Business Central cash management: a daily view of your bank position
Business Central cash management is the set of features that tracks money in and out of your bank accounts. It covers bank account cards, receipt and payment journals, deposits, transfers and reconciliation. Set up well, it tells a controller each morning what sits in the bank and what is about to leave. We configure it around your banks and your routine.
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Bank account setup: the base of cash management
Business Central cash management gives each real bank account a Bank Account card with its own posting group. The group ties the card to a general ledger account. The card carries the currency, the last check number and the formats for payment exports and statement imports. A foreign currency account stays in that currency, and the system tracks the local value alongside.
We recommend one ledger account per bank account. As a result, that makes the bank ledger and the general ledger easy to compare. It also keeps reconciliation clean. We set up petty cash, clearing accounts for card processors and payment service balances as bank accounts too. So no money sits in an unexplained suspense account.
List your bank accounts →
- ✓Posting group and ledger account
- ✓Currency code
- ✓Payment export format
- ✓Statement import format
- ✓Check numbering
Recording receipts in Business Central cash management
You enter customer payments in the cash receipt journal. However, a better way is the payment reconciliation journal. It reads an imported bank file and proposes which invoices each amount settles. Match rules and text-to-account mappings raise the share applied with no manual touch.
Some firms take checks and cash to the bank in batches. For them, therefore, the bank deposits feature groups individual receipts into one deposit. That deposit equals the line on the statement. This small step saves much searching later. Our guides on cash receipts and bank deposits explain the pages themselves.
Speed up cash application →- ✓Imported bank transactions
- ✓Automatic invoice matching
- ✓Text-to-account mapping
- ✓Grouped bank deposits
- ✓Unapplied cash followed up
Controlling payments as part of cash management
In practice, planners build outgoing cash in the payment journal. Suggest Vendor Payments proposes what to pay from due dates and available discounts. You can cap it at a total. So a run stays within what treasury has released. The batch can pass through an approval workflow before anything is exported.
Then payments leave as an electronic file for the bank or as printed checks. Separation of duties matters here. The person who maintains vendor bank details should not approve the run. We set permissions and approvals so the control is real. A policy on paper is not enough.
Tighten your payment run →- ✓Payment proposal by due date
- ✓Limit on run amount
- ✓Approval before export
- ✓Vendor bank detail changes logged
- ✓Duties separated by role
Seeing the cash position every day
Import transactions regularly and reconcile them promptly. Then the bank account balances in Business Central cash management equal the bank's own figures. The list of bank accounts becomes a trustworthy daily position. Add open receivables and payables by due date, and you see what the coming period will likely bring.
A journal posts transfers between accounts and between group companies. So both sides stay in step. For the forward view, the cash flow forecast feature projects balances from open documents and budgets. It has its own page on this site. Here we only make sure the data feeding it is sound.
Build your daily cash view →- ✓Balance per bank account
- ✓Outstanding checks
- ✓Receivables falling due
- ✓Payables falling due
- ✓Balances in foreign currency
How we set up Business Central cash management
We start from your bank relationships. Which banks do you use? Which accounts, and which file formats does each bank accept and provide? Is a bank feed available? Then we walk through your current routine, from opening the banking portal in the morning to closing the month. We assume nothing about how you work.
From that, we also configure the bank cards, formats, journals, matching rules and approvals in a sandbox. We run a full cycle with real statement files. Then we train the people involved. The aim is a short daily routine. Month-end reconciliation shrinks to a confirmation of work already done.
Go over your bank routine →- ✓Bank cards and formats configured
- ✓Matching rules tuned
- ✓Approval workflow in place
- ✓Daily routine written down
- ✓Treasury and AP staff trained
Business Central cash management questions
Does Business Central cash management connect directly to our bank?
It can import statement files in common formats, and bank feed services are available for many US banks. For payments, it exports files your bank accepts. What is possible depends on your bank, so we confirm formats with them early.
Can we manage accounts in more than one currency?
Yes. A bank account card can be held in a foreign currency. Transactions post in that currency, and exchange rate adjustments update the local currency value so the general ledger reflects current rates. Bank charges post in the same currency.
How is Business Central cash management different from cash flow forecasting?
Cash management deals with what has happened and what is happening now: balances, receipts, payments, reconciliation. Forecasting projects future balances from open documents and plans. Reliable forecasting depends on the daily cash routines being in order first.
Can several companies share a treasury process?
Each company keeps its own bank accounts and ledgers, but the routines can be standardized, and intercompany transfers are posted so both sides agree. A group view of cash is usually built as a Power BI report across companies.
What stops a fraudulent change to vendor bank details?
A combination of measures: limiting who may edit vendor bank accounts, logging changes to those fields, requiring approval of payment batches by someone else, and using positive pay files where the bank supports them. We set these up together.
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