Treasury Management Solutions for All Businesses: Cash Flow & Fraud Protection

As your business grows, implementing effective treasury management strategies becomes essential to managing cash flow, preventing fraud and maintaining control over payments.

Why Cash Flow Visibility Is Critical for Growing Businesses

For growing businesses, real-time insight into cash positions is essential for making confident decisions about spending, borrowing and investing. Cash flow visibility refers to understanding where cash is coming from, where it’s going and how that will change over time.

Surveys of finance professionals show that organizations recognize the importance of better visibility but often feel they fall short. In one survey, 62% of respondents agreed that understanding cash flow in real time is becoming increasingly important for their companies, yet 98% said they could be more confident in the visibility they currently have over cash flow. This gap highlights the need for modern treasury tools and disciplined forecasting.*

When you improve cash flow visibility, you can more easily:

• Anticipate liquidity needs and avoid shortfalls
• Reduce idle cash by moving excess balances into short-term investments or paying down debt
• React faster to changing market conditions because you know your current cash position

Treasury Management platforms that consolidate bank accounts, automate reporting and integrate with your accounting or ERP systems can help close this visibility gap and support scalable growth.

Payments Fraud Risks and Treasury Management Solutions

As payment volume increases, so does exposure to fraud. Payments fraud remains widespread among organizations of all sizes. According to the Association for Financial Professionals, 79% of organizations reported experiencing actual or attempted payments fraud activity in 2024, a level that has remained in the ballpark of recorded fraud since 2015.**

Business email compromise (BEC) continues to be another major threat. In the same AFP findings, 63% of organizations reported experiencing BEC-related fraud attempts in 2024.** These attacks often target payment processes, directing funds to fraudulent accounts using convincing but fake emails.

Common fraud risks for growing businesses include:

• Compromised email accounts leading to unauthorized payment requests
• Altered or counterfeit checks, which remain a frequently targeted payment method
• Unauthorized ACH or wire transfers initiated with stolen credentials

Because fraudsters are persistent and increasingly sophisticated, it is critical to leverage technology, implement business controls and heighten employee awareness.

Treasury Management Solutions to Help Prevent Payment Fraud

Use a combination of tools and best practices to help detect and prevent payment fraud , such as:

• Check Payee Positive Pay to flag unauthorized or altered checks before they are paid
• ACH filters and blocks to limit which parties can debit your accounts and in what amounts
• Automated alerts and monitoring tools that notify you of unusual or high-risk transactions
• Secure, role-based online banking access to limit who can initiate or approve payments

Strengthening Your Company’s Internal Controls & Governance

Did you know that fraud can happen from inside your own walls, too? One of the most practical ways to reduce payments risk is to introduce dual control for payment transactions. Dual control splits responsibilities so that one person initiates a transaction and another person approves it.

Guidance from banks and risk professionals emphasizes that dual control helps prevent a single individual, whether an internal employee or an external fraudster, using stolen credentials, from having full control over both payment initiation and approval. By requiring at least two people to be involved, you create a checkpoint that can catch errors or suspicious activity before funds leave your account.

As you set up dual controls within your treasury management platform, it’s advised to:

• Define which users can initiate ACH and wire payments, and which users can approve them
• Establish daily limits by user, by payment type and by channel
• Determine who is best to create or change user entitlements and payment templates

These recommendations support better governance and can significantly reduce the possibility of internal or external fraud related to payment processing.

Ready to strengthen your treasury management strategy?

By partnering with a banking team that offers treasury management solutions and guidance tailored to your industry and growth stage, you can better safeguard your cash, support expansion and navigate an environment where both opportunity and risk are on the rise.

Connect with our team to explore solutions designed for growing businesses.

*Forecast for 2023: Cash Visibility Rules, treasury-management.com

**Fraud Survey, Association for Financial Professionals

Treasury Management FAQs

How can treasury management solutions help businesses?
Treasury management solutions help business clients manage their cash flow by operating more efficiently, improving their working capital and reducing risk. When all of this is optimized, companies can focus on growing their business and other pressing needs.

How can businesses help reduce their risk of payment fraud?
Businesses help reduce their risk of payment fraud by using tools like Check Payee Positive Pay, ACH filters and debit blocks. Alerts, daily transaction monitoring and dual approval controls also enhance proper governance and risk management.

Why is cash flow visibility important?
Cash flow visibility is important because it helps businesses know their daily cash position to make informed decisions about spending, investing and borrowing.