Treasury Management Advisory

The core service covers building and maintaining a rolling 13-week and 12-month cash flow forecast, mapping and optimising your banking structure and facilities, diagnosing and improving your working capital cycle, assessing and managing foreign exchange exposure, supporting banking facility applications and renewals, designing appropriately sized cash approval controls, and — for multi-entity groups — coordinating a consolidated cash view across related entities. Ongoing weekly or fortnightly cash position reporting and monthly variance reviews are the operational backbone of the engagement.

No, though the two are complementary and often run together. Treasury advisory can be engaged as a standalone service if your existing accounting and management reporting is already current and reliable. If your books are not current, we typically recommend starting with a books health assessment or virtual accounting engagement, since a treasury forecast built on unreliable historical data is not a meaningful planning tool.

A 13-week rolling cash flow forecast is the standard operational treasury tool for managing near-term liquidity — roughly one financial quarter, updated weekly, so the business always has a current view of the coming three months rather than a forecast that goes stale the moment it is produced. It sits alongside, not instead of, a longer 12-month forecast used for annual planning and facility discussions.

Monthly management accounts are historical — they tell you what happened last month. Treasury management is forward-looking — it tells you what your cash position will be over the coming weeks and months, and what decisions that requires today. The two are connected: an accurate historical position (from well-maintained books) is the foundation a reliable forward forecast is built on, but they serve different purposes and answer different questions.

Yes. We map every account across every bank you hold, build a consolidated cash position report that updates on an agreed cadence, and flag structural inefficiencies — idle balances, unnecessary duplication, or signatory bottlenecks — that are difficult to see when each account is checked separately through its own online banking portal.

We first quantify your actual net exposure — not gross transaction volume, but the real mismatch between foreign-currency inflows and AED-denominated outflows — and then present practical, proportionate options: timing conversions to avoid converting at unfavourable moments, using forward contracts through your bank where the exposure and cost justify it, or simply building the exposure explicitly into your pricing and margin assumptions. We do not default to recommending a hedging programme a mid-market business does not need.

Yes. We prepare the financial model and forecast the bank's credit assessment team will want to see, help anticipate the Central Bank of the UAE-aligned KYC and AML documentation the bank will require, and can join key conversations with your relationship manager to support the negotiation. We do not act as a broker earning commission from any specific bank — our advice is independent of which facility or bank you ultimately choose.

WPS is the UAE's electronic salary transfer system, which requires employers to pay wages to employees through approved channels within a specified window each month, with penalties and potential labour-related consequences for non-compliance. Because WPS payroll is a fixed, date-certain, non-negotiable monthly cash outflow, it anchors the cash flow forecast — every forecast we build treats the WPS payroll date as a hard commitment the business must be able to meet, not a flexible line item.

ESR, administered by the UAE Ministry of Finance, required UAE entities carrying out defined 'Relevant Activities' to demonstrate adequate economic substance in the UAE — including, in relevant cases, that key income-generating activities and decision-making genuinely occurred in the UAE. Note that the ongoing ESR notification and report filing obligation was discontinued for financial years starting on or after 1 January 2023, under Cabinet Decision No. 98 of 2024, so this is now primarily a historical consideration for earlier financial years rather than a live annual filing requirement. Where an entity still has open ESR filings or assessments relating to earlier periods, the same principle applies: decisions about where cash management and banking relationship decisions are actually made can form part of the substance picture for a Relevant Activity entity.

Treasury advisory diagnoses the specific drivers of the gap — typically a mismatch between days sales outstanding (how long customers take to pay) and days payables outstanding (how long you take to pay suppliers), sometimes combined with inventory holding for trading businesses — and presents concrete levers: renegotiated payment terms, tighter collections discipline, or, where the gap is structural rather than fixable through process alone, appropriately sized short-term facility support. It is a diagnostic and advisory service, not a guarantee that cash pressure disappears without operational or facility changes.

Yes. For groups with a UAE entity and an India-linked entity, we advise on efficient and compliant intercompany fund movement, coordinated with PNPC's India offices in Chennai, Bangalore, and Hyderabad so that FEMA considerations (on the Indian side), UAE Corporate Tax transfer pricing requirements for related-party transactions, and India-UAE DTAA implications are considered together rather than by two disconnected advisors.

This is agreed in the engagement letter based on your business's volatility and needs, but a typical cadence is a weekly or fortnightly consolidated cash position update against the rolling forecast, with a fuller monthly variance review comparing forecast to actual results and refining assumptions going forward.

It scales down meaningfully. A smaller business with a single bank account and simple cash flow may only need a lighter version — a basic rolling forecast and monthly review — while a multi-entity, multi-currency group needs the full banking structure and FX exposure work. We scope the engagement to match actual complexity rather than proposing a one-size package regardless of business size.

We flag it as soon as it appears in the rolling forecast — not at month-end when options have narrowed — and work through the available responses with management: accelerating receivables collection, deferring non-critical payables where relationships allow, drawing on an existing facility, or, if none of those are sufficient, beginning a facility conversation with enough lead time to negotiate properly rather than under emergency pressure.

Yes. We design or tighten payment approval workflows appropriate to your business size — typically including dual authorisation above a defined threshold, segregation between who initiates a payment and who approves it, and a defined reconciliation cadence — avoiding both the risk of having no controls at all and the inefficiency of imposing enterprise-scale bureaucracy on a small business.

PNPC charges either a fixed monthly retainer for ongoing treasury advisory (forecast maintenance, weekly/fortnightly cash reporting, monthly variance review) or a project-based fee for a discrete engagement such as a one-time facility application support or a working capital diagnostic. The exact fee is scoped based on entity count, transaction complexity, and the specific elements of the service you need, and confirmed in writing before work begins.

We advise on and support the account opening process — including preparing the KYC/AML documentation package UAE banks require under Central Bank-aligned regulation, and recommending which banking relationship structure best fits your entity and cash flow profile — but the account itself must be opened directly by the entity with the bank, as UAE banks require direct engagement with authorised signatories for account opening.

That is a common and entirely reasonable starting point. We scope discrete, project-based engagements — such as a single facility renewal support package, or a one-time working capital diagnostic — separately from an ongoing retainer, and many clients begin this way before deciding whether an ongoing treasury function adds enough value to justify a continuing engagement.

Yes, to the extent that Corporate Tax liabilities — computed as part of your accounting and Corporate Tax compliance work — are built into the cash flow forecast as a known, date-certain future outflow, so the business is never caught short when a Corporate Tax payment falls due under Federal Decree-Law No. 47 of 2022. The tax computation itself is handled by PNPC's tax and accounting team; treasury advisory ensures the resulting cash obligation is visible and planned for well in advance.

Investor and acquirer due diligence routinely scrutinises cash flow discipline, working capital management, and banking structure as indicators of operational maturity. We prepare the cash flow forecast, working capital position, and banking structure in a due-diligence-ready format, and are available to respond directly to investor or acquirer financial queries on the treasury and cash side of the business.

The service is delivered primarily remotely from PNPC's Dubai office, using secure access to your accounting platform and bank statement data, with regular video or phone review calls. Physical presence is arranged for specific moments where it adds genuine value — such as accompanying management to an important bank facility meeting — rather than being a routine requirement.

Startup vCFO is a broader, strategic finance leadership service — covering fundraising support, financial modelling, board reporting, and overall finance function strategy. Treasury Management Advisory is a more focused discipline within that broader function, specifically concerned with cash flow forecasting, banking structure, working capital, and FX exposure. Many clients engage both together; some engage treasury advisory as a standalone service when their broader finance function is already well served internally or by another advisor.

For a business with current, reconciled management accounts, an initial 13-week rolling forecast and banking structure review is typically deliverable within 3–5 weeks of engagement start. If the underlying books need to be brought current first, that timeline is added ahead of the treasury build — we do not build a forecast on data we know to be unreliable, even under time pressure.

We can work alongside an existing bookkeeper or accounting provider, provided we have reliable access to current, reconciled financial data to build and maintain the forecast from. In practice, treasury forecasting works most smoothly when the same team also has full visibility into the underlying books, which is why many clients choose to bundle both services with PNPC, but it is not a strict requirement.

PNPC typically proposes an initial engagement period sufficient to build the forecast model, complete at least one full monthly variance cycle, and establish the working relationship, after which either party can adjust or end the engagement with reasonable notice as set out in the written engagement letter. We do not lock clients into lengthy fixed-term contracts without a clear opt-out mechanism.

A bank relationship manager's role includes selling that bank's own products and facilities — their advice, however well-intentioned, is not independent of that interest. PNPC has no stake in which bank or which facility you ultimately use; our recommendations are based solely on what best fits your cash position and business needs. We also see your full banking picture across every bank you use, not just the one relationship manager's own institution.

Discovery and scoping consultation. Books and data readiness check. Rolling 13-week and 12-month cash flow forecast build. Banking structure review across all accounts and facilities. Working capital diagnostic with actionable improvement levers. Foreign exchange exposure assessment and practical management options. Banking facility strategy and application/renewal support. Cash approval control design appropriate to business size. Multi-entity cash coordination for group structures, including coordination with PNPC's India offices where relevant. Ongoing weekly or fortnightly cash position reporting. Monthly forecast-versus-actual variance review. Quarterly treasury and banking strategy review.

Yes. Treasury management advisory is delivered remotely from PNPC's Dubai office to clients across all seven Emirates, using the same forecasting tools, banking structure review process, and reporting cadence regardless of which Emirate the business is licensed or operating in.

As part of the banking structure review, we identify balances sitting materially above what near-term forecast requirements justify, and flag options appropriate to a business's risk appetite and liquidity needs — such as short-term deposit facilities offered by UAE banks — while making sure the working cash buffer required to comfortably meet payroll, supplier, and tax obligations is never compromised for the sake of a marginal yield gain.

You retain full ownership of and access to the forecast model, banking structure documentation, and all underlying data — none of it is proprietary to PNPC or withheld on termination. If the engagement ends, we provide a structured handover so that either an in-house hire or another advisor can continue the forecasting discipline without rebuilding it from scratch.

Yes, in the sense that we advise on which banking relationship structure — number of accounts, currency mix, and which bank's facility offerings genuinely suit your transaction profile — best fits your business, based on your actual cash flow patterns and growth plans, rather than a generic recommendation. We do not receive referral commissions from any bank, so the comparison is made purely on fit for your business.

Where a business has a genuinely seasonal or cyclical revenue pattern — a trading business with peak import cycles, a services business with year-end concentration, or similar — we build that seasonality explicitly into both the 13-week and 12-month forecast rather than smoothing revenue evenly across the year, since an evenly smoothed forecast for a seasonal business is actively misleading at exactly the low points in the cycle when cash visibility matters most.

Treasury Management Advisory covers cash flow forecasting, banking structure, working capital, FX exposure, facility support, and cash approval controls. It does not include preparing statutory financial statements, filing VAT or Corporate Tax returns, running payroll, or providing legal advice on loan or facility documentation — those sit with PNPC's accounting, tax, payroll, and (where needed) external legal teams respectively, and we coordinate with them rather than absorbing that work into the treasury scope.

The forecast is built from your accounting ledger (receivables and payables ageing, bank reconciliations), actual bank statements for every active account, the payroll and WPS disbursement schedule, lease and loan repayment schedules, and any confirmed contracts or purchase orders driving near-term inflows or outflows. We do not build forecasts from verbal estimates of what management thinks is coming — every recurring line traces back to a document or a confirmed commitment.

Corporate Tax and VAT payment obligations confirmed through EmaraTax, and WPS payroll disbursement confirmations from MoHRE-approved channels, are both treated as fixed, date-certain cash outflows in the forecast. We do not recompute the tax or WPS figures ourselves within the treasury engagement — those come from PNPC's tax and payroll teams or your own filings — but we make sure the confirmed obligation appears in the forecast with the correct due date, so it is never the item that gets missed.

PNPC retains treasury working papers, forecast models, and supporting bank and accounting data for at least seven years, aligned with the Corporate Tax record retention period under Federal Decree-Law No. 47 of 2022, even though treasury advisory itself is not a tax filing. This means if a bank, auditor, or tax authority later asks how a historical cash position or facility decision was reached, the underlying workpapers are still accessible.

The core forecasting and banking work is the same either way, but a VAT-registered business (mandatory above AED 375,000 in taxable supplies, or voluntarily from AED 187,500) has an additional recurring cash outflow — net VAT payable — that must appear in the forecast on the correct EmaraTax filing cycle, alongside any VAT refund receivable that should be tracked as a forecast inflow rather than assumed away.

The forecasting and working capital methodology is identical, but banking relationship options, facility appetite, and account opening documentation can differ between free zone and Mainland structures, and between individual free zone authorities themselves — DMCC, DIFC, ADGM, JAFZA, IFZA, Meydan, and RAKEZ are not interchangeable in how UAE banks treat them. For multi-entity groups combining a free zone company with a Mainland trading entity, we build a single consolidated cash view while respecting that each entity's banking relationship is negotiated on its own terms.

We build one consolidated cash position view across all entities in scope, map how funds move between them, and structure any intercompany funding so it is properly documented — loan agreements or intercompany balances recorded correctly, rather than informal transfers with no paper trail. Where a UAE entity is linked to an Indian or other overseas entity, this is coordinated with PNPC's relevant international office so cross-border implications are considered on both sides simultaneously, not as two separate conversations.

Standard outputs are a weekly or fortnightly consolidated cash position report, a monthly forecast-versus-actual variance pack with commentary, and a quarterly treasury and banking strategy review — each written so an owner, a bank credit team, an auditor, or an investor can follow the numbers without a verbal walkthrough. Reports are tailored to the audience: a bank credit submission emphasises facility headroom and covenant compliance, while an internal owner pack emphasises the operational cash runway.

Every forecast assumption is tied to a specific source — a signed contract, a historical payment pattern, a confirmed facility term — rather than left as an unexplained number in a spreadsheet. Where management judgment is used (for example, an assumed collection delay on a specific customer), that judgment is documented and attributed, not hidden inside a formula. This lets a bank credit team, an auditor, or a due diligence team trace any single figure in the forecast back to why it is there.

The control design specifies who can initiate a payment, who must independently approve it above a defined threshold, and how frequently reconciliations happen — but enforcement sits with the client's own team, since PNPC is an advisory function, not the entity's bank signatory. We test, in periodic reviews, whether the agreed control is actually being followed in practice (checking real approval records) rather than assuming a documented policy is automatically being observed day to day.

The most common drivers are unreconciled or out-of-date management accounts requiring a books health assessment first, a multi-entity structure needing consolidation logic built before the first forecast can be produced, missing bank statements or facility documentation that has to be chased from the bank directly, or a business with genuinely complex seasonal revenue that needs more scoping time to model correctly.

The main fee drivers are the number of entities and bank accounts in scope, transaction volume, whether foreign currency exposure needs active management versus simple monitoring, whether a facility application or renewal is part of the current cycle, and how much historic clean-up of accounting data is required before a reliable forecast can be built. Two businesses of similar revenue can have meaningfully different fees if one has three bank accounts in one currency and the other has eight accounts across three currencies and two entities.

We run a structured handover workshop covering the forecast model logic, the banking structure documentation, the current exception register, and the recurring reporting calendar, and provide the model itself in a portable format the incoming team or advisor can use directly without rebuilding it. We also stay available for a defined transition period to answer questions as the new team takes over the reporting rhythm.

PNPC maintains the rolling forecast update on the agreed weekly or fortnightly cadence, refreshes it against actual bank and accounting data each cycle, and leads the monthly variance review. The client's responsibility is providing timely access to current bank statements and accounting data, and confirming or correcting forward-looking assumptions we flag for their input — such as a large expected receivable or a planned capital purchase.

Access to bank statements, accounting systems, and cash data is granted on a need-to-know basis to the specific PNPC team members assigned to the engagement, governed by our standard client confidentiality terms set out in the engagement letter. We do not require ongoing signatory or transactional authority over your bank accounts — our access is to information needed for forecasting and advisory, not operational control of your funds.

We build a single consolidated cash and treasury view spanning the UAE and Indian entities, coordinated directly with PNPC's India offices (Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad) so that FEMA reporting considerations on the Indian side, UAE Corporate Tax transfer pricing documentation for related-party transactions, and the India-UAE Double Taxation Avoidance Agreement are all factored into how intercompany cash actually moves, rather than each side's advisor working from a partial picture.

Beyond audited or management financial statements, UAE bank credit teams typically expect a forward cash flow forecast demonstrating repayment capacity, a clear explanation of the facility's purpose, current utilisation of any existing facilities, and KYC/AML documentation aligned with Central Bank of the UAE-referenced regulation covering beneficial ownership and source of funds. A facility application built only on historical numbers, with no forward view, is a materially weaker submission than one built with both.

Due diligence teams typically check whether cash flow forecasting exists at all and how reliable it has proven historically (comparing past forecasts to actuals), whether working capital is being actively managed or simply happening by default, whether banking facilities and covenants are documented and current, and whether intercompany or related-party cash movements are properly structured and disclosed. Gaps in any of these are common sources of due diligence queries that can slow a transaction.

Any unresolved discrepancy — a bank balance that does not reconcile to the accounting records, an unexplained intercompany balance, or a cash movement without clear supporting documentation — is logged in an exception register with an assigned owner and status, rather than corrected through an unexplained adjusting entry or quietly absorbed into the forecast. Management reviews and signs off on how each exception is resolved.

The forecast and cash position reporting continue through year-end, but PNPC additionally reconciles the treasury working papers — bank reconciliations, facility confirmations, intercompany balances — to the figures the auditor will test, so year-end and audit fieldwork are not a separate reconstruction exercise from the ongoing treasury records already being maintained.

The forecast links to whatever accounting platform the client already uses (commonly QuickBooks Online, Xero, Zoho Books, or similar cloud platforms used by UAE SMEs), pulling receivables, payables, and bank reconciliation data directly rather than requiring manual re-entry. If the underlying system has unreconciled bank feeds, mis-categorised transactions, or stale data, the forecast inherits those errors — which is why the books and data readiness check happens before the forecast build, not after.

Where a client does not already have one, we draft a lightweight treasury and cash management policy — covering approval authorities, banking relationship principles, FX risk appetite, and surplus cash handling — sized to the business rather than an enterprise template. Where a policy document already exists and reflects sound practice, we build on it rather than replacing it wholesale.

The payment approval workflow we design names specific roles (not just 'someone in finance') responsible for initiation, approval, and reconciliation at each stage, with a defined escalation path if a payment is delayed or an approval threshold is breached. This creates a clear record of who was responsible for a given step, which supports both day-to-day accountability and, if needed, a clean internal review after an error.

For a small team, full segregation of duties (separate people for recording, approving, and reconciling) is not always possible with headcount alone, so we design compensating controls instead — for example, the founder or a senior manager reviewing a weekly transaction summary even where they cannot practically separate every approval step from execution. The goal is a control that genuinely reduces risk given the real headcount, not a textbook structure the business cannot staff.

We recommend the owner or a senior finance lead personally reviews the monthly variance report and any flagged forecast shortfall or facility issue requiring a decision, while day-to-day weekly cash position updates can be delegated to an internal finance team member once the process is established and trusted. The point of ongoing owner review is decision-making on flagged items, not re-checking every routine transaction.

A projected shortfall or a material variance against forecast triggers a specific, written flag to management — not buried in a routine report — identifying the affected week, the size of the gap, and the response options available (accelerating receivables, deferring non-critical payables, drawing an existing facility, or initiating a new facility conversation). This is treated as an exception requiring a decision, not just a data point in a spreadsheet.

Intercompany loans, shareholder current accounts, and related-party fund transfers are tracked as distinct, labelled lines in both the cash flow forecast and the underlying banking structure documentation — never merged into general operating cash flow — since UAE Corporate Tax rules require related-party transactions to be identifiable and, where relevant, supported by transfer pricing documentation on an arm's-length basis.

Because treasury records are maintained with a clear audit trail back to source documents throughout the engagement, PNPC can typically respond to a regulator, MoHRE, or bank query by tracing the specific transaction or period in question directly to the supporting evidence already on file, rather than needing to reconstruct the history from scratch under time pressure.