Best Practices in Cash Management: Information and Automation Are Key

THE ORGANIZATIONAL SPOTLIGHT is pointed squarely at the treasury function as businesses recognize the need to develop better methods for managing cash flow. Spurred by the need to develop solutions that support Sarbanes-Oxley compliance -- and by companies' increasing activity in global markets with divergent payment terms -- finance executives are standardizing and improving cash-management activities and turning to tools that monitor cash balances in real time enterprisewide. In fact, treasurers today are striving to automate virtually every activity in the cash-management function.

The other thrust in treasury operations is toward implementing new tools and methodologies to deter fraud -- a rising threat to business. Attempted check fraud alone has risen to over $5 billion in recent years. Various safeguards, including positive pay, are helping companies and banks protect themselves against major losses.

In this special section we explore some of the best practices that leading companies are adopting to build a stronger treasury function through automation. And we examine the controls that businesses -- with the help of their banks -- can implement to take a bite out of fraud.

-- The Editors