The Start of Day (SoD) is effectively the opening balance across the group. It is viewable by receiving a report or by signing on via a terminal albeit mobile or fixed. It provides a summary of:

• The opening balances on the working capital accounts;
• List of treasury type assets eg. Call, fixed deposits, NCDs, etc.
• High level credit exposures to individual financial institutions including the working capital accounts and any foreign currency exposures;
• Simple interest rate exposure;
• Provides the viewer with an all-round high level synopsis;
• Serves as the central point of all cash management;
• Enables management to control the activities for that day.

The risk culture in an organisation permeates from senior management down into operations.

So, how do you get to know when the company is in breach or near breach of contract caveats, undertakings, or representations?

Do you want to know?

How soon after the event would you like to know?

Experience shows that without liquidity or at least, access to liquidity, companies are unable to operate even for brief periods of time.

Our approach is to pre-empt and be aware of the headroom available before breaches actually occur.

Even where breaches are inevitable that a strategy has been formulated and ready to be actioned.

Breaches can affect the reputation of your company. Is it worth protecting is the question you need to answer.

This is just one aspect of practices 4D Treasury Services provides.

Exposures in this context is limited to credit, interest rates, currency and commodity exposures.

Is it valuable to firstly, know what your exposures are and secondly what the effect of market and price movements are on your business?

We offer real time exposure reporting on certain transactional components of the business and next day reporting in respect of companywide exposures.

Information is supplied through reports or by means of deal capture warnings.

Asset and liability exposures are produced at a single stroke and consolidated in a single system generated report.

Limits, facilities and guarantees are features of all businesses.

They apply to internal and external parties which influence your company.

By internally we refer to subsidiaries, divisions and departments which fall within your control.

In cases where a monitoring function is required, this too can be accommodated.

External parties would generally comprise legal entities who would provide assets or liabilities.

The purpose is to provide management with an all-encompassing view of exposures across the group.

Wouldn’t it be nice to know what your commitments are and what facilities are available?

Let’s face it, spreadsheets don’t conform to true Governance, Risk and Compliance requirements. Even disregarding GRC:-

• Are you confident in the controls of cash and liquidity management?
• Do you have an acceptable measure of risk and exposure?
• Are your operations complying with policy and contract requirements?

If the answer is YES to all, read no further.

If not, 4D Treasury Services provides an answer which will empower, inform and instil an inner confidence in the decisions you make

Risk is unavoidable. However, if managed properly in conjunction with contingency planning, risk can become part of a standard procedure.

Would it be helpful to know how much risk the company is exposed to at the start of day, knowing what the baseline is and how this will affect your cash and future liquidity?

We provide a simple solution in the form of a report or file for analytical purposes.

When things are running smoothly nobody considers adversity.

We believe this is precisely the time when to consider negative market impacts on your business.

We provide for three scenarios. We belief that more would lead to confusion. More is not necessarily better

Scenario simulation covers:

• Interest rate movements;
• Foreign exchange rate moves;
• Commodity price changes

Our offering enables you to store, compare and have sight of your future cash and liquidity position under a chosen scenario.

Most companies find forecasting to be challenging.

Forecasts are further complicated by the further out the forecast the greater the likelihood of error.

Our mission is to identify and measure the extent of errors and then to help improve the forecasting based on analytics and forecasting methodology.

The amount of spend in obtaining information, systems and the type of expertise normally defines how serious a client is about the future.

The sustainability of your company is dependent on whether it has sufficient cash resources.

Matters are further complicated by acquisitions and mergers or market conditions that suddenly restrict the ability to trade freely. This could be due to debtor defaults or lending conditions drying up.

This is one of the reasons you should want to centralise banking relationships and the management of cash at a central hub is one of our core strengths.

In times of crisis, information to make decisions is critical. We help ensure that information is available whenever, wherever at whatever time intervals you need it to make those all important decisions.

Don’t let delays in information be the downfall of the company in times of chaos.

General communication to shareholders is an aspect most companies have waxed. In dealing with companies who are multi banked or who have divisions dealing with the same bank by more than one party we have found are at a disadvantage.

Here are just three questions we know we can help answer:

Has your organisation considered how they are going to control what is said to who by whom?

Have you thought about how best to centralise key interactions during times of liquidity crisis?

Do we as an organisation have a plan?

Communication to members of staff is just as important as the communication with creditors, shareholders and banks during volatile and uncertain times. This is especially applicable when the perception of your organisation changes.

We have physically experienced such conditions and encourage you to use our services to aid you in formulating a strategy in how to manage key stakeholder relationships.

In our daily business dealings we are focused on being profitable which will hopefully lead us to being ‘around’ next month, next year, the year after and so on.

4D Treasury Services is a company that endorses the anticipation of negative circumstances by implementing strategies thus minimising unknowns to within acceptable risk parameters. Most importantly however 4D Treasury Services uphold and promote teamwork with clients in ensuring future sustainability.

Our approach to data, reports and software is that functionality and presentation is simple and relevant.

Information is standardised across the organisation to ensure understanding, makeup and constancy.

Terms get defined and standard calculations are signed off leading to a common understanding within the organisation at all levels.

Information is provided through standard reports or viewed online.

We ensure minimal manipulation through external interference.

In the case of calculated data in reports, calculations are checked by two parties and signed off by management and internal audit.

Reports can’t cater for individual user requirements.

The system provides for user specific data to be exported to excel for external analysis.

Choice of too many reports in specified layouts results in reports becoming obsolete.

4D helps focus the relevance of data.

User specific data is available on an ad hoc basis or as and when required.

Company should remain vigilant of analysis paralysis.

Group companies and or subsidiaries can be a complex environment.

Especially when dealing with strong individual businesses.

Each has its own experiences and differing believes in their respective resources.

Common to all is the impact decisions and risk has on the profitability.

Whether good or bad decisions are made cannot be controlled.

However, 4D will enable you to make informed decisions based on accurate and timeous data that you understand.

Timeous information not only refers to time but also place at specified intervals.

Only when organisations have lived the potentially business destroying crisis is the value of quality information understood and appreciated.

Our service includes processes formulation, introducing best practice thinking and contingency plans which will pre-empt potential crisis as well as highlight future bottlenecks.

Enablers of understanding daily cash flows.

Include processes, procedures and policies.

Service is complemented by reliable and proven software.

Managers and users can view the company’s position whenever, wherever they need to.

4D Treasury Services aims to remove volatility, uncertainty, confusion and ambiguity within organisation to facilitate the accurate and efficient delivery of information and services.

Trust at an operational level has a number of dependencies. These include:

• Human capital;
• Systems;
• Processes and procedures;
• Perceptions

Organisations are dependent on proper cash management. If the people, systems and processes are not trusted, cash management and decision making will be in doubt no matter the end result.

We affect the systems and process elements of your business.

The human capital aspect is influenced through recommendations and suggestions.

We aim to work with clients and shoulder part of the responsibility of implementations.

Best practice is our chosen option.

However, it doesn’t always suite every client’s needs.

We use best practice as the baseline relative to existing practice.

And only once established is a strategy implemented that the client desires.

Access and ease of use refers to the system on offer.

The treasury system is written in Progress which is used by Administrative Financial Service Providers.

Access to the system can be gained by signing on the desk top or remotely.

We can provide technical specifications on request.

The navigation once logged in as a User is system prompted.

The basis of the controls comply with the regulations applicable to banks.

Statements drawn from the system mirror those of the investment at a financial institution in both capital and interest and can be drawn intra month on a daily basis. The system is a fully fledged Treasury banking system adapted to corporate needs.

Working capital account balances are visible to users as well as the transactions that would pass through that account once loaded.

This enables users to know what the anticipated Opening Balance should be the following day by current account.

Management has sight of how much lazy money there is within the group at individual companies.

In respect of management and staff with regards to cash and liquidity management, 4D Treasury Services offer clients two services:

• We can consult or train staff at the work station on how to perform cash management. We can transfer skills as well as coach staff members in terms of market practice, terminology as well as market fundamentals.
• The organisation could outsource the cash management function. Depending on the level of control the organisation wants to maintain will determine the extent of the service.

We believe that if data is consolidated at a central point proper risk management and informed decision making can occur quickly, efficiently and in a control environment.

In order to achieve this efficiency however, data must:

• Be system generated;
• Minimum human intervention;
• Be obtainable on demand;
• Visible to parties that need to have sight;
• In a format that everyone understands the same data in the same way;

Our approach is to ensure that cash flows are traceable, accurate, back-tested and that there is independent sign off by management and internal audit.

The tester is whether the flows occurring on the working capital accounts match those that have been provided for from within the company.

Managing divisions or separate companies who perform their own banking, cash management, settlements as well as their own forecasting within their entity makes life difficult for the person drawing the data together for analytical purposes.

In order to manage cash flow properly from a central point, our solution states that there must be:

• At least visibility / sight of the working capital accounts;
• Minimum of quarterly future dated cash flows;
• As a bare minimum a one year rolling cash flow forecast;

We believe that cash flows controlled from a central point will prevent the business from defaulting leading to loss on discounts, liquidity squeezes without good reason or even credit downgrades without being able to plan for these events.

The above events lead to reputational risk, higher cost of funding as well as the consumption of unnecessary management time.

The actual control is achieved by back-testing forecast versus actual cash flows

Our approach also limits unplanned outflows on individual working capital accounts without an escalation and approval process.

A history of actual flows is built up for future analytical purposes which take seasonal flows into account which are an accurate indicator and can be linked to economic indicators.

The system provides controls in respect of

• Users;
• financial instrument;
• interest rate tolerance limits;
• credit risk management which includes the exposure on the working capital accounts;
• dealer transaction volume;

The system is based on the requirements that banks need to comply with and is controlled in the initial set-up of users, financial instruments and the various risk factors.