Multi-entity cash visibility without a treasury management system
Groups with a dozen entities and several currencies are told they need a full TMS. Usually they need three things: a clean entity map, consistent classification, and a defensible translation policy.
A logistics group we worked with last year had eleven legal entities, four currencies, nineteen bank accounts and no treasury function. They had been quoted for a full treasury management system and had, sensibly, walked away.
What they actually needed was smaller than that, and it is the same three things almost every mid-market group needs.
One entity map, maintained deliberately
Most groups have an entity structure that lives in three incompatible places: the statutory register, the consolidation model, and whatever the bank portals happen to be organised by. Reconciling those once, and then keeping a single map, removes an enormous amount of downstream confusion.
The map needs to record, for each entity: its functional currency, its bank accounts, its position in the group hierarchy, and whether it participates in any pooling arrangement.
Consistent classification across banks
Cash flow categories only mean something if every bank's transaction lines map to them the same way. A customer receipt should land in the same category whether it arrived as a direct debit collection in the UK or an incoming SEPA credit transfer in the Netherlands.
Build the mapping rules once, apply them to every source, and keep an exception queue for lines that do not match a rule rather than letting them fall into a catch-all. The catch-all is where accuracy goes to die.
A translation policy you can defend
Multi-currency reporting forces a choice, and the choice matters less than making it explicitly and sticking to it. Report balances in their own currency first, then translate to a group presentation currency at a stated rate — whether that is spot, a month-end rate, or a hedged rate you have contracted.
State which one you used on the report. A group cash figure without a stated translation basis is not a number anyone can act on.
What pooling does and does not change
Physical pooling moves cash; notional pooling does not. Both change what your available liquidity is, and neither changes what each entity legally owns. Report the entity-level position and the pooled position separately, because your local directors need the first and your group treasurer needs the second.
When you genuinely do need a TMS
If you are running an in-house bank, dealing FX or interest rate derivatives in volume, or managing an investment portfolio with hundreds of instruments, a full treasury management system earns its cost. Below that, the cost is mostly in the implementation and the ongoing administration, and the visibility problem can be solved for a fraction of it.