BCR Publishing
We are the leading provider of news, market intelligence, events and training for the global receivables finance industry.
Working with industry leading organisations, experts, governments and universities, BCR Publications delivers expertise in factoring, receivables and supply chain finance to a global audience.
BCR has long been a beacon of innovation and excellence in the realm of receivables finance, playing an instrumental role in shaping the industry’s international landscape. Through its comprehensive conferences, insightful publications, and thought leadership, BCR has facilitated crucial dialogues and connections among industry professionals, driving forward the development of receivables finance globally.
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Flex Treasurer via treasuryXL: Wij regelen het voor je
| 18-12-2018 | treasuryXL |
Laagdrempelige en hoogwaardige expertise van ZZP’ers uit de treasury wereld voor kleine en middelgrote organisaties die geen treasurer of cash manager in dienst hebben.
WAT IS EEN FLEX TREASURER?
U bent de eigenaar van of werkt in een kleine of middelgrote organisatie die geen treasurer of cash manager in dienst heeft. U denkt waarschijnlijk dat er binnen uw organisatie geen plaats is voor een dergelijke functie. Maar, oordeel niet te snel: ook het MKB heeft behoefte aan professionals als het gaat om treasury en cash management. Toch gaat het aannemen van iemand vaak een stap te ver.
Welke mogelijkheden zijn er?
treasuryXL en Treasurer Search hebben de handen ineengeslagen om laagdrempelige en hoogwaardige expertise van ZZP’ers uit de treasury wereld te koppelen aan kleine en middelgrote ondernemingen die geen treasurer of cash manager in dienst hebben.
We willen met deze dienstverlening geen substituut worden voor de grote treasury consultancy organisaties maar we bieden graag ondersteuning bij vraagstukken die nu onbeantwoord blijven. U kunt de vraag aan ons stellen en wij zullen u vrijblijvend in contact brengen met de juiste deskundige. Leidt dit tot een samenwerking, dan kan dit op urenbasis, als lump sum of in een abonnementsvorm ingevuld worden.
Beschikbare diensten
Wij kennen Flex Treasurers uit verschillende vakgebieden: risk, bankrelaties & technologie, regulations, non-profit, financiering, trade finance, cash management, SME & overige gebieden.
Meer informatie kunt u terugvinden op onze website: https://www.treasuryxl.com/community/flex-treasurer/ . Hier kunt u bijvoorbeeld een overzicht van de diensten vinden die we aanbieden in samenwerking met de Flex Treasurers zoals bijvoorbeeld een treasury quickscan en een treasury coach.
Netting: a viable value driver
| 17-12-2018 | BELLIN | treasuryXL |
How to save money and resources with a smart intercompany reconciliation process
The last two decades have seen treasurers graduate from haphazard data collectors to deliberate decision makers. As their empowerment is inextricably linked to the triumph of the internet and the technology it affords, it comes as no surprise that most of them are curious about new developments and eager to partake in them. Yet, the convenience and value of automated intercompany reconciliation is still comparatively underappreciated and overlooked. According to an article published in Financial Management just a few years ago, the vast majority of US companies still reconcile their balance sheet accounts manually and forfeit the countless benefits yielded by a centralized, agreement-driven netting process enabled by today’s technology.
What is Netting?
At its most basic level, netting is the offsetting of payables against receivables between two or more group companies to reduce the amount of net payments and save transaction costs. Originally a mere accounting task – ensuring that the balances of two accounts were matching – intercompany reconciliation has, with the advent of modern technology, transformed into an indispensable cash and FX management tool and thus become an integral part of treasury management.
The netting center — technology with teething troubles
The proverbial missing link to an enhanced netting process was the emergence of cloud-based Treasury Management Systems that afford users global visibility and control and enable the implementation of group-wide process automation. Bilateral netting was replaced by multilateral netting (figure 1) via the introduction of netting centers run by the group treasury. Isolated matching between single subsidiaries became obsolete, as the netting center acts as a reconciliation hub across the entire company: payables are made out by the respective group companies to the netting center, receivables get paid to the eligible subsidiaries by the netting center. Classically, this process was either payable- or receivable-driven. On the surface, this seems simple and efficient, but it’s not: as there is no room for doubt or dispute, it is susceptible to errors and abuse. In the case of payments-driven netting, subsidiaries can compromise the system by accidentally or willfully failing to enter invoices, while in a netting process based on receivables, group companies can enter fictitious agreements to garner illegitimate payments. In a setup like this, the netting center is as effective as it is blind – with guillotine-like precision it carries out what the subsidiaries have entered, without verifying its legitimacy. This creates uncertainty among the group companies and fosters catacombs of shadow bookkeeping at the expense of much-needed visibility.
Netting – it’s all about engagement
Therefore, modern multilateral netting systems should not only perform AP/AR matching but are also dispute management systems, performing – as we call it — agreement-driven netting. It enables payable- and receivable-driven netting, but in an advanced manner, as it encourages engagement and promotes transparency. Via the TMS, AP and AR line item data gets collected and subsequently matched. Disagreements are dealt with in a structured dispute process, the rulebook of which is defined by the company’s management according to the requirements of the group. Disputes between subsidiaries get reviewed by the netting center, which acts like a referee, applying said rules. The key principle and the main advantage of this approach is the engagement it fosters: each party gets their say, no one can be taken advantage of, all transactions are transparent as everything gets recorded and the proper settlement of balances is ensured.
Multilateral Netting as a cash and FX management instrument
The advantages of such a process are obvious: With fixed dates for netting runs, incoming payments can be predicted precisely. The netting center respectively the central treasury enjoys maximum control and visibility of cash movements and can optimize the use of funds within the group. The same holds true for FX hedging: netting enables subsidiaries to transfer the FX risk to the central treasury, where seasoned experts deal with it for the entire group. Consequently, the number of FX trades – and with it the transfer and bank fees – gets significantly reduced, as each subsidiary will only have one cashflow per netting run towards or from the netting center in a fixed currency set beforehand. As the netting center acts as an in-house bank, the group companies don’t make any payments via bank accounts anymore, which saves cost and resources and provides added transparency.
Cost reduction via best practice netting: figures!
Let me provide you with just one example from the plethora of companies, who were able to streamline their operations and encounter significant savings via a TMS-based netting process: the Austrian tool manufacturer Tyrolit, whose Success Story and accompanying video we’ve featured previously as part of our We Love Treasury 2 series. Upon counting all payments via bank accounts between group companies, Tyrolit arrived at the impressive number of 600 per month, most of them international, entailing substantial bank fees as well as float. The fact that many of those transactions were made in foreign currency added significant translation costs to that, which were hard to calculate due to the different margins the banks offered. With the roll-out of an agreement-driven netting process across the group, Tyrolit managed to reduce the number of transactions to a mere 5% of the original amount and ended up saving the whopping sum of about 500,000€ per year on bank fees and translation costs alone.
Netting company-wide: benefits, benefits, benefits
By transforming a company’s entire intra-firm trade, a robust multilateral netting process offers benefits galore, including but not limited to:
By the way: the implementation of netting software is fairly straightforward, software-wise, once you’ve decided that you want to follow through with the process. It’s a one-time technical impact, user-training can be performed very efficiently and hosting as well as outsourcing options are available to overcome capacity shortages. So what are you waiting for?
Dr. Teut Deese
Staff Writer – BELLIN
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Check out the video: “Netting: How to save resources with smart IC Reconciliation,” in which Martin Bellin gives us an in-depth breakdown of how your company can take full advantage of the associated benefits.
YOU CAN BE ONE OF THE LAST PEER GROUP MEMBERS!
| 13-12-2018 | by Pieter de Kiewit |
“Under 20% of the treasury population completed a formal treasury education. And over 50% of decision makers in the recruitment of treasurers does not know about the discipline.” We are one of the launching partners of the Treasurer Test that can bring an objective measurement that can tackle problems resulting from the described issue. Others are the Vrije Universiteit (Amsterdam), the University of Applied Sciences of Utrecht, software & assessment developers and law experts.
Key element of the test is the comparison with peer groups. These groups are defined by number of years of experience in treasury of its’ members. Our role as launching partner is asking 100 relevant peer group members that will create the benchmark that future testees will be compared with. Peer group members do not pay the €595 the test will cost when ready, but only €1,21. We carefully invited most, but there are still a few places left, especially in the group with under 9 years’ experience. If you are interested, please contact Roy Baaten, the community manager of treasuryXL at [email protected]
When the number of 100 is reached, reports will be sent out and the Treasurer Test is ready for use. We expect a lot. At Treasurer Search we will use the test in our committed searches and many other situations, when relevant. First expectation is to further improve the match making process. Also in choosing education, coaching, outplacement, team formation and salary benchmarking the test can come in handy. Perhaps even showing a CFO about the complexity of the discipline can be done. There is a peer group “no treasury experience”.
We look forward to the analysis that can be made after a bigger group of people completed the test What will we see in the correlation between age, education level, nationality on one hand and treasury skills level on the other? We expect to further contribute in raising the level of corporate treasury and hope you will join us.
For more information about the Treasurer Test please visit the Treasurer Test Blog page.
Pieter de Kiewit
Owner Treasurer Search