The 2026 CFO Readiness Checklist

The 2026 CFO Readiness Checklist

For CFOs of startups and SMEs, treasury rarely ever starts as a formal function. It comes together gradually through managing multiple bank accounts, overseeing cross-border payments, dealing with FX exposure, and planning cash beyond the next payroll run. This means most CFOs are already running treasury, without having named it as such

The challenge here is managing the treasury with tools and processes that were never designed for growing complexity. Instead, they quietly impact decision speed, increase risk, and limit a CFO’s ability to act proactively. Fragmented visibility, manual workflows, and delayed insights quietly impact decision speed and increase risk.

This checklist is designed to help CFOs assess whether their current approach to cash, forecasting, payments, and liquidity is fit for how the business operates today, and what they will need in 2026.

How to use this checklist

This checklist is a practical self-assessment and designed to be completed in 10 minutes. You should:

• Answer each question honestly
• Remember that gaps are normal, especially in fast-growing businesses
• Use it to identify blind spots

For each question, select one option:

• Yes, when it is consistently true today
• Sometimes, when it works, but with effort or delays
• No, when it's not true at all

The goal is to get a clear view of how well your finance function is supporting the business today, and where stronger foundations are needed.

Cash visibility and liquidity readiness

Cash visibility means having a consolidated, real-time view of cash across all bank accounts and entities. As businesses expand across entities and geographies, cash naturally becomes fragmented. Funds sit in operating accounts, local accounts, FX accounts, and payment platforms. Reporting often relies on manual consolidation or delayed bank feeds, meaning visibility arrives after decisions have already been made.

Limited visibility makes liquidity unpredictable. CFOs may overestimate available cash and risk shortfalls, or underestimate it and hold unnecessary buffers, even when idle capital exists.

To assess your cash visibility and liquidity readiness, answer the questions in the checklist below with yes or now. If answering these questions takes more than a few minutes, visibility is already a constraint.

☐ We can see balances across all bank accounts in one place

☐ We know our total cash position across entities

☐ We don’t rely on logging into multiple bank portals

☐ We can confidently answer “how much cash do we have today?”

☐ We can identify idle or trapped cash

Cashflow and 13-week rolling forecasting

Most growing companies don’t fail due to lack of revenue. They fail because cash constraints build quietly and are noticed too late.

Late customer payments, early supplier demands, FX volatility, and uneven working capital cycles can distort cash flow long before a crisis even becomes visible to CFOs. Yet many businesses still rely on static budgets or monthly forecasts that show what has already happened, rather than what to expect in the coming weeks.

A 13-week rolling cashflow forecast shows expected inflows and outflows week by week, giving CFOs near-term foresight that is both actionable and reliable. This time horizon is short enough to be actionable, but long enough to surface issues early and create options.

When forecasts are connected to live data such as bank transactions, invoices, receivables, and payables. CFOs can anticipate shortfalls earlier and deploy excess liquidity with confidence.

Use the checklist below to assess your forecasting readiness:

☐ We maintain a rolling cash forecast (not a static budget)

☐ We can see cash inflows vs. outflows week by week

☐ We update forecasts when assumptions change

☐ We use forecasts to guide hiring, expansion, or spend decisions

☐ Our forecasts are connected to real transactions

Payments: collections and payouts

As businesses scale, the volume of transactions increases and each payment needs to be tracked and reconciled accurately.

When payments are handled through fragmented tools, email approvals, and multiple bank portals, finance teams spend more time tracking money than analysing its impact.

The problem becomes more pronounced if your business often deals with international payments. Hidden FX costs and inconsistent settlement timelines can directly affect working capital and trust with partners.

On the collections side, many businesses still rely on manual follow-ups and inbox-driven processes. Payment status depends on individual intervention rather than system visibility. The result is cash tied up in receivables, inflated liquidity buffers, and reactive finance teams.

Here’s the checklist to assess if your collections and payouts are being tracked accurately:

☐ Customer collections are predictable and trackable

☐ Vendor payouts follow a clear, repeatable process

☐ Payment approvals don’t live in email or chat

☐ Payments are linked to actual cash positions

☐ We can see payment status across entities

Strategic opportunities from cash

Once visibility and control are in place, treasury stops being a coordination problem and becomes a strategic step. The key question becomes How should available cash be deployed?

For many businesses, cash is managed defensively. Uncertain collections, early supplier demands, and FX volatility push CFOs to hold larger buffers than necessary. Excess liquidity often sits idle in low-yield operating accounts, not because it isn’t needed elsewhere, but because CFOs lack the confidence to redeploy it without risking shortfalls.

Over time, this extra caution becomes costly. Idle cash earns little, slows down growth decisions, and increases dependence on external financing when conditions tighten.

Strategic treasury creates a clear separation between operational cash and strategic cash available to businesses. This distinction allows CFOs to protect downside risk while still funding growth. While operational cash supports day-to-day requirements, strategic cash is used to optimize FX conversions, support growth investments and reduce financing costs.

Use this checklist to assess if your business is able to use cash strategically:

☐ We know how much cash is operational vs. strategic

☐ We can plan the timing of FX conversions

☐ We understand the cost of holding idle cash

☐ We can confidently fund growth initiatives

☐ Cash strategy is discussed at leadership level

Quick reality check: What your answers reveal

Once you’ve completed the checklist, use the guide below to interpret what your answers indicate about your treasury readiness.

Mostly “Yes”

You have a solid foundation. At this stage, you should focus on optimization–reducing friction, improving speed, and extracting more strategic value from liquidity.

Mostly “Sometimes”

It means your core finance processes are in place, but they require constant effort to keep running especially if you plan to scale your business. Visibility exists, but it often arrives with delays. Forecasts are created but they are not always updated enough to guide decisions.

At this stage, the priority should be strengthening the foundations–building real-time visibility, reducing manual work, and connecting forecasts and payments to live data.

Mostly “No”

This doesn’t mean your finance function is failing. It means the business is growing faster than current processes can support.

At this stage, the focus should be on establishing basic structure and visibility rather than aiming for perfection. CFOs should prioritise creating a clear view of cash across accounts, standardising payment and approval processes, and introducing simple forecasting that reflects real activity.

What growing CFOs are doing differently

Growing CFOs are moving away from spreadsheets and heavyweight enterprise systems toward lighter, connected treasury tools that scale with the business. With light treasury management systems, finance teams get more control and insights without slowing the business down.

In practice, this shift shows up in three clear ways:

Move beyond spreadsheets

While spreadsheets still play a role in analysis, successful CFOs recognize they are not designed to support real-time cash visibility, multi-entity forecasting, or payment tracking at scale.

Centralize visibility without enterprise overhead

Instead of stitching reports together at month-end, finance teams use tools to consolidate cash, transactions, and exposures in real-time, without long implementations or heavy configuration.

Create one connected workflow for cash, forecasting, and payments

When cash visibility, forecasting, and payments work together, finance teams no longer have to piece information together manually. You can see where cash sits, use that view to plan upcoming inflows and outflows, and have every completed payment automatically reflected in your cash position.

Pressure-test your checklist

This checklist is not a report card. It’s a starting point for understanding where risk or friction may be building as your business scales.

Most teams will land somewhere between “Yes” and “Sometimes.” There will always be room for improvement.

The next step is to pressure-test your answers with a treasury expert to analyze your current setup, identify where friction or risk is building, and understand which gaps matter most right now.

Connect with Finmo’s treasury expert to get started.