Traditionally, the day-to-day demands of finance and treasury work have required a full team, especially when most of that time is spent on manual, time-consuming tasks like gathering bank data, reconciling balances, or updating forecasts. For many startups and small to mid-market companies, however, building out a full treasury team just isn’t in the budget. At least not yet.
That leaves a growing number of treasury professionals managing it all solo, often with little support and even less time. However, being a one-person treasury team doesn’t mean settling for reactive processes or operating blindly. With the right processes and modern treasury technology (especially with the rise of AI), it’s now possible to operate at a much higher level, even without additional headcount.
At Trovata, after working with thousands of treasury professionals, we’ve seen what sets the most effective solo treasurers apart. These aren’t survival tactics—they’re scalable strategies for getting ahead, staying informed, and earning a seat at the table while your team grows.
Here are six of those strategies—so you can work smarter today and build the case for more support tomorrow.
Contents
1. Start with a Strong Data Foundation
It’s a cliche, but you can’t build anything substantial without a strong foundation. For treasurers, that foundation is your data. Manually downloading bank statements and keying transactions into spreadsheets often leads to errors, delays, and frustration. When daily transaction volumes grow, spreadsheets become slow to open and difficult to maintain.
For a solo treasury lead, any time spent wrestling with large files is time taken away from analysis and strategic decision-making.
Automate Multi-Bank Data Aggregation and Normalization
A more dependable approach begins with automated bank connectivity. Linking every domestic and international account across all of your banks to a centralized system ensures that each transaction appears in real time.
For example, at the pharmaceutical manufacturing company, EVERSANA, more than 50 bank accounts covering multiple entities and regions flow directly into a single platform. With each posting, it automatically assigns transaction tags for categories such as payroll, accounts receivable, or vendor payment. Rather than relying on broad buckets (for example, tagging an entire cash-pooling account as “AP” or “AR”), granular tags distinguish individual customers, vendor types, and even specific cash-management fees.
Import Historical Data
Historical context is equally important. If a forecasting system receives only a few weeks of data, it can’t identify seasonal patterns or recurring cycles. By back-loading at least twelve months of prior statements, the treasury lead provides sufficient depth for forecasting models to capture true cash flow behavior.
When EVERSANA adopted Trovata in late 2023, eighteen months of historical data delivered a mature baseline for forecasting from day one. Without that full-year perspective, projections rely too heavily on guesswork and risk large variances.
Focus on Data Integrity
Maintaining data integrity is an ongoing effort. As banks update file formats, remittance fields can change unexpectedly. A vendor might switch to a new clearing bank or modify its payment reference conventions. To catch those shifts early, a dedicated ‘Uncategorized’ or ‘Other Cash Flow’ bucket tracks any transaction that fails to meet existing tagging rules.
Weekly reviews of that bucket ensure any new patterns are quickly incorporated into the tag framework. Whether it’s a change in a single bank’s BAI code or the introduction of a new payment method, a disciplined review process preserves data reliability.
2. Automate Daily Treasury Tasks Like Cash Positions and Variance Analysis
Time is the premium resource for a one-person treasury team, which is why it’s so valuable to automate repetitive tasks and free up capacity for analysis and strategic work. Manual workflows often consume tens of hours each month. Some examples of areas that can be automated include:
Consolidate Transaction Data
Within a modern treasury platform like Trovata, automated bank feeds eliminate the need to manually retrieve CSV files on a daily basis. An API connection pulls transactions from every linked account into a single repository. As soon as a deposit or payment posts at the bank, the treasury platform reflects it. A well-configured tagging engine classifies each entry on the fly, whether it’s a payroll disbursement or a one-off vendor refund.
Monitor Cash Positions
Daily cash updates are another common point of friction. Compiling prior-day inflows and outflows, comparing month-to-date performance to forecast, and packaging that information for senior leadership can take a chunk of time out of the schedule every single morning. By automating those calculations, a solo treasury lead delivers a concise snapshot in under two minutes. An email generated at 7 AM might include prior-day activity, today’s opening balance versus forecast, and month-to-date trending. Stakeholders receive timely insights without manual effort.
“Trovata is like having my very own employee which is incredibly valuable. It handles the heavy lifting by automating data aggregation, categorization, and reporting.” – Robert DiTondo Senior Treasury Manager, Lemonade (Read the full success story)
Run Variance Analysis
Variance analysis traditionally takes several hours per month. In a fully automated environment, forecast versus actual calculations happen instantly once the month closes. The system automatically compares each data stream against actuals. Clicking on any variance immediately displays the underlying tagged transactions, eliminating manual drilling through large spreadsheets or raw bank reports. Automated variance reporting builds stakeholder confidence, since sudden variances no longer come as a surprise.
“Doing variance analysis used to take me multiple hours every single month. Now it’s calculated instantaneously when the data is fed over from the bank.” — Tim Green, CTP, Treasury Manager, EVERSANA (Watch Tim’s forecasting how-to)
3. Use Tools That Balance Automation and Simplicity — Not a Legacy TMS or Just Excel
It perhaps goes without saying that if you need better data insights and automated processes, you need the right tools for the job. But that doesn’t necessarily mean simply selecting the solution with the largest feature list. Relying exclusively on spreadsheet models becomes untenable as transaction volumes multiply, while a full-suite, traditional treasury management system (TMS) may bring complexity that a small team will never be able to use effectively.
The optimal path for every company is different, but for companies with small or one-person treasury teams, it likely lies somewhere between heavyweight spreadsheets and unwieldy enterprise systems. The treasury tech landscape has shifted with newer, ‘right-sized’ tools like Trovata providing all the cash management functionality you need to operate treasury more effectively, while also being quicker to implement and easier to use than legacy systems.
That user experience can also empower a solo treasurer to respond rapidly to changes. If an unpredicted vendor invoice appears or an unexpected customer payment spikes, you want a platform that reconciles and tags that transaction immediately. Forecast adjustments can happen in real time, not via manual formula updates, and daily cash reporting becomes a scheduled, automated email rather than a labor-intensive routine.
Recommended: Deciding Between a Legacy TMS, Next-Gen Treasury Platform, and the Rest
4. Cultivate a Treasury Network for Real-Time Support, Solutions, and Career Growth
An oft-overlooked aspect of small or one-person teams is the shortfall in peer learning and networking. Professional isolation poses a significant risk when a treasury function relies on just one person, or a very small team. Without colleagues to consult and bounce ideas off, a solo treasury lead may spend hours chasing outdated practices or reinventing solutions that others have solved before.
Building and maintaining a network of treasury peers offers immediate access to insights, best practices, and troubleshooting guidance.
Find Your Treasury Tribe
It’s important to find the right community to help fuel your capabilities at work and long-term career aspirations. Industry associations such as the Association for Financial Professionals (AFP) host conferences, local chapter events, and virtual sessions. Online communities like The Trove on Slack bring together treasury professionals from diverse industries.
Engaging in both in-person and virtual forums can help you find quicker solutions to the problems you’re having and fast-track your knowledge and experience. If a bank changes its file format, a treasurer in the group has likely already dealt with it. If a new regulatory requirement emerges, a fellow professional can share their implementation approach.
Get Support in a Crisis
Real-time networking becomes critical in times of crisis. When Silicon Valley Bank collapsed, Stef Layne, Klaviyo’s VP of Treasury, Payroll, and Go-To-Market Compensation, set up a group text with her industry peers.
Within hours, she identified alternate banking partners capable of rapid new account onboarding. That immediate insight allowed her to transfer tens of millions overnight and avoid liquidity disruptions. A solo treasurer who lacks such connections might spend precious days searching for alternatives or feel uncertain when such a rare, yet occasional crisis strikes.
Fuel Your Career Growth
Networking also drives career growth. Laura Loeffler, having left a large public-company treasury role, attended a local AFP luncheon after submitting her resume for a position at Celgene. By chance, she sat next to a treasury manager from the company. That brief lunch-table conversation led to an interview, an offer within a few days, and a smooth transition into a new role.
A personal introduction is the best way to stand out in a crowded field, and it can be the difference between finding the right opportunity and watching it slip away.
“Prioritize tracking and keeping up with your network. As your career develops your network can be very helpful and staying in touch even briefly can be very beneficial over time.” – Erin Dewar, Treasury Director at IMA Financial Group
5. Leave the Spreadsheet Behind: Forecast Faster and Smarter with a Purpose-Built Platform
Forecasting in a large, multi-tab spreadsheet can be a bit like wearing an old, worn-out pair of shoes. They might feel familiar, but they’re full of holes and they leak when it rains. Likewise, the comfortable spreadsheet approach to forecasting can easily become a liability for one-person treasury teams (and larger teams for that matter).
Going back to when Tim Green joined EVERSANA, he relied on an Excel file that pulled in a single US cash concentration account each day. Every morning, he downloaded a CSV, opened a massive workbook, and manually tagged hundreds of transactions. The file was so large that it took 20 minutes just to open it. Senior leaders never saw that file, because it was too slow and too fragile.
Why Excel Falls Short for a Solo Treasurer
An Excel workbook quickly becomes unwieldy when transaction volumes grow. As new bank accounts open or international entities come online, each line item must be tagged, formulas must be updated, and multiple sheets must be linked.
One small formula error can cascade across dozens of tabs, and a single broken link can pull the entire forecast offline. Tim realized that maintaining a giant spreadsheet meant he spent more time troubleshooting formulas than analyzing cash trends. In one-person treasury functions, hours are precious. Every minute spent waiting for a file to load or tracing a broken formula is a minute he cannot spend on strategy.
Transitioning from Excel to a Forecasting Platform
When EVERSANA adopted Trovata, Tim spent the first two months upfront creating tag rules that mirrored his Excel categories, only far more precise. Instead of treating the entire US concentration account as one big ‘accounts receivable’ bucket, he built tags based on BAI codes, remittance text, debit/credit indicators, and transaction amounts. Within another two months, he had back-loaded twelve months of history and was running Trovata in parallel with Excel.
By month four, he retired the spreadsheet.
Rather than opening a slow workbook each morning, Tim now logs into a dashboard where every transaction already carries its correct tag. The same platform automatically compares forecasts to actuals at the click of a button. Variance analysis that took several hours in Excel now happens in minutes. Because all entities (domestic and international) feed into one system, Tim can review global cash flows in a single view. He no longer worries about broken links or file size bloat. Instead, he spends his time refining cash assumptions and advising leadership on upcoming liquidity needs.
“Since implementing Trovata, we’ve seen far better accuracy in our cash forecast. We’ve gained visibility into all of our accounts globally that we didn’t have before, and we’ve significantly reduced the time we spend manually reporting data to our senior leadership.” — Tim Green, CTP, Treasury Manager, EVERSANA
6. Use AI to Get Instant Cash Flow Insights and Analysis
Last but not least, the savviest one-person treasury teams are embracing the latest technology—like generative AI tools and embedded AI assistants in modern treasury platforms—to multiply their impact. By combining domain expertise with AI-powered insights, solo treasurers can move faster, make better decisions, and gain bandwidth without adding headcount.
Let AI Do the Heavy Lifting
Instead of spending hours manually reviewing cash flow trends, reconciling reports, or crafting executive summaries, AI can help surface patterns and flag anomalies in real time. For example, within Trovata, AI can summarize key changes in cash position, answer natural language questions about forecast assumptions, and even suggest tagging rule adjustments—all within seconds.
If you’re working in Excel, generative AI tools like ChatGPT can help write formulas, clean up transaction data, or translate CSV fields into more readable formats. What used to take 30 minutes of spreadsheet wrangling can now take less than five.
Ask Better Questions, Get Faster Answers
With natural language interfaces becoming more common in finance tools, treasurers don’t need to dig through rows of data or build pivot tables to find answers.
You can simply ask:
- “Why is my cash position down compared to last month?”
- “Which customers paid late in Q1?”
- “What will my cash look like in 90 days if payroll increases by 15%?”
Instead of relying on IT or BI teams, one-person treasury leads can run quick scenario analysis or variance breakdowns directly from the platform, using AI to generate narrative and visual insights on demand.
See what you can do with Trovata AI:
The Next Evolution of Treasury
Using AI doesn’t mean replacing expertise—it means amplifying it. The most forward-thinking treasurers are using AI as a copilot: handling repetitive tasks, translating complex datasets into clear takeaways, and helping them think more strategically.
For lean treasury teams, this marks a new era: where a single person with the right tools and a bit of curiosity can deliver enterprise-grade insights every day.
One Person, Big Impact: How Solo Treasurers Operate Like a Full Team
Solo treasury professionals can operate at the level of a fully staffed department by mastering these key principles:
- Start with clean, comprehensive data to provide a reliable foundation.
- Automate routine processes to free up time for deeper analysis.
- Consider whether or not a next-gen treasury tool could be a good fit for your day-to-day workflow as opposed to relying solely on spreadsheets or an outsize enterprise system, maximizing efficiency without unnecessary complexity.
- Build a network of treasury peers to ensure rapid problem-solving and valuable benchmarking.
- Use a tailored platform for advanced forecasting that takes projections and scenario planning to the next level, away from manual spreadsheets and into automatic updates, variance analysis and budget vs actuals.
- Instead of fearing them, embrace AI tools for treasury and learn how you can start using it to enhance your productivity now and in the future.
By focusing on these areas, one-person treasury teams can drive growth, manage liquidity risk, and earn a seat at the executive table, without ever scaling their headcount.
To find out how Trovata can power your treasury team (no matter how big or small), book a demo today.
