If you’re a small business owner, you know how challenging it can be to manage your company’s finances. Tracking your profits and losses, planning for future expenditures, and figuring out if you have enough capital to expand your business can be difficult on your own. That’s where treasury management comes into play.
Many banks offer treasury management services, tools that help you to streamline your business finances and plan for the future.
What Is Treasury Management?
Treasury management tools are designed to meet several different commercial banking needs. Whether you’re looking for help organizing, planning or controlling your business finances, these solutions can help you accomplish your goals.
Banks understand that there’s no one-size-fits-all financial solution for businesses. That’s why most institutions offer a variety of treasury management tools, so you can select the ones that work best for your company. They can help identify areas that need improvement, make the best use of available funds, reduce risk and more.
SouthEast Bank offers treasury management solutions designed with local businesses in mind. Here are a few of the options available to small business owners and entrepreneurs:
- Account Analysis: If your business has a high volume of transactions and a high balance, account analysis may be right for you. In short, this service keeps a running total of the fees associated with activity on your account – deposits, check activity, ACH items, etc. That total is then translated into an earnings credit allowance, which can help offset the cost of those fees.
- Check Verification: If you receive a check as payment, you can use Positive Pay to verify that the check is valid before it’s cleared against your account, preventing your business from incurring check fraud losses.
- Credit Card Acceptance: If you want to increase your revenue, accepting credit card payments is an excellent decision. SouthEast Bank’s merchant services include wireless, internet, and PC-based card acceptance options.
- Direct Deposit: If you have employees, direct deposit may be a good fit for your business. This tool enables business owners to deposit payments directly into employees’ bank accounts, which is faster and easier than having to cash checks.
- Direct Vendor Payments: Instead of manually submitting vendor payments, you can use treasury management tools to schedule recurring payments quickly and easily.
- Insured Cash Sweeps: If your business account exceeds the FDIC’s insurable limit, this treasury management tool can help you divide your money between other participating accounts in the insured cash sweeps network.
- Online Domestic Wire Transfers: If you need to wire money to a vendor or customer, you can save time by sending domestic wire transfers online through your account.
- Remote Deposits: Save time and trips to the bank with remote deposit, which enables you to scan checks directly from your desk.
How Does Treasury Management Help Small Businesses?
As a small business owner, you’re required to juggle many different tasks, which can become exhausting. But by using treasury management services, you can simplify everyday money management and improve your business functions in the following ways:
Increase Efficiency
If you’re running a small business, there’s never enough time in the day. Why create more work for yourself (or your employees)? Treasury management services can streamline some of your tasks, allowing you to get more done in less time.
For example:
- Instead of manually processing vendor payments, use positive pay to automate recurring transactions.
- Rather than driving to the bank to cash a client check, use remote deposit to scan it directly from your office.
- Your employees won’t have to wait for their checks to come in the mail. With direct deposit, they can be confident that they’ll get paid on schedule, and the money will show up right in their bank accounts
Boost Revenue
If your business only accepts cash or debit payments, you could be missing out on a substantial amount of income. In a 2019 study, the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco found that about 23% of all consumer transactions are paid for with credit cards — and that number is likely to increase.
Fewer customers carry cash, so accepting credit cards can make shopping at your business easier and more convenient. Even considering credit card fees, increasing your volume is good for the bottom line.
Decreases Workload
Chances are, you spend a significant portion of your time doing administrative tasks, like payroll or paying vendors. All of that time on those sorts of tasks is time you could be spending doing other work that benefits your business, like negotiating sales or brainstorming new products.
By using treasury management services, you can decrease the time you spend on money management, freeing you to focus on what generates income.
Utilizing Treasury Management Services
Treasury management services can have a big impact on businesses of every size, but for small business owners short on time, they can be especially helpful. To get started, contact SouthEast Bank’s Treasury Management Services department. You can call 1-844-732-2657 or fill out the contact form, and a representative will reach out to you to discuss your needs and how SouthEast Bank can help.
Note: Links to other websites or references to services or applications are provided as a convenience only. A link does not imply SouthEast Bank’s sponsorship or approval of any other site, service or application. SouthEast Bank does not control the content of these sites, services or applications.
Information contained in this blog is for educational and informational purposes only. Nothing contained in this blog should be construed as legal or tax advice. An attorney or tax advisor should be consulted for advice on specific issues.
