Topic
Corporate Cash & Liquidity Management Guide
The operating side of treasury: seeing and controlling cash day to day and planning it over time. Cash positioning vs forecasting, physical vs notional pooling, in-house banks and payment factories, and how to get global cash visibility.
These are the decisions the systems exist to support — written from real treasury-transformation work, with the trade-offs and the things that usually go wrong.
33 articles · ~154 min, in 5 sections — each in reading order
Cash Forecasting
5 articles · ~22 minCash Positioning vs Cash Flow Forecasting: The Difference
Cash positioning tells you the cash you have now; forecasting projects what you'll have. Two different jobs — and why confusing them costs treasury teams.
Direct vs Indirect Cash Flow Forecasting for Treasury
Direct forecasting builds cash bottom-up from expected receipts and payments; indirect derives it from projected financials. Which to use, over what horizon.
The 13-Week Cash Flow Forecast: A Practical Guide
A rolling, week-by-week projection of cash in and out over the next quarter, on a direct receipts-and-disbursements basis. Why 13 weeks, and how to build one.
How to Measure Cash Forecast Accuracy
Measure cash forecast accuracy by comparing forecast to actual per period and category — variance, MAPE, bias, hit rate — so you know where it's reliable.
Cash Forecast Operating Model & Ownership
A cash forecast is a process, not a spreadsheet. Who owns it, who contributes, at what cadence, and how to run the forecast-to-actual loop people trust.
Positioning
2 articles · ~8 minHow to Build a Daily Cash Position
A daily cash position is a consolidated view of the cash available today across every account and currency — prior-day vs intraday, actuals vs expected.
How to Achieve Global Cash Visibility
Global cash visibility is seeing all the group's cash (every account, currency and bank) in one timely view. Mostly a data problem: full statement coverage.
Liquidity Risk
7 articles · ~35 minWorking Capital and Cash: The Cash Conversion Cycle
Working capital — cash tied up in receivables and inventory, less payables — is a big driver of a company's cash. The cash conversion cycle (DSO, DIO, DPO).
Supply Chain Finance and Dynamic Discounting
Supply chain finance (reverse factoring) pays suppliers early via a bank on the buyer's credit; dynamic discounting uses the buyer's cash. When to use each.
Liquidity Risk Management
Liquidity risk management: not having cash when needed is the one risk that fails companies, even profitable ones. Forecasts, buffers, lines, stress tests.
Corporate Funding and Credit Facilities
Corporate funding secures cash beyond operations — facilities, commercial paper, short-term debt — and the committed-vs-uncommitted distinction.
Bank Guarantees and Letters of Credit
Bank guarantees and letters of credit are a bank's promise to pay if a counterparty fails or documents are presented — and both consume credit lines.
Intraday Liquidity Management: The Operating Model
Cash is a moving position through the day, not a daily number. How to run intraday liquidity: payment queues, cut-offs, intraday credit and alerts.
Liquidity Escalation Framework
How to build a liquidity escalation framework — thresholds, tiers, actions and owners — so a liquidity squeeze triggers a plan, not panic.
Structures
14 articles · ~64 minTrapped Cash and Cash Repatriation
Trapped cash is money the group owns and can see but can't freely move to where it's needed — here's why it gets stuck and how treasury frees it.
Treasury Operating Model: Centralized vs Decentralized
Centralized, decentralized or hybrid — how treasury is organized across a group, the trade-offs, and why the trend runs toward centralization.
Treasury Exception Management: Designing the Operating Queue
Treasury runs on exceptions — unmatched transactions, limit breaches, missing rates. How to design one operating queue that catches, routes and clears them.
Physical vs Notional Cash Pooling: How to Choose
Physical pooling moves funds to concentrate cash; notional pooling offsets balances for interest without moving money. The trade-offs, and when to use each.
Cash Concentration: Sweeping and Zero-Balancing Accounts
How cash concentration physically sweeps balances into one header account via ZBA — and the intercompany loan positions those sweeps quietly create.
What Is an In-House Bank? A Treasury Guide
An in-house bank is a central treasury acting as a bank for the group — internal accounts, intercompany funding, on-behalf-of payments and netting.
Bank Account Rationalization: How to Cut Account Sprawl
Bank account rationalization cuts the number of bank accounts to the minimum a company needs. Why sprawl is expensive, and how to run and govern it.
What Are Virtual Accounts?
Virtual accounts (virtual IBANs) are sub-accounts over one real account — each with its own number, all cash in one place. How they cut reconciliation.
Virtual Account Management (VAM): Structures and Design
Virtual account management (VAM) is how you design and run virtual account structures — hierarchies, subledgers, virtual IBANs — and when each type fits.
Electronic Bank Account Management (eBAM)
Electronic bank account management (eBAM) handles opening, closing, mandates and signatories digitally, not on paper. Why account admin is broken.
Bank Relationship Management
How a company deliberately manages which banks it uses, for what, and the value exchanged both ways — because the bank relationship is two-way, not one-sided.
What Is a Payment Factory?
A payment factory centralizes payments for many entities through one channel, often with payments-on-behalf-of (POBO). Why, how, and the intercompany catch.
Payment Hub vs Payment Factory: What's the Difference?
A payment factory is an operating model — how the company organizes paying. A payment hub is the technology layer payments travel through. How they differ.
Intercompany Netting: How It Works
Intercompany netting offsets what group entities owe each other so only net positions settle, cutting payments, FX and fees. Bilateral vs multilateral netting.
Optimization
5 articles · ~25 minManaging Surplus Cash: Short-Term Investment Basics
Putting surplus cash to work safely, governed by a policy that ranks security, then liquidity, then yield. The cardinal rule of corporate cash investment.
Money Market Funds for Corporate Treasury
Money market funds pool short-dated, high-quality instruments to give treasury same-day liquidity and a yield on cash — inside policy, not chasing return.
Debt and Investment Management in Treasury
Debt and investment management records and tracks a company's instruments through their life — interest, schedules, rollovers and covenants.
Bank Fee Analysis: How to Stop Overpaying Your Banks
Bank fee analysis reconciles what banks charge against agreed pricing, catching errors and overcharges. Bank fees are opaque and often wrong.
Treasury KPIs: How to Measure Treasury Performance
Treasury KPIs measure how well treasury works — liquidity, efficiency, risk, cost. Good ones make performance improvable; the trap is measuring what's easy.
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Frequently asked questions
What is a 13-week cash flow forecast?
A 13-week cash flow forecast is a rolling, week-by-week projection of a company's cash receipts and disbursements over the next quarter (13 weeks), built on a direct basis — actual expected cash in and out, not accruals. It's the standard tool for short-term liquidity management because it shows precisely when cash could run short, week by week, far enough ahead to do something about it. It's especially common in tight-liquidity, high-leverage or restructuring situations.
Full article →What is a daily cash position?
A daily cash position is a consolidated view of the cash a company actually has available today, across all its bank accounts, currencies and entities, as of a point in time this morning. It combines the opening balances from bank statements with the day's known movements to answer the treasurer's first question: how much cash do we have, where is it, and what's it going to do today?
Full article →What is global cash visibility?
Global cash visibility is the ability to see all of a group's cash, across every bank account, legal entity, currency and banking partner, in one consolidated, timely view. It means treasury at the centre can answer 'how much cash does the group have and where is it?' without emailing subsidiaries or waiting for month-end. It's the foundation for cash concentration, funding decisions and reducing idle balances.
Full article →What is an in-house bank?
An in-house bank (IHB) is a centralized treasury structure that provides banking services to a group's operating entities — internal current accounts, intercompany loans and deposits, payments and collections on behalf of the entities, netting, and internal FX. It lets treasury concentrate the group's cash, reduce the number of external bank accounts and fees, and centralize control, effectively acting as an internal bank for the subsidiaries.
Full article →Why is it 13 weeks specifically?
Thirteen weeks is one quarter — long enough to see the liquidity pressures that are actually coming (a tax payment, a debt repayment, a seasonal dip) but short enough that a week-by-week direct forecast can be reasonably accurate. Beyond about a quarter, receipts-and-disbursements detail becomes guesswork; inside it, the weekly granularity gives you time to act. It's the sweet spot between visibility and reliability for short-term cash.
Full article →Work with me → — the workflows this hub documents are exactly the kind I redesign with AI: slow, manual, exception-heavy, and still answerable to a control review.