Treasury management keeps cash accessible and liquidity steady. It also prevents financial risks from gradually increasing behind the scenes. Strong corporate treasury practices give a business absolute control over its money—how it moves, how it’s allocated, and how well it withstands volatility and seizes new opportunities.

Below, we’ll discuss what treasury management involves, its impact on financial efficiency, and the challenges businesses face as they scale.

What’s in this article?

• What is treasury management?
  
• How does treasury management function in practice?
  
• How does treasury management improve cash efficiency, capital allocation, and risk mitigation?
  
• Which challenges make treasury management difficult for businesses?
  
• How can companies evaluate and implement treasury management?
  
• How Stripe Payments can help
  

What is treasury management?

Treasury management is how a company moves, holds, and uses its money. This includes cash coming in from customers, payments going out to suppliers and employees, and decisions regarding what to do with the money that remains. The treasury also manages funding, short-term investing, and financial risks such as interest rates, currency fluctuations, and credit exposure. As an industry, global treasury management is projected to reach $16.31 billion in market value by 2032.

Good treasury management keeps the business stable. Excellent treasury management offers greater freedom and flexibility, such as the ability to enter new markets, launch products, or act quickly when market conditions are favorable.

How does treasury management function in practice?

Treasury work consists of three routines: knowing your cash position, predicting where it’s going, and planning so you never run short.

Here’s what that looks like in practice.

Cash positioning

Teams consolidate balances across all accounts and entities into one view, track what’s clearing that day, and shift funds to ensure coverage and reduce idle balance. The goal is to ensure accounts across different regions have what they need for the day’s activities.

Cash forecasting

Forecasts, often over 13 weeks, estimate expected inflows and outflows from receivables, payables, payroll, and taxes. They reveal timing issues early so that the company can prepare. Scenario planning tests sensitivity to problems such as softening demand and delayed collections.

Liquidity planning

Planning takes the forecast and turns it into decisions about how to fund gaps and use any surpluses. It can determine whether you need to structure credit lines, time debt raises, and decide how much cash the company should hold vs. invest. The focus is on resilience and capital access.

How does treasury management improve cash efficiency, capital allocation, and risk mitigation?

There are many benefits to refining your treasury management. When the treasury has good visibility into cash and a reliable plan for how it moves, your business can become more financially agile.

Here’s why strong treasury management is important for your business.

Cash efficiency

Better positioning and forecasting prevent cash from sitting idle, reduce interest costs by minimizing unnecessary borrowing, and allow excess funds to earn income through short-term liquid investments.

Capital allocation

With a clear picture of liquid capacity and timing, you can make smart decisions with confidence, whether it’s investing in growth, paying down debt, or returning capital to shareholders. The treasury also helps secure funding that matches the business strategy.

Risk mitigation

The treasury protects earnings against market volatility by measuring exposure to foreign exchange (FX) risk, interest rate cycles, and credit tightening, and selectively using hedging tools. Controls around banking, payments, and account structure can reduce fraud risk.

Which challenges make treasury management difficult for businesses?

As companies expand, treasury work becomes harder. Everything multiplies, from bank accounts to currencies and regulations. Before you make big decisions regarding your treasury management, it’s important to understand the potential challenges.

Here’s what businesses should be aware of.

Fragmented liquidity

More accounts, regions, and currencies make it harder to see cash availability, especially after acquisitions or geographic expansion.

Cross-border market exposure

Global operations introduce FX and rate risk that domestic teams might be unprepared to model or hedge at scale.

Regulatory and compliance demands

Different jurisdictions impose different rules for compliance. These address facets such as payments, data, and tax. Public companies, in particular, face additional expectations regarding internal controls and auditability.

Systems and data sprawl

Multiple enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, manual reporting, and inconsistent banking setups force teams into reconciliation work rather than analysis.

Specialized talent requirements

Treasury skills are specialized, and people need to understand both the financial mechanics and the systems that underpin them. Many scaling companies have small teams, which can create bottlenecks and overreliance on a single individual.

How can companies evaluate and implement treasury management?

A flexible treasury function has distinct priorities, practical policies, and relevant systems.

Following these steps will help you move forward with the process:

• Assess the gaps: Look for issues such as slow cash visibility, manual payments, unreliable forecasts, and unhedged FX exposure. Prioritize them based on financial impact and risk.

• Define the policies: Create clear rules for cash handling, account governance, risk limits, and liquidity thresholds so decisions are consistent and auditable.

• Choose the right systems: About 45% of companies worldwide report difficulties in integrating a treasury management system (TMS). Choose a TMS and supporting tools, like Stripe’s, that integrate cleanly with banks and ERP systems, support governance, and minimize manual effort.

• Roll out in stages: Start with cash visibility and payments, then add forecasting, risk tools, and funding workflows as data quality improves.

• Adjust as the business develops: Review policies and configurations regularly as products, markets, and capital structure change. Scale the team so the treasury can support the company’s next stage.

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