Building from scratch the Treasury department at Spendesk

Can you describe your job and your responsibilities as a treasurer?

I’m a treasurer, which is a specific and quite technical role that requires a certain company size.

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I created this role when I joined Spendesk in early 2023 – before that, the responsibilities were spread among different people in the finance team, notably the accountant for gathering financial data and the CFO's right hand for analysis and reporting.

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I have both recurring tasks and project-based tasks.

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• Recurring tasks:
  • Managing payments about 2 to 3 times a month, ensuring we have cash in the accounts, checking the accounting entries of invoices, paying salaries and suppliers, and monitoring daily bank account activity.
  • Analyzing transactions to understand cash flow with categorizations: how we spend money, major trends and changes, etc.
• Project-based tasks:
  • Implementing an ERP to centralize operations in real-time and support the growth of Spendesk
  • Implementing treasury software like Payflows to streamline cash management and all payments

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This requires a lot of interaction:

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• With banks for cash management: sending SEPA or SWIFT payments (appropriate services), getting the right rates, having the correct file formats
• Internally at Spendesk to get short- and medium-term information on expenses and thus make the most accurate cash flow forecasts possible

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Why did you choose to implement treasury software when you joined Spendesk?

When I joined Spendesk in 2023, there was no treasury tool at all, which resulted in a lot of manual operations.

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We have about twenty bank accounts, including Société Générale and BNP Paribas, as well as other accounts we call “wallets” on different platforms (including Spendesk, as we use our own solution).

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Every time I wanted to do an analysis or a forecast, I had to (i) log in to the relevant platform, (ii) retrieve the data, (iii) reformat it since each platform organizes data differently, and then (iv) aggregate everything into a spreadsheet to start my analysis.

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Now, thanks to our treasury management tool Payflows, I have all the financial data in one place, in real-time.

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Now, thanks to our treasury management tool Payflows, I have all the financial data in one place, in real-time. There’s no need to log into each account one by one: I can analyze much faster.

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It was the same for processing a payment – I had to log into each platform, which was very time-consuming. Now, I can manage all payments from Payflows in a few clicks, easily and securely.

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Why did you choose Payflows over other solutions?

Payflows allows us to centralize all treasury operations in a single tool.

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Before, I could only do my cash positions twice a month because it took me about 3 to 4 days. With Payflows, it’s possible to do it every day.

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Before, due to lack of time, I could only do my cash positions twice a month because it took me about 3 to 4 days. With Payflows, it’s possible to do it every day. Using Payflows is therefore very beneficial in terms of time saved and ultimately provides real-time visibility on my cash positions.

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Setting up Payflows was very simple. I just had to connect the tool to our accounts and software with secure connectivity tests and deployments. Once that was done, we could see all transactions directly in Payflows.

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With Payflows, we can “have fun” as treasurers because what interests us is the analysis:

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• Creating rules to categorize flows in a personalized way
• Easily visualizing cash positions with just a few clicks
• Managing relationships with banks to choose the best investments for our company
• Making all payments from a single platform (and not 20 as before)

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The tool is very easy to use, visually modern, and the team is always available if product support is needed.

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The tool is very easy to use, visually modern, and the team is always available if product support is needed. I also had the chance to be one of the first clients and users, so I feel like I’m helping to build the roadmap with Payflows.

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You used Kyriba in your previous experience at Alvest. What are the differences?

With Payflows, I have the chance to help build the roadmap with the product team.

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Kyriba is a good, standard tool for treasury management. No matter the company it’s implemented in, it’s the same, so a treasurer can easily find their way around. It handles debt management (debt maturities with settings and automatically created forecasts), payments, and the generation of accounting entries.

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The downsides I saw when choosing the tool for Spendesk were that the support, unless you pay a special price in the package, is quite basic and not necessarily knowledgeable about treasury issues. Payflows, on the other hand, offered high-quality support included in the package, providing precise and very fast responses.

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Lastly, with Kyriba, the modules, like the Cash Management module, are 10/15 years old. They remain the same and evolve very little, which is good for stability, but I found that it could lack product innovation.

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With Payflows, I have the chance to help build the roadmap with the product team. They are very attentive and strive to offer the best tool technically in terms of connectivity, security, and also user experience and visualization.

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