The cash flow problem that wasn’t about cash

Management kept asking the same two questions every month, and kept getting answers that arrived too late to act on. Records were fragmented across departments, forecasts were written after the fact, and treasury had become an administrative function rather than a decision-making one.

The business was not short of resources. It was short of visibility. Cash was arriving and leaving on terms nobody had assembled into a single picture, so every funding need was discovered rather than forecast — and a need you discover is always more expensive than one you see coming.

1. Forecasting, rebuilt as a process

   Cash forecasting turned from an occasional exercise into a standing process with owners and inputs, so the forecast exists before the month does.

2. Reporting that faces forward

   Treasury reporting rebuilt to show future liquidity rather than describe what already happened — the difference between a record and a warning.

3. Controls over cash movement

   Stronger controls over how cash moves, so the forecast stays true to what the business is actually doing.

4. Treasury connected to the business

   Treasury brought into operational decision-making rather than sitting apart from it, so decisions that consume cash are visible to the people managing it.