After 12 years in treasury, I’ve seen the same pattern everywhere: talented treasury professionals drowning in manual tasks that could be automated with the right tools. The irony? Most of these solutions don’t require coding skills or an IT army to implement.
Here are the five biggest time wasters I encounter, and the practical steps to eliminate them.
1. Bank Statement Reconciliation (15+ hours/week)
The Problem: If you don’t have a TMS to save you, then probably you’re aggregating statements from different banks in an Excel file, matching transactions, and hunting down discrepancies.
The Real Cost: Beyond the time spent, manual reconciliation introduces errors. A single missed transaction can cascade into month-end reporting delays and audit issues.
The Solution: If your company has money, then invest in a TMS, a bank connectivity platform like Coupa, Kyriba, GTreasury, or even simpler tools like Cashbook or TreasuryXpress. Otherwise, a Power Automate flow, VBA will do miracles for you.
How to Implement:
- Start with one major bank relationship
- Many global banks offer API access through treasury portals. Availability depends on your location and banking relationship.
- Choose a platform that offers pre-built bank connections – no custom coding required
- Begin with read-only access to build confidence
- Expect 2-3 weeks for initial setup, then 30 minutes daily for reconciliation instead of 3+ hours
Red Flag to Avoid: Don’t try to connect all banks simultaneously. Start with your highest-volume account and expand gradually.
2. Cash Position Reporting (8+ hours/week)
The Problem: Every morning starts with the same ritual: log into multiple banking platforms, extract balances, paste into Excel, calculate positions, and email reports to stakeholders. By the time you finish, the data is already stale.
The Real Cost: Decision-makers are working with yesterday’s information, and you’re spending prime morning hours on data compilation instead of analysis.
The Solution: Automated cash positioning dashboards using tools like Tableau or Power BI connected to your banking data, or treasury-specific platforms.
How to Implement:
- Schedule daily balance reports from your bank’s portal and set up a cloud flow in Power Automate to extract and centralize the data automatically
- Set up a Power BI or Tableau dashboard
- Connect your bank feeds directly to these tools using built-in connectors
- Create automated email reports that send at 7 AM daily
- Total setup time: up to one week if you don’t have all data, ongoing maintenance: 15 minutes weekly
Real-World Tip: Start with a simple dashboard showing cash by entity and currency. Fancy analytics can come later.
3. Foreign Exchange Rate Management (6+ hours/week)
The Problem: Manually pulling FX rates from multiple sources, updating spreadsheets, calculating exposures, and monitoring rate movements throughout the day.
The Real Cost: Missed hedging opportunities and inconsistent rate sourcing across the organization.
The Solution: Automated FX rate feeds and exposure calculators.
How to Implement:
- Subscribe to FX data feeds from your bank or providers like Refinitiv Workspace or Bloomberg
- Use Excel add-ins like the Thomson Reuters or Bloomberg plugins that pull live rates (may costs!)
- Set up automated alerts for rate thresholds using these same tools
- Create standardized rate files that auto-refresh your exposure calculations
- Implementation time: 1 – 2 weeks depending on how familiar you are with the tools, daily time saved: 45+ minutes
Insider Secret: Many banks offer free FX rate feeds to treasury clients. Ask your relationship manager about their ‘treasury data services’.
4. Investment Portfolio Monitoring (5+ hours/week)
The Problem: Logging into multiple investment platforms, extracting positions and performance data, consolidating in Excel, and creating reports for investment committees.
The Real Cost: Delayed decision-making on portfolio adjustments and inconsistent performance measurement across investments.
The Solution: Portfolio aggregation platforms or direct custodian data feeds.
How to Implement:
- Request data feeds from your custodians (most offer Excel-based solutions, some MT535 or even API)
- Use portfolio management tools like a TMS, Power BI or build your own Excel database
- Set up automated performance reports using custodian-provided templates
- Create exception reports that highlight positions requiring attention
- Setup time: 2-3 weeks, ongoing time: 1 hour weekly instead of 5+
Critical Point: Focus on exception reporting rather than comprehensive portfolio summaries. Stakeholders need to know what requires action, not every position detail.
5. Compliance and Reporting Documentation (12+ hours/week)
The Problem: Manually creating board reports, compliance documentation, and audit trails by copying data from multiple systems into standardized formats.
The Real Cost: Last-minute scrambles for month-end reporting and potential compliance issues from manual errors.
The Solution: Automated report generation using your existing data sources.
How to Implement:
- Create report templates in Power BI or PowerPoint that pull data from your automated sources, or Excel files.
- Set up shared folders with automated report distribution
- Implement electronic signature workflows using DocuSign or similar tools, if you need signatures.
- Build simple audit trails using your treasury system’s reporting features or from Sharepoint/ Teams/ OneDrive, versioning in Google Docs or Office 365, approval flows in Power Automate, etc.
- Implementation time: 1-2 weeks, monthly time saved: 8+ hours
Pro Tip: Start with your most frequent report (usually daily/weekly reports) and perfect that process before expanding to others.
Implementation Strategy: The 90-Day Plan
- Month 1: Implement bank connectivity and automated cash positioning
- Month 2: Add FX rate automation and investment monitoring
- Month 3: Build automated reporting and compliance documentation
Success Metrics:
- Time spent on manual data entry should drop by 70%
- Error rates in reports should decrease by 50%
- Decision-making speed should improve as data becomes real-time
Common Implementation Mistakes to Avoid
- Mistake 1: Trying to automate everything at once. Start with your biggest pain point and expand gradually.
- Mistake 2: Assuming you need custom development. Most solutions exist as configurable platforms.
- Mistake 3: Not involving end-users in the selection process. The best technology is the one people actually use.
- Mistake 4: Underestimating the importance of data quality. Clean your data before automating processes.
The Bottom Line
These five improvements can save 40+ hours per week while improving accuracy and decision-making speed. The key is starting simple and building complexity gradually. Most treasurers I work with recover their technology investment within 3-6 months just from time savings alone. The tools are already available, you just need to start using them strategically.
Remember: the goal isn’t to eliminate the treasurer’s role, but to elevate it from data compilation to strategic analysis. Technology should make you more valuable, not replace you.
Next Steps: Choose the task that frustrates you most and start there. Most of these solutions offer free trials or demonstrations. The biggest risk isn’t implementing the wrong technology—it’s continuing to waste time on manual processes that could be automated today.
