Cash Forecasting - Pain Points & Challenges¶

Pain Points¶

Explainability & Trust Gaps¶

Can't easily explain forecast accuracy to stakeholders - "Can I trust it?" is a question they struggle to answer confidently
Source: ON (2025-11-11)
Model explainability is challenging - Hard to answer "how reliable is your forecast?" with specifics
Source: ON (2025-11-11)
No visibility into model selection - Don't know which models are being used or why they were chosen
Source: ON (2025-11-11)
Other treasuries asking the same question - HelloFresh and others asking "can I trust it?" - this is a universal concern
Source: ON (2025-11-11)
No visibility into forecast model assumptions - Hard to know if a trend is already factored in before layering additional adjustments, risking double-counting
Source: Personio (2026-02-18) - Tom: distinguishes "nudging the forecast" (correcting model assumptions) from "scenario analysis" (layering events on top)

Validation Workflow Challenges¶

Excel/Google Sheets methodology hard to maintain - Manual validation process "not super easy to maintain over time" and needs to transition to the platform
Source: ON (2026-01-22) - Federico building in Google Sheets but recognizes it's unsustainable
Need to validate across multiple forecast versions - Want to compare different forecast versions for the same week to see improvement over time
Source: ON (2026-01-22) - Forecast vs Forecast comparison essential for tracking accuracy improvement
No built-in WMAPE tracking - Have to manually calculate Weighted Mean Absolute Percentage Error and maintain heat maps externally
Source: ON (2026-01-22) - Federico building WMAPE methodology in Excel for validation

Decentralization Challenges¶

Decentralized entities make consolidated forecasting difficult - Multiple entities across countries need both individual and group-level views
Source: Euroports (2025-10-27) - Belgium (5), Spain (2), France
Source: Volvo Cars (2025-03-27) - 40 entities report to Group Treasury
Excel chaos across many entities - Different formats, decimal conventions, Lakh notation (India); "When it's on the Excel, anything can go wrong"
Source: Volvo Cars (2025-03-27)
Business controllers not Treasury-focused - Spend ~1 hour/month on forecasting; focused on commercial, not cash
Source: Volvo Cars (2025-03-27) - "The controllers aren't giving enough time on this because at the end of the day they're concerned with commercials"
Chasing entities for on-time reporting - Constant follow-up needed to ensure timely submissions
Source: Volvo Cars (2025-03-27) - First of "three wishes" is to stop chasing markets for submissions
Half day spent collating forecasts - "You spend half a day collating all the data to get to something that should be done as soon as you cook a submit button"
Source: Live Events (2025-04-01) - 23 operating businesses sending Excel templates
Historical data not useful for revenue forecasting - In unpredictable industries (festivals), past performance doesn't indicate future results
Source: Live Events (2025-04-01) - "Sometimes one festival that goes mad one year and then just no foot for the next year"
No unified ERP across opcos - Fragmented data across many different ERPs
Source: Live Events (2025-04-01) - "Many different teams on different ERPs, there's no unified ERP"
Expensive debt facilities for short-term funding - Using central debt facility during seasonal cash shortfalls
Source: Live Events (2025-04-01) - Building internal cash pool to avoid external debt costs

Forecast Frequency & Freshness¶

Budget/forecast cycles too infrequent - Only 1-2 per year, not responsive to business changes
Source: Euroports (2025-10-27)
ERP bookings only updated monthly - Not useful for within-month forecasting
Source: Euroports (2025-10-27)

Data Visibility¶

Factored receivables lose customer-level visibility - 60-70% of receivables through ABN factoring, losing customer-level detail needed for AR forecasting
Source: Euroports (2025-10-27)

Granularity & Distribution¶

Collections forecast is just one monthly number - Need daily distribution across working days, but only get aggregate monthly figure from FP&A
Source: Personio (2025-10-21)
No automated way to track investment maturities in forecasts - Deposit maturities not showing as future cash inflows
Source: Personio (2025-10-21)

TMS Limitations (Kyriba)¶

Kyriba deletes ALL forecast data daily and replaces - No smart updates, no historical snapshots; causes missing data during training
Source: ON (2025-10-02) - "We're training the regions now... and the data is not there because that day because we delete... it happens so many times."
Kyriba rejects data if bank account not assigned - Ongoing data quality issues from integration rules
Source: ON (2025-10-02) - "Kyriba rejects [data]. So for example, we have rules based on Kyriba bank accounts. If any of the flows don't have a bank account assigned, it will not be integrated."
No smart forecasting in Kyriba - Just open items and manual inputs; "nothing super smart, nothing of AI"
Source: ON (2025-11-17)
Kyriba forecasting module can't import data - Cash flows must be generated within Kyriba; can't pull actuals from ERP
Source: IHG (2025-04-07) - "In my understanding is that in the forecasting module in Kyriba, there's no ability to import data"
Accounts going overdrawn due to missed items - Policy violations from spreadsheet errors
Source: IHG (2025-04-07) - "We have certain accounts where we have agreements that they won't go overdrawn... sometimes that happens"
Hard to justify additional TMS spend - Already paying for unused modules; reluctant to buy more
Source: IHG (2025-04-07) - "She's very reluctant to spend any more money with Kyriba because we already paid for a fair bit of stuff that we don't use"
No category-level forecast views - Can't see development of salaries, Capex, etc. separately in Kyriba
Source: ON (2025-11-17)
Dynamics data timing issues - Paid items still show as open until accounting closes them, causing duplicate forecasts
Source: ON (2025-11-17)

Accuracy Issues¶

IC forecast timing incorrect - Monthly intercompany transactions get averaged across all weeks instead of pinned to correct week
Source: Palm Internal (2026-02-02) - Jennifer on Personio: "The forecasts are not being pinned to the correct week. They're just being attributed over the year."
ZBA participant accounts show decreasing balances - Should always be zero, but forecasts show declining balances
Source: Palm Internal (2026-02-02) - "Zero balances that the accounts look like they're going down forever when they should always be at zero"
Forecasting model picks wrong approach for periodic payments - Model selects "most numeric" approach which averages everything, even clearly periodic (monthly) payments
Source: Palm Internal (2026-02-02) - Same issue affects payroll: "Payroll's the third week of the month, but you average it out every week"
Outliers skew forecasts - Large one-off payments (e.g., 11M, severance) distort future predictions if not excluded
Source: ON (2025-11-17)
Source: Sonder (2024-11-19) - "Algorithms have a hard time with sudden changes"
AR collection patterns not applied - HighRadius knows customer behaviors but this data doesn't flow to cash forecasting; "only 80% of expected inflows actually arrive"
Source: ON (2025-11-17)
Collections volatility - Customer behavior is unpredictable; external events (Super Bowl, elections) affect bookings and payments
Source: Sonder (2024-11-19) - Collections hardest to predict; outflows controllable but inflows depend on customer behavior
Stakeholder input quality varies - Sales tends to be optimistic, finance teams more reliable; need to sanity-check inputs
Source: Sonder (2024-11-19) - "Different people are gonna have different levels of confidence"

Buffer & Funding Challenges¶

Holding buffers because forecast isn't reliable enough - Can't do just-in-time funding when daily forecast accuracy is uncertain
Source: Personio (2024-10-03)
Source: Personio (2024-11-26) - "If you don't trust the forecast because you have variances and can't identify where they're coming from easily, you end up having bigger buffers."
No daily transactional forecast - Bottom-up forecasting needed for daily funding decisions vs monthly FP&A forecasts
Source: Personio (2024-10-03)

Manual Process Challenges¶

Manual spreadsheet process - No system, everything basic and manual; takes significant time
Source: Personio (2024-11-26) - "Current process: Budget-based, manual spreadsheets, averaging monthly inflows across days"
Budget-based forecasting only - No transactional-level visibility; forces large buffers
Source: Personio (2024-11-26)
Lack of ERP integration - Would love supplier payment reports from ERP but hard to prioritize
Source: Personio (2024-11-26)

Forgotten/Surprise Payments¶

Forgotten tax payments - Payments that happen once a year get forgotten, causing panic
Source: Personio (2024-11-26)

Stakeholder Challenges¶

Stakeholder alignment challenges - Business teams don't see value in improving invoice approval timing
Source: Personio (2024-11-26) - Need feedback loop to show cost of late approvals

Surprise Payments & Missing Data¶

Last-minute surprise payments - Payments not in anyone's radar, discovered day-of
Source: ON (2024-11-19)
Source: Volvo Cars (2025-03-27) - Entities reach out when "something crazy" happens
Source: IHG (2025-04-07) - "Sometimes it'll be very late in the day and they'll suddenly realize we need to pay this"
Overwriting forecasts loses variance visibility - Changing 100 to 80 looks the same as changing 100 to 800; no audit trail of changes
Source: Volvo Cars (2025-03-27) - "If you see a variance, you pay more attention. If you have to report a deviation of something, you pay a little bit more attention"
Year-end AP rush - Invoices approved but not forecasted; big push to pay suppliers before year-end
Source: Volvo Cars (2025-03-27)
Payments made outside system - E.g., tax payment from online banking not in ERP, only see debit next day
Source: ON (2024-11-19)
Direct debits not transparent - Not clear what's set up historically, banks don't provide this info easily
Source: ON (2024-11-19)
Stakeholder education gaps - Teams making payments without informing Treasury
Source: ON (2024-11-19)

Data & Tool Challenges¶

Data mining from ERP - Accounting system not designed for treasury, requires combining multiple tables
Source: ON (2024-11-19) - "The difficult part is getting the right data from the ERP... the accounting system is not designed as a treasury management system."
TMS inflexibility drives Excel usage - If tool isn't easy for quick scenarios, people go back to Excel
Source: ON (2024-11-19) - "If the tool is not flexible or intuitive to make scenarios or adjustments, you end up doing it in Excel."

Account Management Complexity¶

150 accounts blindness - Become "fully blind" reviewing so many accounts daily; can't identify where to focus attention
Source: ON (2024-11-19) - "At some point, you become blind, you become fully blind. You see the numbers but you don't know where to draw your attention if you have 150 accounts."

Category & Alignment Challenges¶

Different category definitions across departments - Treasury calls it "payroll" while accounting splits into taxes, benefits, salaries
Source: Sonder (2024-10-03)
Reconciling between Treasury/Accounting/FP&A takes time - Cash vs GAAP basis; different timelines (Treasury knows day after, accounting takes 2-3 weeks)
Source: Sonder (2024-10-03)
Lack of historical data for seasonality - Younger companies can't rely on year-over-year patterns
Source: Sonder (2024-10-03) - "Our business is still too young probably to have much seasonality"

Reactive Cash Management¶

Cash management is reactive rather than proactive - Teams respond to cash needs as they arise rather than anticipating them
Source: Discogs (2025-03-25) - "Cash management tends to be reactive... limited forward-looking visibility"
No need for deep forecasting... until business changes - Companies with healthy balance sheets may not need detailed forecasting until growth/investment phase
Source: Discogs (2025-03-25) - "We've been in quite fortunate position with a very healthy balance sheet... So we've not had to look at cash forecasting too much depth recently but that can and will change"

FP&A vs Treasury Misalignment¶

FP&A plans don't refresh frequently enough - FP&A updates annually/quarterly while Treasury needs weekly; creates end-of-period divergence
Source: Levi's (2025-12-11) - "It's when you come closer to the end of a period that you're so far apart because they haven't refreshed. And I have." - Dette

Unexpected Payments¶

Invoices stuck in desk drawers - Invoices forgotten or lost, discovered only when due, not in any forecast
Source: Levi's (2025-12-11) - "There's always somebody who's going to get an invoice and stick it in the drawer of their desk... All of a sudden I owe somebody $20 million because it's sitting in someone's desk." - Dette
Influencer pre-payments don't follow standard terms - Influencers/celebrities require upfront payment regardless of payment terms
Source: Levi's (2025-12-11) - "Influencers. They get paid up front. They don't care if you have a 90 day term." - Dette

System Transition Challenges¶

Straddling two systems creates double work - During transitions, maintaining forecasts in parallel systems delays publish
Source: Levi's (2025-12-11) - "Because we're straddling two systems, we publish in the middle of the week because there's so much work." - Dette

Industry-Wide Challenges (Treasury Dragons Panel, 2025-12-09)¶

Data fragmentation remains the biggest challenge - Banks, ERPs, investment platforms, payment processors all in separate silos; "The biggest pain is in gathering all the data into one platform" - Matthias Van Camp (Cobase)
Source: Treasury Dragons (2025-12-09) - Varan (Zanders, 13 years consulting): "fragmented technology landscape, multiple banking partners and operations across different geographies"
IT dependency for data preparation - Treasury teams relying on IT/BI teams to clean and prepare data; creates bottleneck
Source: Treasury Dragons (2025-12-09) - Panax: "teams are often relying on other teams within the organization to get the data in"
Spreadsheet default despite tool investments - Even companies who've tried tools revert to Excel; Ferguson (37 years treasury) "still using spreadsheets"
Source: Treasury Dragons (2025-12-09) - Royston Decoster: "Many firms still using spreadsheets, including ourselves. Not for lack of trying"
User adoption slows when tools are difficult - Complex tools lead to slow adoption and abandonment
Source: Treasury Dragons (2025-12-09) - Royston Decoster: "user adoption slows when the tools are difficult to use"
Data quality inconsistent across sources - Foundation data quality still unresolved industry-wide
Source: Treasury Dragons (2025-12-09) - Royston Decoster: "Data quality is still often inconsistent"
Long-term forecasts depend on human judgment - Short-term becoming reliable but "long term forecasts still depend heavily on human judgment and scenario planning"
Source: Treasury Dragons (2025-12-09) - Royston Decoster (Ferguson)
Entity collaboration remains challenging - Getting subsidiaries to provide timely, accurate forecasts is ongoing struggle
Source: Treasury Dragons (2025-12-09) - TIS: "reliance that companies have on multiple different entities to really bring in forecast inputs"