Articles
In the fast-paced world of finance, it’s easy to focus solely on the next deliverable, deadline or deal. But have you ever considered that stepping back — pausing and zooming out — might actually help your team generate more innovative and creative outcomes?
12/05/2024
With each new year comes the opportunity to learn and grow. Some lessons are inspiring, and some can be a challenge, but all are worthwhile.
12/02/2024
Looking for inspiration for your goals? We asked members of our global FP&A Advisory Councils to share with us some of their professional goals for 2025.
12/02/2024
Show your workers they have both company and manager support in their desire to grow professionally.
11/29/2024
While automation is ideal for many AP departments, convincing the CFO to invest in the technology requires the identification of key pain points and a careful business case to show why such an investment is needed.
11/26/2024
CFOs’ focus has shifted to a defensive, risk-averse stance when it comes to the supply chain — regardless of whether they are a producer or a consumer of goods.
11/22/2024
The reality of today’s complex and often unpredictable world of corporate finance is that companies can no longer allow FP&A and Treasury to operate in silos.
11/21/2024
The start of a new year is synonymous with goal setting. We spend the year-end reflecting on what we accomplished, what didn’t work out, and how we want the new year to be different, and then we set goals accordingly.
11/20/2024
Technology is fundamentally transforming the treasury function. Automation is freeing treasury teams to focus on value-added activities such as strategic planning, risk management and business advisory services.
11/19/2024
AFP is proud to introduce the new chair, vice chairs and five new members to its Board of Directors.
11/18/2024
Cash flow and profit are two essential financial metrics. Understanding the difference between the two is important to effective decision-making for an organization.
11/18/2024
Developing a robust data strategy has become increasingly important for treasury organizations as they seek to take advantage of opportunities to build actionable forecasting and planning tools.
11/15/2024
During the Payments Keynote address at AFP 2024, Kelvin Coleman, who formerly served as Executive Director for TIC Council Americas and CEO and Executive Director of the National Cybersecurity Alliance, urged treasury and finance professionals to identify an individual — a Minister of Digital Transformation — to address unforeseen threats and challenges.
10/31/2024
The current rapid pace of innovation in treasury technology offers plenty of opportunities for treasurers to improve operational efficiency.
10/30/2024
Stocks and bonds are two of the most common investment vehicles. Both can be beneficial to your organization’s investment portfolio. How much you invest and where depends on your risk tolerance, timeline and investment goals.
10/30/2024
Of the processes related to accounts receivable (AR), matching payments data to remittance data can be one of the most tedious and time-consuming, especially when it’s manual.
10/28/2024
IBM Corporation was named the winner of the AFP 2024 Pinnacle Awards Grand Prize for excellence in treasury and finance.
10/21/2024
Investing in a planned and comprehensive onboarding strategy can foster a sense of belonging, reduce the time it takes for new hires to become productive, and minimize the risk of errors.
10/18/2024
An onboarding checklist for FP&A should cover the three main dimensions of FP&A skills, as described in the FP&A Maturity Model: personal & team effectiveness, finance & financial processes, and technology & data.
10/18/2024
A treasury policy is a set of clear guidelines that helps your organization manage key risks, set limits and define accountabilities within treasury operations. It serves as a roadmap, outlining essential risk management practices and establishing how performance should be evaluated.
10/15/2024
Now that AI is becoming a fixture of many finance teams' operations, leaders are wondering how its involvement will fundamentally improve their decision-making processes. Although finance organizations are adapting AI to enhance operations and streamline processes, leveraging it for improved decision-making is still fairly new.
10/07/2024
Beyond balance sheets and market trends lies a powerful tool that can make or break financial endeavors: effective communication. While data drives decisions, it's effective communication that propels understanding and action.
10/07/2024
Prudent companies will always look to build resilience in their working capital to develop some protection against the vagaries of the market.
10/02/2024
Two treasurers who work for companies in different industries share their ongoing treasury management system (TMS) implementation journeys and the lessons learned along the way.
09/19/2024
An empowered FP&A team that builds relationships with the business, looks at data in a new context and creates a disciplined structure can change the business mindset to own cost optimization activities.
09/18/2024
A bank’s financial stability is of utmost importance to 98% of organizations when choosing a primary relationship bank, according to the 2024 AFP Bank Relationship Management Survey.
09/17/2024
Michael High, FPAC, has had a nearly 20-year career in finance. He currently works as the Vice President of Finance at Parkland Fuel Corporation and is Chair of the AFP Board of Directors.
09/09/2024
Finalists were selected by a jury of treasury and finance professionals. Decisions were based on forward-looking solutions that progress the efficiency and effectiveness of their organization’s treasury and financial operations.
09/09/2024
This case study explores a strategic approach focused on value efficiency. The company’s initiative aimed to maximize the benefits and value derived from its existing resources and focus on the overall efficiency and effectiveness of its operations to create a comprehensive, cost-optimization strategy that delivers sustained value over time.
09/06/2024
There are several best practices CFOs can implement to balance financial stewardship with a focus on profit maximization.
08/30/2024
Recently, experts from the Middle East and Africa (MEA) region were brought together to discuss the pros and cons of centralized versus decentralized treasury functions.
08/28/2024
Three in four organizations are still using checks, according to the 2024 AFP Payments Fraud and Control Survey, underwritten by Truist.
08/26/2024
Manually tracking promissory notes was time-consuming and burdensome, so it became clear that the The Heritage Group treasury team needed to switch to a new treasury management system (TMS) that could automate the process.
08/23/2024
The finance domain is ripe for data science and automation solutions to improve efficiency, productivity and reliability.
08/20/2024
A large language model (LLM) is a type of artificial intelligence that can process and produce natural language texts.
08/20/2024
If you truly are doing a transformation, don’t put the effort into a detailed forecasting process and then turn around and have machine learning come back with better answers. Start with AI and try to skip some of that grinding work.
08/20/2024
Constant threats to the economy’s health provide an ongoing incentive for companies to build working capital resilience as protection against potential problems.
08/09/2024
At an AFP Member Meet-Up, Tom Hunt, CTP, Director of Treasury Services and Payments, discussed a wide range of payments fraud questions with a panel of payments experts.
08/08/2024
Effective communication is the foundation on which strong business relationships are built.
07/29/2024
Financial analysis helps the business answer three important questions: What happened? So what does it mean? Now, what do we do?
07/29/2024