Archive for the Featured Category
Reconciliations are a basic business control. Despite them being commonplace, fundamental errors in their application continue.
When you are reconciling one balance to another, you must make sure that you are using the correct balance. It may sound obvious, but when you are performing a bank reconciliation you need to ensure that you are using the balance provided by the bank to reconcile to.
If you don’t, this can happen:
An error is made because the bank balance hasn’t actually bee
March 26, 2012
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I recently spent some time with a few of the team reviewing recent projects to understand what had gone well and what had not gone well in order to hopefully learn something useful for next time. The projects we were reviewing were long and complex software implementations with impacts across a number of areas of the client’s business.
As we worked our way through the project review we came up with a list of things we could have done better. Lessons learnt first hand are always better in m
March 6, 2012
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“Data is a precious thing and will last longer than the systems themselves.”
Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor, world-wide-web
It's always nice to be able to share a joke with your customer so the other day when I was asked by IT infrastructure staff at a customer about any ‘inconveniences’ our solution would ‘force upon them’. This is my slightly tongue in cheek reply:
Customer: So where do you manage your authentication information?
I don't know, where do you manage yours?
February 17, 2012
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The 2012 AFP Risk Management Survey asked CFOs, corporate treasurers and other senior finance executives about risks that worry them now, those most likely to cause uncertainty in the next three years, and actions they are taking to mitigate those risks
Here is my view on the major points:
Financial Uncertainty Risk. Over 70% of respondents identified this as the primary area of concern. Financial uncertainty risk is made up of:
Liquidity risk, the ability to turn assets you hold into
February 9, 2012
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“There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know.” Donald Rumsfeld
Taking a lead from Donald Rumsfeld, we know what today’s FX rate is. We know that we don’t know what future FX rates will be. We know that we need to do something about it. We don’t know what we don’t know about the FX deal the
January 23, 2012
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JP Morgan has released the latest 2011 global liquidity survey. See it here http://www.treasurers.org/node/7564
Here is my take on the headline points...
The appetite for yield is returning. I sense we have moved from a focus on just staying in business back to one of return on cash. Since 2008, many companies have just been happy to actually have spare cash to earn a return in the first place, as I am sure are their shareholders. Now that period of grace is over the shareholders
January 13, 2012
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The SIBOS 2011 Issues Preview Edition had an interesting article around Tim Keaney's (vice chairman and CEO at BNY Mellon) views on growth opportunities for banks. 4th on his list (of 4) is FX volatility. It’s not so much the presence of FX that interested me but rather it’s qualification with ‘volatility’. Now that’s the astute bit and where banks should be pushing for growth with corporates.
For corporates, rate changes in minor / exotic currencies have always been of conc
September 27, 2011
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So it really does look like that wonderful financial instrument the cheque will be with us for some time. Good news and good sense.
The Payments Council continues to cite the decline in cheque volumes as requiring a re-think on their actual existence (seeking abolition). But those canny newly 'NOTW trained' MPs have picked up on the fact that there may just be a small conflict of interest within the Council's proposals.
The Council's composition is bank led and, since banks want
August 25, 2011
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