A: Yes - as in all other areas of TFM, users are fully flexible when setting up structures.
Q: Having some contingent liabilities, e.g. bank guarantees, in our books, we need to capture them in a system as part of the group's cash position - is it possible to maintain bank guarantees in TFM?
A: Bank guarantees or other contingent liabilities can be captured, just like bank accounts, with an additional flag that makes sure that these liabilities are presented correctly in reports and lists.
Q: Is it possible to capture lease transactions in TFM?
A: In TFM, lease transactions are treated as financial liabilities just like loans and can therefore be administrated in the system in the same way as regular bank accounts.
Q: Is it possible to capture group-internal transactions (deposits/loans) in TFM?
A: Any transaction can be captured in TFM by selecting either an internal or external counterparty. TFM also provides an optional feature for the group-internal reconciliation of accounts and their balances.
Q: We receive most of our bank account balances electronically - does TFM support the import of those balances via an interface?
A: TFM has an interface allowing the import of pre-structured data. Balances can be imported via file transfer as long as they are delivered in the same format, something which can be individually defined by the user by mapping the structure of files to be imported based on TFM's table structure.
Q: Is it possible to maintain external and internal credit limits in TFM?
A: TFM offers the possibility not only of maintaining credit limits but of exactly assigning transactions or perhaps granted limits (to subsidiaries) to the respective credit limits. This makes it possible to set up even complex structures of limits received and granted. Furthermore, TFM provides all the necessary information regarding, for example, the utilization of limits at any point in time.
Q: We also have limits for bank guarantees - how do they affect the calculation of the unutilized portion of a limit?
A: We recommend setting up individual limits for bank guarantees in order to make sure that this calculation is performed correctly. It is never a good idea to mix cash and contingent items when it comes to the calculation of the utilization of limits.
Q: Is it possible to capture information and data regarding banking fees and commissions by bank account in TFM?
A: Yes, TFM can be used to provide users with even a group-wide overview on such fees and commissions by bank account, banks, groups of banks, etc.
Q: We have a couple of different cash pools in place - can we maintain the structure of these pools in TFM?
A: This can be done by using the cash pooling feature - simply set up the structures with master and pooled accounts, define the type of cash pooling method, and off you go.
Q: We would like to maintain our bank account signatories in a system - is TFM able to do that?
A: Yes, TFM offers features for the administration of bank account signatories (by individually definable types of authorization) as well as extensive options for querying and analyzing the respective data.
Q: As a group treasurer, I want to be sure that only accurate data are reported - how can TFM help here?
A: TFM provides a series of consistency checks and validations in order to maintain a high level of quality in terms of the reported data.
Q: As a group treasurer, I need to monitor deadlines and have to make sure that all subsidiaries report on time - how are these processes supported by TFM?
A: One of the mandatory features of TFM is the setup of at least one group-internal calendar with - optional - different due dates for different modules. Once the calendar has been setup, TFM can check whether all subsidiaries have reported on time or which subsidiaries have still not confirmed their reports according to the calendar. If required, TFM can automatically send out reminders to subsidiaries, for example.
Q: Manual data capturing is often regarded as time consuming and cumbersome - how does this work in TFM?
A: Knowing that this is a very critical aspect, we have made sure that we support the data capturing process as much as possible - capturing balances for ten accounts, for example, should not take longer than 30 seconds if the balances are already available. It definitely does not take longer to capture such values in TFM than it would take in a spreadsheet.