“Thank you for your email. I am currently out of the office with limited access to my inbox. For urgent matters, please contact…”
And somewhere in treasury, someone starts to panic.
August has arrived. Half the company is on holiday, one payment approver is hiking somewhere without reception, their backup thought somebody else was covering, and the person who normally knows how that one particular process works is enjoying an Aperol Spritz several countries away.
Meanwhile, the payments still need to go out.
Summer holidays are supposed to give people a break, but they should not give treasury processes one too. In fact, holiday periods can provide a surprisingly effective stress test for a treasury function. When the usual people disappear, teams quickly discover whether their processes are genuinely resilient or simply held together by experience, inboxes and a few colleagues who “just know how it works.”
So, what happens to cash management, payment processes and treasury controls when everyone goes on holiday?
Ideally, not very much.
“I Am Currently Out of the Office…”
Treasury does not really have an out-of-office mode. Suppliers still expect to be paid, payroll still needs to happen, cash positions continue to change and liquidity requirements do not politely postpone themselves until September.
The challenge is that many processes gradually become dependent on individuals without anyone necessarily noticing. Perhaps one person normally prepares a particular payment file, another knows which bank portal to use, while someone else understands why Entity A always needs additional liquidity before month-end.
Everything can work perfectly well until those people are unavailable.
This is where treasury business continuity becomes more than a theoretical exercise. A resilient treasury function should be able to continue operating without depending on one specific person being at their desk.
“For Urgent Matters, Please Contact…”
Possibly treasury’s least favourite sentence, especially when nobody knows who that person actually is.
Clear backup responsibilities are essential during holiday periods. If someone involved in a critical treasury process is unavailable, another person should already know that they are responsible for covering it rather than discovering this at 16:47 on a Friday afternoon.
For important processes such as payments, cash positioning, funding and bank administration, teams should have clearly defined primary and secondary responsibilities. More importantly, the backup should actually know how to perform the task.
Putting somebody’s name in a holiday handover document is not quite the same as ensuring they have the necessary access, knowledge and authority.
A useful question for treasury teams is therefore: if the person who normally performs this task disappeared for two weeks tomorrow, could someone else complete it safely?
If the answer is “probably,” summer might be a good time to investigate further.
Payment Approvals Should Not Go on Holiday
Payment processes are particularly vulnerable when key employees are away. A payment that normally takes a few minutes can suddenly turn into a small corporate treasure hunt: Who can approve it? Is the backup approver active in the bank? Does their approval limit cover the amount? Who has the token? Are they even in the same time zone?
Besides being inefficient, poorly planned holiday coverage can create genuine control risks. Under pressure to process an urgent transaction, employees may be tempted to find workarounds or temporarily weaken normal procedures simply because the usual approver is unavailable.
Strong payment controls should therefore be designed to work throughout the year. Approval limits, backup approvers and system permissions should be reviewed before holiday periods begin rather than improvised when an urgent payment is already waiting.
Good Treasury Controls Should Survive August
Controls are easiest to follow when everything is normal, but their real value becomes clearer when it is not.
During periods of reduced staffing, treasury teams still need appropriate segregation of duties, payment approvals, access controls and verification procedures. The solution is not to make controls so rigid that nothing can happen without one particular employee, but it is also not to weaken them every time someone books a flight to Mallorca.
Effective controls need to combine security with operational flexibility. Authorised backup approvers can be established in advance, user permissions reviewed periodically and escalation procedures clearly documented.
The principle is simple: holidays should change who performs a task, not the standard to which the task is performed.
“I Will Respond Upon My Return…”
That is perfectly reasonable for many emails, but less useful for a liquidity issue.
Some treasury activities simply cannot wait until somebody returns from holiday. Teams therefore need clear escalation procedures for situations requiring immediate attention.
If a major payment fails, who needs to know? If liquidity falls below a certain level, who makes the funding decision? Who can contact the bank, and what authority does the person covering the process actually have?
Clear escalation procedures remove ambiguity at exactly the moment when ambiguity is least helpful. Instead of searching through old emails or messaging five people to ask what normally happens, employees know who owns the decision and what steps to follow.
Automation: The Colleague That Does Not Book a Summer Holiday
There is one member of the treasury team who will probably not request two weeks off in August: automation.
Routine processes such as data collection, cash positioning, reporting, reconciliations and certain workflow steps can often continue regardless of who is sitting at their desk. This reduces dependence on manual actions and individual knowledge while helping smaller teams maintain consistency during periods of lower staffing.
Of course, automation does not eliminate the need for human oversight. People still need to review exceptions, investigate unusual activity and make decisions when something does not go according to plan.
The objective is not to create a treasury function that operates without people. It is to create one that does not collapse because one particular person is currently on a beach.
Holiday Handover Should Be More Than a List of Open Tasks
Most teams know the pre-holiday handover: a document containing current tasks, upcoming deadlines and several sentences beginning with “Just in case…”
Handovers are useful, but treasury resilience should not depend entirely on them. Important procedures should already be documented, responsibilities understood, system access arranged and backup employees familiar enough with the process to take over.
Otherwise, the holiday handover becomes an emergency manual for running the treasury function. And nobody wants to receive a 14-page document titled “Things to know while I’m away :)” at 17:30 the evening before their colleague leaves.
Summer Is a Surprisingly Good Treasury Stress Test
Holiday season can reveal weaknesses that remain hidden during the rest of the year.
If processes become significantly slower whenever one employee is unavailable, there may be too much key-person dependency. If urgent payments regularly require exceptions, approval structures may need reviewing. If nobody is quite sure who owns a process, responsibilities may not be sufficiently clear. And if people need to perform repetitive manual tasks simply to keep basic reporting running, there may be opportunities for automation.
These are not really summer problems. They are treasury process problems that summer happens to expose.
That makes August a useful opportunity to ask whether the treasury operating model is as resilient as it appears when everybody is in the office.
A Good Treasury Function Lets People Actually Go on Holiday
Perhaps that is the simplest test of all: can people switch on their out-of-office message, close the laptop and genuinely leave?
A resilient treasury function should have clear responsibilities, reliable payment processes, strong controls, appropriate automation, documented procedures and defined escalation routes. Not because holidays are unusual, but because they are completely predictable.
Treasury teams cannot prevent every unexpected event, but someone taking two weeks off in August should probably not qualify as one.
So let people go hiking somewhere without reception and enjoy their Aperol Spritz. The cash will keep moving — and with the right treasury processes, nobody should need to interrupt their holiday to make sure it does.
Keep Your Treasury Running; Even When Your Team Is Out of Office
Strong treasury processes should not depend on one person, one spreadsheet or one perfectly timed approval.
At Pecunia, we help organisations strengthen treasury processes, improve controls, introduce effective automation and build operating models that remain reliable even when key people are unavailable.
Because good treasury should work in January, August and everywhere in between.
Want to make your treasury processes more resilient? Get in touch with Pecunia and discover how we can help build a treasury function that keeps moving even when your team isn’t.
