This article is written by Cobase
Treasury carries a particular kind of responsibility. It sits at the point where financial stability, risk awareness, and future ambition come together. Cash must be available when the business needs it. Risks must be understood before they escalate. Decisions have to support today’s operations while leaving room for tomorrow’s growth. This balance is not theoretical or abstract. It plays out every day, often under time pressure and with consequences that are felt immediately across the organization.
For Vincent Van Poeke, treasury became the place where this balance felt natural. Not because he planned a career in treasury from the start, but because his professional path gradually pulled him toward work that combines liquidity, analysis, and strategic thinking. Over time, treasury brought those elements together in a way that made sense. It did not change what Vincent was responsible for, but it gave those responsibilities clearer direction and purpose.
Before treasury became the core of his work, Vincent built experience across different areas of finance. He started as a financial expert with the Belgian government, then moved into banking as a financial advisor and corporate analyst. These roles were not labelled as treasury, but they consistently touched its edges.
In banking, he worked closely with treasury teams and saw how their decisions influenced funding structures, liquidity buffers, and risk exposure. This proximity gave him perspective. Treasury was not just about execution. It was about positioning the business to withstand pressure and seize opportunity.
What stood out was how central treasury was, even when it operated quietly.
Treasury is rarely visible at the beginning of a finance career. University programs and early roles tend to focus on areas like accounting, audit, corporate finance, or investment analysis. These paths are clearly defined, easy to explain, and well represented in academic settings. Treasury, by contrast, often sits behind the scenes, quietly connecting those functions without drawing much attention to itself.
Vincent’s experience reflects this reality. Treasury did not appear as a clear destination early in his career. Instead, it revealed itself gradually through exposure and relevance. As he moved closer to real business decisions, dealing with cash flows, funding structures, and financial risk, treasury became more visible. It was the point where analysis stopped being theoretical and started to have immediate consequences.
This shift did not happen by accident. It happened because treasury proved to be the place where insight could turn into action. Over time, Vincent realized that this was where his skills and interests aligned most naturally. What began as exposure slowly became clarity, and clarity turned into a deliberate choice.
Today, Vincent works primarily in treasury and financial controlling, with treasury accounting for roughly 80 percent of his daily activity. His work centers on managing cash and liquidity, maintaining bank relationships, making funding decisions, and overseeing financial risk. All of this is approached through a strong analytical lens, with careful attention to how each decision connects to the wider business.
What keeps him engaged is the dynamic nature of the role. Treasury rarely deals with static problems. Conditions change, priorities shift, and decisions need to adapt accordingly. At its core, treasury repeatedly asks the same fundamental question in different forms: how do we protect the company today while keeping it ready for what comes next. That balance between stability and progress is what defines his work and keeps it challenging.
Treasury appealed to Vincent because it operates in the present and the near future. Decisions are rarely abstract or theoretical. They affect liquidity today, funding options tomorrow, and strategic flexibility over time. The impact of a decision is often visible quickly, which adds both responsibility and clarity to the role.
Questions in treasury cannot always wait. Do we have sufficient cash. Where is it located right now. How much risk are we carrying at this moment. What happens if market conditions change. These are not academic exercises that can be debated indefinitely. They demand timely answers and considered action.
By working through these situations, Vincent learned that treasury rewards clear thinking, comfort with uncertainty, and accountability. Perfect information is rarely available, but decisions still need to be made. In treasury, progress comes from making informed choices when timing matters, and taking responsibility for the outcomes that follow.
One of the toughest aspects of treasury, especially early in a career, is its sheer breadth. Liquidity, funding, foreign exchange, systems, regulation, and technology all intersect within a single function. Each area comes with its own language, risks, and priorities. For Vincent, this created a steep learning curve that did not disappear with time. Instead, it became a constant feature of the role.
Rather than trying to master everything at once, Vincent learned to approach treasury with a mindset of continuous growth. Curiosity became a practical tool. Staying open to learning, accepting that not knowing everything is part of the job, and asking questions without hesitation all helped him progress. Learning from more experienced professionals was just as important as formal knowledge, because much of treasury insight comes from context and experience.
He also learned the importance of stepping back and looking at the bigger picture. Treasury decisions rarely exist in isolation. A funding choice can influence operational flexibility. A liquidity decision can affect strategic options. Understanding how these pieces connect made the complexity easier to manage. Over time, the learning curve did not flatten, but it became more navigable, shaped by experience rather than overwhelm.
Vincent views treasury as having two inseparable sides. The operational side keeps the business running. Cash management, payments, and reporting require consistency and precision. These activities build trust.
He deliberately starts with these fundamentals. Once they are in place, he shifts attention to strategic work such as forecasting, risk management, and feasibility analysis. Every decision is tested across short, medium, and long-term horizons.
This structure ensures treasury supports both stability and forward planning.
Visibility is the foundation of good treasury. Without a clear and centralized view of liquidity, even the most detailed forecasts lose their value. When visibility is fragmented or delayed, forecasting becomes assumption based rather than decision driven, and that weakens confidence across the business.
He approaches forecasting across multiple timeframes, each serving a distinct purpose. Weekly forecasts keep operations running smoothly and ensure obligations are met on time. Monthly and quarterly forecasts help manage risk and anticipate changes in cash flows. Yearly forecasts move treasury into strategic territory, supporting decisions around capital allocation and long term investment. When visibility is strong, these forecasts become practical decision tools rather than static reports that explain the past.
Speed matters in treasury, but only when clarity comes first. Acting quickly without a reliable view of liquidity increases risk instead of reducing it. For Vincent, clarity is what allows speed to be used responsibly.
Technology is reshaping treasury, and Vincent sees this shift as an opportunity rather than a disruption. Among the developments he finds most promising is predictive analytics. By combining historical data with real time inputs and market trends, predictive tools can improve forecast accuracy and help treasurers deploy cash more effectively without taking on unnecessary liquidity risk.
At the same time, technology is changing what is expected from treasury professionals. Strong financial knowledge remains essential, but it is no longer sufficient on its own. Treasurers now need to understand the systems behind the data, question how information is generated, and interpret outputs with confidence. Data literacy and technical understanding are becoming just as important as traditional financial skills.
Treasury is increasingly about making sense of complex systems, not just reviewing numbers.
Managing multiple banks, payment flows, and FX exposures adds significant complexity to treasury operations. Left unchecked, that complexity can slow decision making and increase operational risk. Vincent believes this is why multi-bank platforms and Treasury Management Systems are becoming essential tools rather than optional enhancements.
He is also a strong supporter of in-house bank principles. Thanks to technological progress, these models are no longer reserved for large multinationals. Today, organizations of all sizes can adopt the core fundamentals of in-house banking to centralize liquidity, streamline payments, and improve control. For Vincent, simplification is not about reducing ambition. It is about creating structures that allow treasury to operate with clarity and confidence.
Vincent believes treasury will continue moving closer to the boardroom as the function evolves. As operational tasks become increasingly automated, treasurers are no longer tied down by repetitive execution. This shift creates space for deeper involvement in long-term planning, capital allocation, and strategic decision making.
In Vincent’s view, treasury adds its greatest value when it helps leadership understand what is financially possible. He often returns to one core idea: finance is about translating risk. Treasury plays a central role in connecting ambition to financial reality by assessing liquidity availability, the cost of capital, and the impact decisions have on working capital. Before a strategy becomes a plan, treasury helps test whether it is feasible, sustainable, and aligned with the company’s financial position.
This is where treasury’s strategic value becomes visible. Not through authority or titles, but through insight and clarity. By bringing perspective early into discussions, treasury helps shape decisions rather than simply reacting to them.
Curiosity, adaptability, and communication have been critical throughout Vincent’s career. Treasury touches many parts of the business, and understanding how those parts fit together matters just as much as understanding the numbers themselves. The treasurers who stand out are those who can explain implications clearly and connect financial analysis to commercial strategy.
Treasury may not be a career many people plan from the beginning. But for those who grow into it, it becomes a role where responsibility, judgment, and impact come together. For Vincent, that combination is what makes treasury both challenging and deeply rewarding.
Vincent’s journey shows that treasury careers are often shaped through exposure and experience rather than intention alone. What begins as proximity to the function gradually turns into understanding, and understanding into commitment. Over time, treasury reveals its depth and relevance, not through titles or labels, but through the impact of its decisions on the business.
Treasury attracts people who are comfortable balancing risk and opportunity, who are willing to take responsibility, and who continue learning as markets, technology, and organizations evolve. As the function becomes more strategic and more visible, its influence grows in a natural way, built on trust and insight rather than authority.
For Vincent, treasury is where analysis becomes action and responsibility leads to meaningful impact. It is the place where his skills, mindset, and curiosity come together. And it is exactly where he wants to be.
Treasury Masterminds is a community of professionals working in treasury management and those interested in learning more about topics such as cash management, foreign exchange management, and payments. To register and connect with Treasury professionals, click [HERE] or fill out the form below to get more information.
By Alex Cannon
Across 111 European public tenders for treasury systems, training is named in 47% of notices. The highest-ranked treasury capability is FX and hedging, at 13%.
uropean public bodies have to write down what they want from a treasury system, in public, before anyone can bid.
It all gets published on TED, the European Union’s procurement journal.
I looked at 111 notices, published between May 2018 and October 2026.
Training appears in 47% of them.
After that, the highest-ranked treasury capability is FX and hedging, at 13%.
A product that a qualified professional cannot operate without a course has been designed badly.
This market has stopped treating that as a defect and started pricing it in instead.
Some training is unavoidable. A treasury system touches bank mandates, approval limits and payment files and no amount of good design removes the need to show a new user how a particular organization has set those up.
A degree in the domain, 40 hours of instruction and a consultant on call is not that. That is a product nobody can learn by using it.
The newer products in this category are not like this. You open one, click around for an afternoon and it explains itself.
So why are buyers still signing for dinosaur software and then signing again for somebody to explain it?
Nobody buying a treasury system is new to treasury.
The people who will use it know what a forward contract is, what a cash position is, which balances get swept at the end of the day.
The training in these notices is not teaching them their job. It is teaching them the product.
What they are paying to be taught is where things are, what the screens are called, which order the steps go in and what the system wants before it will let you do the obvious thing.
The European Central Bank bought its treasury management system in 2018 for €16,534,744. Since then it has signed two consultancy frameworks for that same system: €7m in 2020 and €11.7m in 2025.
That is €18.7m to be helped with a system it paid €16.5m for. The advice has outgrown the software, at an institution staffed with some of the most qualified treasury professionals in Europe.
A degree in the domain, a budget to learn the software and consultants on retainer for the parts that stay unclear.
Does nobody else find this strange?
| Share of 111 | |
|---|---|
| Training | 46.8% |
| Cloud or SaaS delivery | 21.6% |
| FX and hedging | 12.6% |
| ERP integration | 12.6% |
| Cash flow forecasting | 10.8% |
| Debt and investment | 10.8% |
| Reporting and dashboards | 10.8% |
| Multi-entity groups | 8.1% |
Nobody writes “this software is confusing” into a procurement document.
You can write 40 hours of training into a contract. You can name a number of sessions, a count of on-site days, a trainer’s qualifications. All of it is enforceable, it survives legal review and a bidder can put a price on it.
You cannot write “make it obvious” into a contract.
So the learning curve gets stated in the only currency procurement accepts, which is people and days. Training tops this list not because treasury teams want courses, but because it is the one line where a buyer can put a number on the distance between signing and competence.
Score time-to-competence. Half your peers write training into their requirements.
If “how long until my team runs this without you” is not a line on your scoring sheet, you are scoring a different purchase than the one you are making.
The demo is run by the person who wrote the training. Ask what the fifth week looks like for somebody who wasn’t in the room.
And read a few notices yourself.
Public bodies publish requirement sets at a level of detail corporate buyers keep private, written by people who had to think a whole project through before they were allowed to publish anything.
Public tenders look like an open door. They mostly are not.
A public buyer has to justify the decision in writing, to people who were not in the room.
That incentive produces the oldest reflex in enterprise software: nobody ever got fired for buying IBM.
The notice encodes it, through reference requirements, revenue and insurance thresholds, years of comparable deployments and a scoring sheet that rewards the familiar answer.
Nearly half of the treasury software awards that reported a bid count drew a single bid, which is the sound of a decision made before publication.
Unless you hold something specific, an existing relationship with the buyer, a local presence the notice requires, a capability in the specification few others can meet, bidding is an expensive way to lose.
What is useful in these documents is not the opportunity. It is the requirement set, telling you what the incumbents are being paid to compensate for.
None of this is the consultants’ fault. If a system takes a month to explain, somebody is going to get paid to explain it.
That is real work and there is real demand for it.
What I keep coming back to is how calmly it gets signed off. Nobody at the ECB had to argue that the treasury system was hard to use. The money went through as consultancy, twice, five years apart and the word “confusing” never had to appear in a document.
So if you are building in this category, that is the number to look at.
You do not have to beat them on functionality. You have to be the system a treasurer can open on Monday and use by Wednesday with nobody sitting next to them.
Treasury Masterminds is a community of professionals working in treasury management or those interested in learning more about various topics related to treasury management, including cash management, foreign exchange management, and payments. To register and connect with Treasury professionals, click the button below.
This article is a contribution from our content partner, PrimeTrade
I never would have thought, at the start of my emerging career as a trade banker, supply chain financier and potential “Master of the Universe” (per Tom Wolfe), that debit notes would be interesting, and that thirty years later I might be writing a blog about them.
But here we are!
It is quite a long post, but this is a topic that merits a detailed treatment, even if the subject matter is rather dry and somewhat technical.
This post sets out five myths about invoices and debit notes.
These myths can lead to various confusions, complications and inefficiencies when it comes to supply chain finance.
The post aims to set out clearly how things normally work in the real world of general ledgers and corporate ERPs. It also digs into the implications for SCF and for the design of platforms that help suppliers to access supply chain finance.
There are generally three strategies used to deal with debit notes in supply chain finance – and these are covered in the final section.
With the right design and approach, debit note recovery can be automated and fully-optimised – no more spreadsheets, no more manual tracking, and no need to get suppliers to deduct debit notes from future invoices.
A debit note acts as the evidence in the buyer’s books for a reduction in its expenses.
So it is issued by the buyer’s accounts payable team to a supplier when the buyer seeks to pay less than it has been invoiced.
For supplier financing transactions (including SCF), a debit note can be an unwelcome event. If an invoice has been financed and even purchased by a financier, the financier typically relies on the invoice being paid in full.
What if I told you that “invoices always get approved”?
A valid invoice is one that is properly addressed, is from a recognised counterparty (ie: a supplier), has the right taxes on it shown in the right way, and which adds up correctly.
Valid invoices always get approved and there is a good reason.
This is a fundamental part of the way financial controls work. A valid invoice has been received representing a claim for payment from a supplier and it will be posted in full to the general ledger.
If this didn’t happen, we would get in a mess very quickly. Accounts payable teams cannot use their discretion and post valid invoices to the general ledger with whatever numbers on them they decide might be right.
Audits would be failed and financial controls would have broken down.
If the invoice from the supplier is for an amount that is too high (for whatever reason), a debit note is raised by the buyer so the supplier gets less money. The question is “what’s the debit note?” not how much of the invoice should be approved.
Some accounts payable teams will, alternatively, ask the supplier to raise a credit note and the invoice remains pending and not posted until the credit note is received. Here, for ease of explanation, we assume the debit note route is the one that the accounts payable team uses.
In the ordinary course of business, accounts payable teams in corporate clients approve payments and not invoices.
A few key points:
This makes supply chain finance and supplier financing tricky – since bankers and lawyers like to think in terms of transactions rather than balances.
Bankers purchase invoices not balances.
Debit notes do not conveniently fit into this model.
Whilst the corporate client may be settling a balance that is due to a supplier (invoices less debit notes),
bankers want the invoices that they have purchased to be paid in full to them.
This is also one of the two main reasons why many corporate clients operate an all-or-nothing model with suppliers when it comes to supplier financing.
These two reasons mean SCF programs can lose a lot of agility. There’s no easy way to move suppliers between financiers, and no easy way to have dynamic management of funding, switching suppliers between financiers whenever needed (even daily) to optimise the use of limits and mix in own treasury funds as a funding source.
I made a statement earlier about “valid invoices always being approved”.
The key question for the accounts payable team when they are deciding what the supplier might be owed is not how much of the invoice to approve.
The key question is: how big should the debit note be?
Yes, that’s right. The full amount of a valid invoice is always posted to the ledger but if there is a reason to pay less than the full amount, then a debit note needs to be raised.
The questions being answered by the accounts payable team reviewing purchase orders, delivery paperwork and the invoice (ie: the 3-way match) are (a) whether a debit note should be raised and (b) how much it should be for?
For example, the invoice face value is 100, but there is a shortage on the delivery of value 5. So that means the invoice of 100 is posted to the ledger, and a debit note of 5 is created and posted – and 95 is the balance on the supplier account, which is what will be settled in due course.
As stated above, the general ledger is an account-based (ie: balance-based) system.
The supplier account is credited with the full amount of the invoices and debited with debit notes to reach the correct amount that should be paid to the supplier when a payment run is operated.
So what is the bank buying when it provides supplier financing?
Is it an “approved payable” (an invoice that is net of specified debit notes) or is it an “approved invoice” (due at face value without deduction)?
This is a key documentary point and one which might not always be clear in the paperwork used to support supply chain finance. On the one hand, the bank wants to buy invoices free and clear of any debit notes. On the other hand, the corporate client may well want the ability to net pre-existing debit notes (at the time of financing) against those invoices.
Is the IPU for the same amount as the invoice? What exactly is the claim that the bank is buying and relying on here – the invoice or the payable amount (at IPU creation-time) in relation to each invoice? If the supplier financing is documented on the basis that the bank is buying the IPU (and not the invoice) – query the accounting treatment and whether the arrangement might then become financial indebtedness in the books of the corporate obligor?
Debit notes “sort of” relate to invoices – but this is an artificial construct and not one that is required in the ordinary course of business.
Companies typically want to collect claims (debit notes) against suppliers immediately. Why wait?
Invoices are posted with a due date (in the future) that reflects when the amount claimed by the supplier should be paid.
Debit notes are often posted with an immedate due date.
That means debit notes are usually collected by set off against the next amount due to be paid to the supplier – ie: as soon as possible. There’s no waiting.
That would be the case even if the debit note might relate to a delivery where the invoice(s) for that delivery are not due to be paid for many days.
And debit notes may also arise that are wholly unconnected with individual deliveries – for example, where there are volume rebates or programme-wide discounts to be recovered.
As mentioned above, settlements clear the due portion of the balance outstanding on the supplier account.
The settlement is calculated by adding up all the transactions that are due and ignoring future-dated transactions. The debit note is always due immediately and is included as soon as possible in any payment that is made to the supplier. The invoice may be due in the future and has to wait.
The idea that this specific debit note goes with that specific invoice is typically a myth when it comes to the practical reality of payables and settlements.
Most platforms ignore debit notes. These are “someone else’s problem”.
That’s why many accounts payable teams don’t like supply chain finance and specifically prefer to limit the size and scope of programs to a handful of large suppliers.
And many SCF platforms ignore debit notes completely.
Corporate clients are expected to provide them with a nice and tidy file of “approved payables” which are guaranteed to be paid in full no matter what else may be going on.
This makes life easy for the platform and easy for the bankers and lawyers involved.
But this also makes life complicated for the corporate accounts payable team.
If clean “approved invoice” or “approved payable” files are to be provided to the SCF platform, this typically means that:
This can mean that many clients end up failing to collect all the debit notes that they might claim, or end up having to track debit notes manually in excel and away from the general ledger. This all leads to extra work for everyone, compromising financial controls and adding costs and complexity.
Yes – it requires a modern approach to the way that the supply chain finance platform is developed and operates.
There are three approaches:
Treasury Masterminds is a community of professionals working in treasury management or those interested in learning more about various topics related to treasury management, including cash management, foreign exchange management, and payments. To register and connect with Treasury professionals, click the button below.
This article is written by our partner, Cobase
Oracle NetSuite is a cloud-based ERP platform designed to bring core business processes together in one environment, spanning financial management, reporting and consolidation as well as areas such as billing, projects, CRM and operations. Its multi-entity and multi-currency capabilities make it particularly relevant for organisations whose financial complexity increases as they expand internationally.
Around the core ERP sits a broad ecosystem of implementation partners, technology providers and integrated applications. As companies scale, this ecosystem becomes increasingly important. The ERP may sit at the centre of the finance architecture, but it also needs to connect effectively with the wider financial landscape, including banks, payment providers and other specialist applications.
One of the partners operating in this ecosystem is Novutech, a European finance transformation and NetSuite specialist supporting growing and international organisations with ERP implementation, integration and optimisation.
We spoke with Marta Obrador, Director, Business Transformation Practice & UK Lead at Novutech, about the type of companies NetSuite is best suited to, what makes ERP transformations successful and why bank connectivity should be considered as part of the wider finance architecture.
What type of companies are the best fit for NetSuite, and what makes the platform stand out from other cloud ERP solutions?
“For me, the best fit is really a company in motion: a business that is scaling quickly, expanding internationally or simply dealing with increasing financial complexity.
As organisations add entities, markets and currencies, finance needs more structure without creating more fragmentation. That is where NetSuite is particularly strong. It gives companies a single cloud-based foundation for financial management, consolidation and broader operational processes, while still giving them room to grow.
What matters is that finance teams gain the structure and visibility they need without having to redesign the whole environment every time the business changes.”
As an implementation partner, where do you add the most value and what do successful ERP projects tend to get right from the start?
“Our value lies in connecting people, processes and technology. An ERP project is never only about implementing a system. You also need to think carefully about how people will use it and how the processes around it should work.
The strongest projects usually get a few fundamentals right early on: clear ownership, good-quality data, the right integrations and, importantly, clear priorities.
I also think focus is critical. Companies sometimes try to solve everything at once. The better approach is to focus on what really matters, make good use of best practices and build a realistic path to adoption. That creates a much stronger foundation for the transformation.”
How are customer expectations around finance and treasury changing, and what does that mean for the role of the ERP?
“Finance is moving away from simply recording what happened in the past. Teams are increasingly expected to provide insight, support decisions and help shape what happens next.
That changes the role of the ERP as well. It needs to become a trusted platform for decision-making, not just a place where transactions are recorded.
At the same time, the ERP cannot operate in isolation. If you want finance processes to become truly efficient, it also needs to connect well with banks, payment processes and the wider finance technology landscape. That is where the conversation increasingly moves from ERP alone towards a more connected finance architecture.”
Where does ERP-to-bank connectivity typically become challenging, particularly for companies operating across multiple banks and countries?
“The real challenge is not usually connecting to one bank. Complexity starts to build when a company has several banks, entities, countries, accounts and payment formats, but still wants one consistent process.
Without the right connectivity layer, that complexity often ends up with the finance team. People are moving between bank portals, uploading or downloading files, fixing exceptions and reconciling transactions manually.
As the organisation grows, that becomes increasingly difficult to scale. You may have implemented a strong ERP, but if the banking side remains fragmented, a lot of manual work still remains. Ideally, you want to abstract that complexity away from the finance team.”
What does a strong ERP-to-bank setup look like to you, and what should companies consider when designing it?
“For me, a strong setup creates one trusted flow from payment creation in the ERP through to bank execution and then back into reconciliation and reporting.
Automation is obviously important, but it should never come at the expense of control. You still need clear visibility, the right approvals and enough flexibility to support how the organisation operates.
Companies should also think beyond the situation they have today. If you know you are likely to add entities, countries, banks or accounts, the architecture needs to support that. It is much better to design connectivity as part of the overall finance architecture than to keep adding separate bank interfaces over time.”
Why do you like working with Cobase, and what does combining your ERP expertise with Cobase’s banking connectivity bring to customers?
“What we like about the combination is that it extends the value of NetSuite beyond the ledger and into the day-to-day banking and treasury processes.
NetSuite provides the financial core, while Cobase creates a consistent connection between that core and the banking landscape. For internationally growing companies, that is particularly relevant because the number of banks, accounts and entities can increase quite quickly.
Customers should not have to choose between having a strong ERP and having strong banking connectivity. By combining our NetSuite and transformation expertise with Cobase’s multi-bank connectivity, we can help create a finance architecture that is much more connected and scalable.”
Treasury Masterminds is a community of professionals working in treasury management or those interested in learning more about various topics related to treasury management, including cash management, foreign exchange management, and payments. To register and connect with Treasury professionals, click the button below.
