What Are Treasury Management Services?

As business challenges and market conditions become more complex, small businesses are looking for ways to outsource critical operational functions to improve efficiency and optimize performance. As part of this trend, small business owners are increasingly relying on treasury management services provided by trusted banks to streamline their cash management processes and sustain their long-term profitability.

Treasury management services help businesses optimize their cash inflows and outflows for greater operational efficiency, better access to working capital, and reduced financial risk. Specifically, business owners can use treasury management tools and services to streamline time-consuming processing tasks related to receivables, payables, fraud detection, and other cash management functions so they can focus their limited resources on other high-value priorities.

Treasury management services enable small businesses to maintain visibility into their entire cash flow environment, helping them not only pinpoint issues and limit their financial risk exposure but also leverage clean and highly accurate enterprise financial data to make smarter business decisions.

The Benefits of Treasury Management Solutions

Treasury management services provide small businesses with a range of advantages that help optimize their working capital resources, reduce operational complexity and remain agile in the face of frequent market changes.

Some of the benefits business owners can expect from treasury management services include:

• Greater Operational Efficiency: Cash flow management can be time-consuming and resource-intensive, constraining the internal team’s flexibility. Treasury management solutions enable businesses to outsource many of the manual administrative tasks associated with cash management. This helps make their teams more efficient and gives them more resources to focus on other responsibilities.
• Business Strategic Planning: The ability to oversee all cash inflows and outflows in real time gives businesses better and more accurate visibility into their current financial profile, which helps them build a better understanding of their company’s performance and future forecasts. This information will form a central part of their business strategic plans and can help make their company more attractive to potential buyers.
• Stronger Business Intelligence: By managing and coordinating receivables and payables, businesses maintain clean and validated data regarding all assets and cash flows. This gives them accurate business intelligence they can use to craft well-informed strategic plans while also equipping them to make intelligent decisions regarding debt management, asset optimization, and liquidity management.
• Better Risk Management: Treasury management services enable businesses to review, assess and authorize all payment transactions between both vendors and customers to identify possible issues as soon as they arise. This helps to reduce potential financial risks associated with discrepancies, which could lead to serious downstream operational, financial, and reputational consequences for both the business and its vendors/customers.

Types of Available Treasury Management Solutions

Receivables, payables, and fraud detection are the pillars of strong treasury management structure and provide businesses with coverage across the entire cash flow environment.

• Information and Funds Management: This treasury management solution allows small business owners to maintain complete visibility into multiple accounts, which they can use to facilitate cash concentration to centralize all receivables and disbursements in a single account. Mobile and business online banking services empower owners to access their funds from any device for greater convenience and ease of use.
• Receivables and Collections: The process of managing and chasing customers for outstanding invoices and late payments can be frustrating, time-consuming, and resource intensive. Outsourcing accounts receivables functions to a third-party provider help businesses collect payments from their customers for the services they provide and that their cash inflows are secure and guaranteed.
• Payables and Disbursements: Treasury management providers ensure small businesses complete all required transactions and payments to all necessary vendors and customers. Payables services help small businesses improve account reconciliation processes while also keeping their debts low by ensuring optimal cash flow. Not only does this process sustain a healthy balance between payables and receivables, but it also enables them to take advantage of commercial lending opportunities.
• Fraud Detection: The right tools like Positive Pay fraud detection and other protection services to identify and prevent fraudulent activity detected on their company account. It alerts businesses when a transaction takes place outside of their predetermined criteria, clueing them into possible fraud and signaling that fast action is required. Positive Pay tools can be used to authorize and validate checks, and electronic transactions.

Treasury management solutions are key to success for many small businesses in today’s ever-changing business environment. By helping companies offload cumbersome cash management tasks, it gives them the bandwidth to focus on what they do best — generating value, strengthening customer relationships, and driving long-term success.

At Cathay Bank, we provide a comprehensive set of treasury management and other banking services that help small businesses streamline processes and optimize cash flows across the entire working capital management environment. From payables to receivables, our team of experienced financial professionals is committed to helping small businesses keep their cash flows in check to enable them to meet their financial goals and achieve their strategic objectives.

Reach out to the team at Cathay Bank to learn more about our financial products and services.

Related Links:

• Utilizing treasury management tools to help maximize your working capital

• Five Steps to Building a Great Small Business Transition Plan