Managing Corporate Treasury with Spreadsheets

Commentary

Technology. Treasurers love it – and love to hate it. We depend on it, and appreciate the help it provides. But the treasury technology landscape is complex and changing fast. Treasurers have very different views on the best tools and approaches: it can be a real challenge knowing where to turn.

This call was a departure from the usual discussions on the pros and cons of robots, different TMSs and ERP treasury modules, or how AI can improve your cash forecasting. Instead, we had some very motivated peers who passionately defended the benefits of the second oldest treasury technology (after calculators!): spreadsheets. These peers’ comments bore out the conclusion from our ongoing Treasury Technology Benchmark: spreadsheets are very much alive.

Everyone understands the drawbacks with spreadsheets: they are prone to error, they are often not properly documented and can be changed too easily. They do not automatically provide sophisticated reporting tools, data is often entered manually (and potentially incorrectly), and access control can be a challenge. 

All these issues can be addressed – more below. But the peers stressed that...