We recently did a post on the Treasury Sciences Cash Management Dashboard where we described it at a high level. In this post we thought we would dive a little deeper and look under the hood of how Treasury Sciences cash management dashboard is different and the subtle features that are working behind the scenes to give you a wonderful user experience when you are working with it.
If you are used to working with a basic bank activity report using excel sheets, chances are that you might have already drawn similarities between the excel file and this web based cash management dashboard. One of our major focus was to keep the dashboard very similar to something that you might be already used to or something that is rather easy to understand.
The Flow-Codes on the Y-Axis and the Banks on the X-Axis was a quick but powerful way of letting cash managers monitor how the money is flowing through the banks. Do a wire from Bank A to Bank B and you can literally see the balance on Bank A go down and the balance on Bank B go up in near real-time with the ability to drill down and find out exactly what happened. Depending on which flow-codes you have used, you will also be able to see the transaction's impact on the flow-code in the dashboard itself.
For example, in the out of the box configuration on CMO, you will also be able to see the WOD (Wire out Domestic) figure on Bank A go up and the WID (Wire In Domestic) figure on Bank B go up, telling you exactly what happened at a very high level. Of course you could always drill down into the transactions level by clicking the Transactions button and see the transaction itself.
Even though the dashboard comes fairly close to looking like a simple excel based daily activity report it is much more powerful when it comes to features and gives you a layer of visibility that would be rather difficult to get using Excel spreadsheets. Here are just some of those features that are working silently and subtly behind the scenes when you are using the simple looking cash management dashboard:
Bolded Forecasts:
Each forecast that you see is bolded on the dashboard. But then it automatically "un-bolds" itself and turns into normal font when a new BAI file comes in and it auto reconciles with the forecast, if the forecast is manually reconciled or if the forecast is suppressed. The underlying idea here is that the "bolds" on the dashboard are warning flags or things that you need to give attention to before you submit a projection.
There are multiple reasons why you might want to leave an non reconciled forecast in your projection, but the bolds are primarily targeted towards making you aware of these so that the decision is a conscious one rather than an overlooking error.
Besides, there is a certain visual appeal in being able to see the forecasts dim out in real-time as incremental BAI files are automatically sent by the banks. We have seen our clients monitor the dashboard for hours and they love the "un-bolding" of the forecasts in real time as the BAI files are coming in. It tells them that everything is on track and moving along as planned.
Behind The Scenes Calculations:
The mere fetching of Opening Available Balance, which is often reported by the bank in a BAI files seems like a simple task for a Daily Cash Position, but Treasury Sciences allows you to forecast and project for the future (for as far a day to about a month) and what this means is that the dashboards needs be highly intelligent and aware of a lot of additional items that are at play here.
A Classic example is if you were to do a projection for day after tomorrow. Given this scenario, you obviously do not have the bank statements or BAI files for day after tomorrow. Getting to the opening available balance for day after tomorrow and showing it you accurately does not just means we start with the balance of today and consider two day floats for today, but also three day floats from yesterday and all other long term floats (both variable and date based availability) as reported by the banks in the near past. To add to that we also need to look at future EFTs that you have scheduled using our EFT system.
If Debt payments, other payments or standing instructions in your organization have an impact on the opening available balance for the near future we need to consider these as well which is where we have a capability for writing additional plug-ins for your organization which impacts the short term future opening available balance.
The Float Adjustment line item that you see in the last line of the list, also has multiple calculations associated with it. Similarly every time you make a concentration wire we remember it as a concentration wire, create double entries for it and give you an option of suppressing both sides if you are suppressing a concentration wire.
Long story short, Every line that you see in the cash management dashboard has a high level of intelligence associated with it so that you don't have to scribble numbers in a notepad and remember them while doing your projections. We take our ability to project accurately rather seriously and have tweaked the calculations and the ability to reach out to multiple sources for years now and are constantly on the process of making these calculations smarter and better than most other cash management systems out there.
Subtle Visual Elements, Usability And Other Features:
Ability to see commas in the amounts, ability for a bank to get automatically added to the worksheet every time it is added to the Treasury Sciences system and reporting or forecasts begin on the bank, ability to see alternating colors for the grid to help you avoid parallax errors, ability to drill down by clicking on any figure and seeing how it was formed. These are just some of the countless features which are so subtle that you hardly tend to notice them but they all contribute towards giving you an overall better user experience with the system. We have also spent time considering the most readable fonts and sizes so that cash managers who spend hours looking at the dashboard do not have to strain their eyes to look at figures.
The cash management dashboard, reflects the overall thought process of the application, which is, handle the complexities behind the scenes and keep things as simple as possible for the end user. Give him clear visibility, ease of use and functionality that is most relevant in that context.
Even though it sounds like a Cliché one the core philosophies, one that our development team takes rather seriously, when it comes to the end user experience is, Simplify what you present, even if it involves multiple steps and complex calculations in the background.
After all, Simple is smart. Simple is intelligent. Simple is a whole lot of fun.