The Problem with Cash Flow 

The financial landscape of 2025 presents plenty of challenges and opportunities. As businesses navigate economic volatility, inflationary pressures, and evolving customer behaviors, one area stands out as a primary concern for finance professionals: cash flow management. 
According to a recent APQC survey, a staggering 43% of finance professionals identified focusing on cash flow management as a top priority for 2025. This underscores the critical importance of effectively monitoring, predicting, and optimizing the lifeblood of any organization – its cash. 

The reasons behind this heightened focus are multifaceted. The APQC survey and real-world experiences highlight several key challenges that make cash flow a key topic in 2025.  

  • Unpaid Invoices: One persistent issue is the untimely payment of customer invoices. Delayed payments can create significant strain on working capital, hindering a company’s ability to invest, meet its own obligations, and capitalize on growth opportunities. 
  • Reporting and Forecasting: Adding to this pressure is the challenge of inaccurate forecasting and lack of real-time data. In an environment marked by economic uncertainty, having a clear and current picture of cash positions and predicting future cash inflows and outflows with precision becomes increasingly difficult. Traditional forecasting tools struggle to account for rapid market shifts, supply chain disruptions, and uncertain customer demand, leading to potential cash shortages or misallocation of resources. 
  • Smaller Margins: Rising costs of goods sold (COGS) due to inflation continues to loom large. Increased input prices erode profit margins and necessitate more efficient management of inventory and procurement processes to mitigate the impact on cash flow. Finally, the overarching economic volatility creates an unpredictable environment where businesses must be agile and possess a clear understanding of their cash position to weather potential storms and seize emerging opportunities. 

5 Powerful Workday Financials Functions You Need 

Amidst these challenges lies a wealth of opportunity, particularly for organizations leveraging modern, integrated financial management systems like Workday Financials. Workday offers a suite of powerful functionalities that can significantly enhance cash flow management in 2025 and beyond. 

  • Bank Statement: One key advantage is bank statement integration. By automating the process of importing and reconciling bank transactions, businesses gain real-time visibility into their cash position. Even better, any deposits can be turned into customer payment records automatically. This eliminates manual data entry, reduces errors, and provides an accurate and up-to-date view of available funds, empowering better decision-making. 
  • Invoice Payment Matching: Several functions within Workday streamline the accounts receivable process. By automating the matching of payments to outstanding invoices via a flexible rule set or AI, companies can quickly identify and resolve discrepancies, reducing the time spent on manual reconciliation and accelerating cash inflows. This efficiency allows your team to more effectively address the challenge of knowing when to reach out to customers who have yet to pay. 
  • Collection Analytics:  Furthermore, Workday’s extensive reporting suite provides valuable insights into customer balance trends and payment behavior. By analyzing historical data and identifying at-risk accounts, finance teams can proactively target collection efforts, improve payment terms, and ultimately reduce outstanding receivables, bolstering cash flow. 
  • Process automations via Extend: Beyond core functionalities, Workday’s Extend platform opens up exciting possibilities for automation. Businesses can build custom applications to automate dunning processes, sending timely reminders and escalating overdue invoices based on predefined rules. This reduces the manual burden on accounts receivable teams and improves the efficiency of the collection cycle. 
  • Customer Portal: Finally, implementing a Portal within Workday can significantly enhance customer experience and accelerate payments. Providing customers with online access to their invoices, payment history, and account statements empowers them to self-serve and facilitates faster and more accurate payments. This transparency can improve customer relationships and contribute to a more predictable cash inflow. 

Conclusion 

The focus on cash flow management in 2025 is not merely a trend, but a necessity for navigating the current economic climate. While challenges like delayed payments, forecasting inaccuracies, rising costs, and volatility persist, the opportunities presented by modern financial management systems like Workday Financials are significant. By leveraging features such as bank statement integration, invoice payment matching, collection analytics, Extend automations, and customer portals, organizations can gain greater control over their cash flow, improve efficiency, and build a more resilient and prosperous future. Mastering these tools and adopting a proactive approach to cash flow management will be the defining characteristic of financially successful businesses in 2025 and beyond. 

Struggling with Workday Financials? Let’s Fix It.  

If your team is stuck using processes and reports that don’t meet your needs, we can help.  

At Teamup9, we work with organizations to understand their needs to develop solutions that work for them, allowing customers to take control of their data; from period-end close to cash flow management to department financials.  We mentor your admin team and amplify their organizational knowledge with our expertise to create value. 

Let’s talk.  Reach out at contact@teamup9.com to see how we can help you maximize Workday Financials for your business.