What is corporate treasury?

At its core, corporate treasury is the strategic management of a company's financial assets and liabilities. While accounting looks backward to report on historical performance, the function of corporate treasury is forward-looking.

For a US-based, global first founder, treasury is the operating system behind money movement. It involves cash visibility, payment timing, investments, and financial risks (like fluctuating FX rates) to protect the business’s solvency and fuel its expansion. Corporate treasury helps you decide how idle funds are used, all with the goal of keeping the business solvent, predictable, and ready to scale.

What corporate treasury does in practice

As your business grows, the treasury function in a company acts as a function that quietly removes friction from capital movement. It ensures that capital isn't just sitting idle but is being deployed or protected effectively.

What does the corporate treasury do?

The day-to-day corporate treasury operations focus on these main pillars:

• Liquidity management: Ensuring the business can meet its financial obligations without over-leveraging. It assists with the right amount of cash available in the right accounts to cover payroll, vendors, and operating costs, while keeping excess funds parked safely or earning yield instead.
  
• Risk mitigation: It helps in protecting your business from external financial shocks. For founders operating across markets, this often includes managing foreign exchange exposure, interest rate volatility, and payment reliability so unexpected swings don’t hit margins or disrupt operations.
  
• Capital allocation: Corporate treasury helps you in addressing what happens with excess cash. Should you keep it in a 0% interest checking account, or should you move it into corporate treasury solutions like government bonds or money market funds to preserve purchasing power against inflation and offset inflation?
  
• Planning your financials: An effective corporate treasury will help you make sure that cash movements match up with forecasts, reporting requirements, and other legal compliances.
  
• Ensure compliance and report inconsistencies: Ensuring cash movements line up with forecasts, reporting requirements, and regulatory expectations. Treasury helps surface inconsistencies early, supports accurate reporting, and reduces surprises during audits or investor reviews.
  

What metrics does the treasury function report on?

To keep the board and founders informed, corporate treasury tracks specific KPIs that signal financial health:

• Cash conversion cycle: How fast can you turn resources into cash?
  
• Net debt-to-EBITDA: A measure of your leverage and ability to pay off debt.
  
• FX gain/loss: The impact of currency fluctuations on your global holdings.
  
• Investment yield: The return generated on "idle" cash reserves.
  

How corporate treasury is beneficial for your business

Implementing a formal approach to corporate finance and treasury isn't about adding red tape; it's about building a foundation for scale.

• Maximize interest income: Corporate treasury services can help you turn your venture capital or revenue into a steady stream of passive income. Even a 4% return on a $5 million reserve adds $200,000 to your runway each year.
  
• Minimize FX leakage: When you send money across borders, mid-market rate markups can hide "ghost fees." A good treasury strategy uses local rails to avoid these costs.
  
• Increased security: By centralizing your corporate treasury systems, you make it harder for fraud to happen and make sure you follow all global banking rules.
  

What's the difference between finance and treasury management?

It’s easy to treat finance and treasury as the same thing, especially early on. In a lean startup, one person (often you or a CFO) usually owns both. But they solve very different problems.

• Finance answers, “Are we building a valuable business?”
  
• Treasury answers, “Will we still be solvent while we build it?”
  

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Corporate treasury best practices

When your business grows, corporate treasury management stops being just an idea and starts to affect how you do things every day. These are operator-led rules that help keep things predictable as things get more complicated:

• Keep a "safety" buffer: Don't try to get more money by cutting back on payroll. You should keep at least three to six months' worth of operating expenses in accounts that are easy to access. This way, you won't have to rush when things go wrong or slow down.
  
• Diversify your banking stack: Don't keep all of your money with one bank; instead, spread it out among several banks. A mix of tier-one banks and modern corporate treasury management softwares lowers concentration risk and makes sure you can get to your money if one system goes down or slows you down.
  
• Manage FX risk proactively: If you make money in one currency and spend it in another, FX swings can slowly eat away at your profits. Instead of waiting until costs go up, use automated FX tools or rate-locking mechanisms to lower your risk.
  

Corporate treasury challenges (what usually breaks first)

The theory of corporate treasury seems clean on paper, proper end to end tasks aligning capital movements. But in practice, this is where most growing businesses start to feel friction.

• Keeping enough cash available without letting it sit idle: You need cash ready for payroll, vendors, and taxes, but parking too much in a checking account quietly hurts your runway. Most teams solve this by getting real-time visibility across all accounts and automating cash movement so surplus funds don’t stay unused longer than needed.
  
• Managing financial risk as markets move: Interest rates change. Currencies move. Credit conditions tighten. Any of these can hit margins without warning. Treasury teams manage this by setting clear risk limits and using tools like FX hedging or fixed-rate instruments so volatility doesn’t turn into surprises.
  
• Staying compliant as rules change: AML, KYC, accounting standards, and data rules don’t stay static, and they vary by region. Falling behind creates audit risk and operational delays. The usual fix is tighter reporting, regular reviews, and systems that automatically log and surface compliance data instead of relying on manual checks.
  
• Connecting systems and avoiding data silos: Treasury rarely lives in one tool. Cash data sits in banks, ERP systems, and spreadsheets. When those don’t talk to each other, decisions slow down. Modern setups focus on integration so cash positions, forecasts, and approvals all reference the same source of truth.
  
• Protecting against fraud and cyber risk: As money movement becomes more digital, the risk shifts from paperwork errors to unauthorized access and fraud. Strong controls like multi-factor authentication, role-based permissions, and real-time alerts are no longer optional at scale.
  
• Dealing with market uncertainty: Rising rates or sudden downturns affect borrowing costs and returns. Treasury teams plan for this with scenario modeling and stress testing so decisions don’t have to be reactive when conditions change.
  
• Handling global operations and currencies: Operating across countries adds complexity fast. Cash sits in multiple currencies, FX impacts profits, and repatriation isn’t always instant. Companies usually respond by centralizing treasury visibility and using multi-currency tools that show exposure clearly.
  
• Closing the skills gap: Treasury today sits between finance and technology. Many teams don’t have specialists who cover both. The practical solution has been to rely more on automation and systems that reduce dependence on manual expertise.

What you actually need to manage in corporate treasury

When you move a lot of money, compliance stops being a list of things to do and becomes a part of how you do business. Moving money isn't just about moving it; it's also about doing it in ways that meet rules, reporting, and internal control standards. Getting this right the first time will keep things from freezing, auditors from asking questions, and things from moving slowly.

Know your rules and your banking: You will need to do KYC (Know Your Customer) and AML (Anti-Money Laundering) checks with every bank and treasury service you use. That means checking your business, ownership, and key signatories not just once, but on a regular basis. In the US, any organization that holds or moves money must have systems like OFAC/sanctions screening and customer identification programs.

• Track every dollar with audit trails: Audit trails let you keep track of every dollar. Regulators and auditors want to see clear links between your cash flows, forecasts, and financial statements. Treasury systems should keep track of transactions, approvals, exceptions, and any rules that caused automated actions to happen. This makes it easier for both internal and external audits to go smoothly, and it makes compliance reviews less stressful.
  
• Internal controls and approval policies matter: As teams get bigger, you need written rules about who can move money, who has to approve transfers, and what levels of risk require extra checks. These controls aren't just good practice; they're required for SOX readiness, investor due diligence, and relationships with institutional banks.
  
• Adhere to anti-fraud and cybersecurity standards: Fraud and hacking often target operations in the Treasury. US regulators and partners want multi-factor authentication, encrypted data flows, role-based permissions, and logs of access attempts. Strong controls lower risk, and banks and business partners are more and more expecting them to be in contracts.
  
• Understand cross-border and tax reporting rules: When you move money between countries or hold balances in more than one currency, you have to deal with FX risk as well as tax reporting, withholding requirements, and possibly how your US entity's tax situation affects you. Treasury compliance often brings together banking and tax teams to make sure that cash movements don't create unexpected debts.
  
• Prepare for investor and board transparency: When outside money is involved, treasury compliance isn't just a rule; it's also part of how the business runs. Founders should explain cash posture, controls, and risk exposures in board packs, forecasts, and quarterly updates.
  

Can you automate corporate treasury? The evolution

The old way of running treasury was manual by default. Spreadsheets to track balances. Logging into multiple bank portals. Chasing confirmations. Phone calls to brokers. It worked when the scale was small, but it broke quickly once money started moving across entities, currencies, or geographies.

Modern corporate treasury systems look very different. Today’s systems behave more like a finance operating layer. Instead of reacting to cash movements after the fact, you can see your global cash position in real time, across accounts and currencies. Rules replace reminders. Automation replaces manual transfers.

Here’s what you can achieve with automating your corporate treasury:

• Real time cash visibility and multi currency control: You can see all your USD cash and multi currency balances in a single dashboard without having to juggle between bank portals. This helps in quick decision making.
  
• Yield on spare cash: With corporate treasury solutions from Aspire, you can earn up to 3.73% annual yield (after fees)³ on idle USD funds. You can invest them in money market instruments and still access the money securely the next business day.
  
• No minimum balances: You don’t need to maintain a huge balance to start putting cash to work; treasury investing can begin from your very first dollar.
  
• Automatic reconciliation: Payments, receipts, and FX conversions can flow into your accounting stack automatically, removing the need to match transactions manually.
  
• Rules-based movement and approvals: Instead of moving funds manually every time cash moves in or out, you can set rules that trigger payouts or migrations between accounts, giving you control without the busywork.
  

Best corporate treasury services and solutions as per growth stage

Early growth stage: simple, operational treasury: At the early growth stage, treasury doesn’t need to be overly complex. The priority is visibility and control, not sophisticated financial engineering. You’re running one or two entities, managing operating cash, paying vendors, and making sure nothing slips through the cracks.

At this stage, your needs are:

• Clear visibility into cash balances
  
• Simple cash movement and spend controls
  
• Easy reconciliation with accounting tools
  
• Minimal setup and low operational overhead
  

This is where platforms like Aspire fit well. They help businesses centralize cash, manage spend, and keep funds liquid and productive without introducing the complexity of full-scale treasury systems.

Expansion stage: integrated treasury management

Once you’re operating across multiple entities, paying vendors globally, or forecasting cash more tightly, treasury needs to plug directly into your broader finance stack. At this point, cash management becomes more strategic and less operational.

This is where integrated treasury management comes in.

Platforms like Rho, Stripe Treasury, or more advanced treasury setups within Brex are designed for this stage. These systems typically:

• Integrate deeply with ERPs like NetSuite or Xero
  
• Support FX management and multi-currency operations
  
• Enable liquidity planning and cash pooling across entities
  
• Provide real-time visibility across accounts, regions, and currencies
  

At this stage, treasury shifts from managing day-to-day cash to actively planning liquidity, managing risk, and supporting global scale.

Corporate treasury isn't just a luxury for the Fortune 500. For the global-first founder, it is a survival and growth tool. By managing your liquidity with the same precision you use for your product roadmap, you ensure that your bold vision is never sidelined by a lack of cash or a sudden market shift. Stop letting your capital sit idle. Build a treasury strategy that works as hard as you do.

Disclosure: AFT US LLC, d/b/a Aspire, is a financial technology company, not a bank. The Deposit Account and banking services are provided by Column N.A., Member FDIC. FDIC deposit insurance covers the failure of an insured depository institution. Deposits in the Deposit Account are FDIC-insured through Column N.A., Member FDIC and Column's Sweep Program Network Banks. Certain conditions must be satisfied for pass-through FDIC insurance to apply