funds, businesses cannot pay their employees on time, invest in growth opportunities or pay urgent bills.
The key to effective cash management is regular monitoring. Many companies simply look at their bank balance, but this is not enough – to make your money work harder, you need to monitor your cash inflow and outflow on a daily basis. This involves a comprehensive process of tracking invoices and paying suppliers on time. It also involves setting clear accountabilities and a robust escalation structure up to the CFO for any decisions that could have significant implications on cash.
Expenses
Companies can save a lot by ensuring they get paid on time and don’t pay too much to finance operations. They can also reduce the likelihood that a cash gap will lead to cessation of payments (which, in extreme cases, can cause a company’s demise). Companies should put in place systems that monitor daily cash balances and report on them. This process is called bank reconciliation, and it ensures that cash movements in the bank correspond with invoices issued and received.
Moreover, companies should make cash reports available to all relevant stakeholders, from the CFO to frontline staff. This will help them to align sales incentives with cash KPIs, while also improving the efficiency of back-office order-to-cash and procure-to-pay processes. Companies should also consider using a digital tool to gather data on their liquidities and solvency ratios and share them regularly with external stakeholders. This will help them to understand the state of their cash management and assess how they’re doing against industry peers.
Investments
A streamlined cash management in corporate banking process can lead to improved relationships with employees, vendors and others who depend on the company. Accurate forecasting and streamlined payment systems can also help companies avoid unnecessary expenses like overdraft fees and bank commissions.
The ability of a company to invest excess cash is another important element of cash management. The financial market offers a wide range of investment options for businesses and individuals. These services include investment accounts, business credit options, merchant service solutions and wire transfers. Companies can choose to use a combination of these services to achieve the best return on their cash assets.
Conclusion
Many companies have a complicated banking structure with cash spread out across multiple accounts. A bank can provide a service known as cash pooling that helps a company concentrate their available funds in a smaller number of accounts. This can be a great way to save on bank charges and find low-risk ways to earn interest on their cash balances.
