A Practitioner’s Guide to One Company, Five Cash Balances, and the Liquidity That Disappears the Day It Is Needed
Julian R. Sterling
These are the companion files of Treasury Management by Julian R. Sterling.The book on Amazon →
The five Excel workbooks that go with the book. Every figure the book prints is reproduced in them by a live
formula rather than a typed constant — change the days of float, the covenant, the supplier’s own funding
rate or the spot in twelve months, and every dependent number moves. Each one ends with a Checks sheet
setting the printed figure beside the computed one: 426 controls in all, every one green. Around them:
the same models with the inputs emptied, thirteen working documents to print, forty questions that mark themselves,
and three cases the book names and never takes to a number.
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Fourteen workbooks, the printable documents and the read-me. Each group below can also be
downloaded on its own. Last revised 24 September 2026.
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Chapters 1, 3 and 12
Bramwell — the five balances
Reported cash by location, and the four subtractions that take it from
214,000,000 to 205,000,000, to 152,000,000 under the
facility’s definition, to 120,608,000 once six days of the company’s
own payments are held back, to the 68,400,000 cleared on the concentration
account this morning. The float is a cell: set it to four days or eight and watch reading 4
move by 10,464,000 each way.
Then net debt three ways on the same 550,000,000: 2.0000x on the board’s
cash, 2.3690x on the facility’s, 2.5559x on the
treasurer’s, with the headroom under the covenant beside each. The cash definition alone
is 0.3690 turns, and it is a formula. Revised: the country table of Chapter 3 with every
share, the gross behind the eurozone net, the joint venture if the partner had to consent, and
where the outside analyst lands (2.0536x, 2.3333x, 2.4048x). The trapped balances, typed twice in
the first version, are now linked to the country lines.
Twelve quarterly forecast errors and the standard deviation they produce —
4.1026 per cent of quarterly disbursements, 13,415,426.12 — then the
reserve at 95, 99 and 99.9 per cent, and the minimum liquidity from its three components:
124,596,281.16, of which 93,204,281.16 sits above the float. The headroom is
tested on both consistent bases, and the classic double count that says the company is
3,988,281.16 short is reproduced on the page and labelled as the error it is.
The drawstop, solved: the EBITDA at which the covenant is exactly met on the facility’s
cash, 132,666,666.67, a fall of 21.0317 per cent, and at an operating leverage
of 2.5 a fall in annual revenue of 8.4127 per cent. Without the revolver the
company clears its own minimum by 27,403,718.84 — 5.2377 days of payments. Then three ways
to hold 250,000,000, priced — 1,562,500 undrawn, 5,625,000 as term debt on deposit,
5,000,000 drawn — the 4,062,500 premium for liquidity without a
drawstop, and the cover under each way on both readings of finance charges. Revised: the twelve
errors in money, the root-of-squares minimum the book rejects (76,178,506.33), the board’s
drawstop at 13.3333 per cent, the certificates quarter by quarter, and a sheet that converts both
covenants into one unit: leverage breaks at an EBITDA fall of 21.0317 per cent, cover at 36.7917.
Eighty days of cash conversion cycle turned into money: a day of receivables is worth
3,835,616.44 and a day of payables 2,684,931.51, and five days off DSO releases
19,178,082.19 without a bank. The 2/10 net 60 discount annualised —
14.8980 per cent — and netted against the cost of funding fifty days on
the revolver: 5,471,890.41 a year, and the 0.3132 turns of reported leverage it costs.
The supply chain finance programme on the annual-flow basis: 66,049,315.07 released, the
supplier’s saving of 5,541,698.63 against 90-day terms and its cost of
72,493.15 against the terms it actually has, and the reclassification on both
readings — 2.7622x on the extension, 3.1362x on the balance
the bank holds. And the eurozone pool before and after: 1,190,000 a year. Revised: the
80-day shortcut that overstates working capital by 25,315,068.49, the discount’s cost in
turns on the facility’s definition (2.6823x), and the drawstop once the programme is counted
as debt: a revenue fall of 3.1707 per cent, not 8.4127.
The swap: interest of 26,547,500 and cover of 6.3283x today, 32,187,500 against 28,947,500
after a 200 basis point rise, the saving of 3,240,000 that nine years of carry
buy — and the shortcut that says 3,600,000, reproduced and labelled. The base rate at which
cover reaches 4.00x, with and without the swap: 8.27 and 15.88 per cent. The fixed share on
both readings, and the net floating exposure after cash.
The currency hedge: the forward from the two rates, 1.095728, the carry of
1,594,896.33 that is an interest differential and not a fee, three futures for the spot with
the hedge gain in each — the hedge that lost 8,130,844.04 at 1.0200 and was
right — the value of one cent (1,019,367.99) and ten, and the layered programme, now as the
quarter-by-quarter table with the one cent on what is still open: 382,263.00.
The four chapters no workbook covered. The surplus of 120,608,000 at three yields — the fund earns 361,824 more than the deposit, 6.9156 per cent of one day’s payments — and the concentration test: 87,740,000 at the largest bank against a limit of 53,500,000, sensitised at 20 and 30 per cent. The wallet, 11,068,055.56, of which the fees the treasurer benchmarks are 37.9470 per cent, and what one lender holding 50,000,000 sees: 0.6250 per cent on committed capital.
Then a day’s run, 5,232,000, against the controls: 1.6000 per cent of a quarter, inside the forecast’s noise, and 58.5486 years of an average account’s fees. And the one-page treasury report of Chapter 18 as a live sheet: nineteen lines, each with its figure, its source and the comparison written by formula.
The five workbooks with every input emptied. The checks sheets count what is still missing and test what holds for any inputs.
Chapters 1 to 18
Your balances, your forecast, your facility, your banks
The five readings, the liquidity test, working capital, hedging and the report, with the same formulas and every blue input emptied. The three z values, the three spots in twelve months, the float at four, six and eight days and the neighbouring limits stay: they are steps, not data.
The book’s inputs are listed in a text file inside the archive. Type them back in and the book’s figures come back with them: 124,596,281.16 for the minimum, 8.4127 per cent for the drawstop, 5,471,890.41 for the discount, 3,240,000 for the swap.
Thirteen pages to print and use. A4, with margins wide enough for US Letter.
Chapters 1 to 18
Thirteen working documents
The five readings on one morning, with the gaps and who finds each. The cash map and the five-day test, with the account inventory. The thirteen-week forecast error log. Minimum liquidity, derived, on both bases. The day the revolver is not there, and the clauses to read before the quarter. The price of liquidity. Working capital in money and the discount test. The supply chain finance review before signing. Pooling and net debt three ways. Rates and the currency. The surplus, the counterparties and the wallet, bank by bank. Payment controls. And the one-page treasury report with the annual policy review.
Each page carries the book’s own figure for comparison, so that a completed page can be checked against Bramwell before it is trusted.
A workbook that marks itself. Answer in the yellow cells; the marking fills in as you go.
All parts of the book
Forty questions on the book
Seven on the five balances, eight on liquidity, eight on working capital, seven on funding and risk, five on practice, and five on the three cases below. Numbers are marked to a tolerance, multiple choice to the letter, and the score sheet counts your errors part by part: that is your revision list.
Nothing is hidden. The marking sheet holds every answer, every tolerance, and the reason for each answer.
New material, not a restatement. Three situations the chapters name and never take to a number. Each case is one workbook: the note is the first sheet, the model is the rest, and a checks sheet closes it. Type your own figures in and every finding recomputes.
Chapters 3 and 11 · Case one
The slice worth paying
Brazil’s 24,000,000 brought home through a withholding tax of 10 per cent (ADDED): 21,600,000 arrives, the margin without the revolver goes from 5.2 to 9.4 days, and the revenue fall that removes the revolver moves from 8.4127 to 10.1270 per cent. Against Chapter 7’s premium the slice pays for itself after 6.8 years; over the bonds’ four it is worth paying only below a rate of 6.10 per cent, unless the covenant pays the difference.
Chapters 6, 7 and 10 · Case two
The partial draw
Chapter 6 mentions drawing “a smaller amount” early and never sizes it. To keep ten business days over the minimum (ADDED) when the revolver and the supply chain programme leave together, draw 90,965,596, 36.4 per cent of the facility, for 1,250,777 a year against 3,437,500 for the whole. Leverage does not move; cover falls to 5.57x at worst; and the certificates read 2.5005x, 2.6475x, 2.8127x and 3.0000x: the draw is made by the third or not at all.
Chapter 14 · Case three
The option the book does not price
The right to sell USD 120,000,000 at the forward, at a volatility of 8 per cent (ADDED): a premium of 3,392,544, 3.1 per cent of the hedged proceeds. At 1.0200 it keeps 4,636,524 more than the forward; at 1.1600 it delivers the forward less the premium. It beats the forward only below a spot of 1.0618 and doing nothing only above 1.1318, and it costs more than the forward’s carry at any volatility above 3.7 per cent.
the printed figure beside the computed one, with a PASS or a FAIL; in the blank set and the cases, a control that states its own verdict, ending ALL OK
ADDED
a figure the book does not give, used in the cases and marked wherever it appears
Why the checks matter more than the models
A workbook that agrees with a book proves nothing on its own — the author wrote both. What
the Checks sheets do is different: they force the model to reproduce a number that was printed
before the model existed, from a formula rather than from the number itself.
On this book the discipline caught three things a reading would not, and each of them changed
a conclusion. The first was a double count: the six-day float had been taken out of the cash and
put into the requirement at once, and the company was 3,988,281.16 short of its own minimum;
counted once, it clears it by 27,403,718.84. The second was a supplier’s cost computed on
one turn of the payables stock and printed as a year: the saving was 1,366,446.24 and is
5,541,698.63. The third was the swap’s saving in the shock year, 3,600,000 by comparing two
“extra interest” figures from different baselines, 3,240,000 as the difference in
total interest. All three wrong figures are still in the workbooks, labelled, because a reader
who can see the error is a reader who will not make it.
The revision of 24 September 2026 went the other way. The book says that every figure it prints is
reproduced by a live formula; close to three hundred were not, among them four whole chapters. Putting
each one in a cell and a check found no conclusion wrong, and four last digits where the book had
subtracted two rounded ratios: the turns of cover way B costs are 1.0655 and 1.9558, not 1.0656
and 1.9559; the draw costs 1.7236 gross, not 1.7237; five days off DSO gain 0.1142 turns, not 0.1141.
Where a shortcut and the full computation disagree, both are shown. Interest cover under way B is
5.2627x net of deposit income and 4.3724x gross, and 4.1638x once
the overdraft interest the book’s total leaves out is added; the net floating exposure after
cash is -608,000, or at most 64,392,000 on home-currency cash alone. Neither gap is smoothed away.
Go beyond the companion files
Treasury Management develops the complete framework behind these models, with the assumptions, trade-offs and worked examples tied together.
The workbooks open in Microsoft Excel, LibreOffice Calc, Google Sheets and Numbers; the PDF
prints on A4 or US Letter. They use no macros and no add-ins, so nothing needs to be enabled or trusted. If your spreadsheet asks
to update links on opening, decline — there are none.
What changed, and when
24 Sep 2026
The book’s promise that every printed figure has a live formula is now kept: close to three hundred figures, four chapters of them, added with a check each, 426 checks in five workbooks instead of 116 in four. A fifth workbook for Chapters 15 to 18. Four last digits corrected (1.0655, 1.9558, 1.7236, 0.1142); a constant typed inside a formula and a duplicated input removed. Added: a blank set, thirteen working documents, forty questions that mark themselves, and three cases.
Articles on this book
Does an undrawn revolver count as liquidity?67.4567 per cent of the headroom, and it leaves at a fall in annual revenue of 8.4127 per cent — not the 13.3333 per cent the board deck implies.
Does supply chain finance count as debt?66,049,315 released, and leverage of 2.7622× or 3.1362× depending on which balance the test is asked of — the second is a breach at today's EBITDA.
How do you set a minimum cash balance?Three components, 124,596,281 in total — and the double count that turns a margin of 27,403,719 into an apparent shortfall of -3,988,281.
Is a 2/10 net 60 discount worth taking?An annualised 14.8980 per cent against a revolver at 4.50 per cent — worth 5,471,890 a year, and 0.3132 turns of reported leverage.
Should corporate debt be fixed or floating?78.1818 per cent of gross debt fixed, and a net floating exposure after cash of -608,000.00 — the proportion, not the instrument.
How do you calculate days cash on hand?Unrestricted cash over daily cash operating expenses (opex less D&A and non-cash charges, / 365): 59.7 days here, and 40.4 days on usable cash.
How do you build a 13-week cash flow forecast?Roll the balance weekly, find the trough, add a buffer for error. Week 6 at 3,300 clears a 3,000 minimum, but a 95% buffer turns that into a 1,312 draw.
How do you calculate cash flow at risk (CFaR)?z-score times the standard deviation of the combined exposure: 80m long USD and 45m short GBP give a 95% CFaR of 9.15m, not the 14.97m of adding them up.
Closing the DealTwo defensible bridges 20.70 million apart, a peg worth 7.00 million, and the six choices that remove 6.60 of a 12.00 earn-out.
CMBS and CRE CLOsWhere the loss actually lands, from appraisal reduction to realised severity, and what the B-piece is really being paid for.
How to Read a Commercial LeaseThe three refinements chapter 19 names and never performs, and the renewal rate below which the mark-to-market is worth nothing.
How to Read a Credit AgreementWhere the default actually comes from, the cure that costs 5.5 times the other, and the capacity nobody adds up.
How to Read a Real Estate Loan AgreementThe cure ratio in closed form, the four-point window in which the cheap cure works, and the cure sized to the wrong threshold.
Office Real EstateA six per cent yield that returns 3.2 per cent once the re-letting cycle is paid for, and the headline-to-net-effective rent arithmetic.
Private Equity Real EstateBoth worked waterfalls to the dollar, the two capital stacks, and the arithmetic of the promote made changeable.
Private Markets PerformanceThirty-one of the thirty-three figures chapter 19 publishes reproduce exactly — and the two that do not are named rather than quietly adopted.
Raising a Real Estate FundThe chapter 17 funnel run on a calendar — when the first close actually lands, and why more travel does not help.
Real Estate FinanceFour people look at one building and reach four numbers; the lender is whole only above 105,109,489, twelve per cent below today’s value rather than forty.
Real Estate Financial ModelingProperty, development and fund models built line by line, and the modelling test worked end to end.
Real Estate Fund ManagementThe waterfall of 6.11, the build-to-core of 8.7 and the proceeds gap, reproduced as live formulas rather than asserted.
REIT Analysis and ValuationFFO of 532.0, AFFO of 381.0, net asset value and dividend safety — every figure a formula you can change.
Retail Real EstateThe occupancy cost of every unit in a centre, the sixteen per cent of the rent roll no tenant can sustain, and the right-size-convert-or-hold decision priced.
Sale and LeasebackA €179.5 million transaction end to end, with rent cover measured on the entity that actually signs the lease.
Self-Storage Real EstateThe cohort engine behind a 590-unit store, and the rate increase on existing customers priced against the move-outs it causes.
The Fund Finance ProfessionalChapter 8 builds the reported-to-eligible NAV bridge; chapter 9 computes every ratio without it. Two points at every state — and what a subscription line does to the IRR.
The Growth Equity InvestorWhat a pro rata cheque really costs, and the band where defending your ownership loses money.
The Private Credit InvestorThe two coverage ratios are not measured on the same thing: the erosion is 47.7 per cent, not the 28.7 the headline implies.
The Private Equity Fund Controller PlaybookThe book defines IRR, DPI, RVPI and TVPI, tells you to update them at the exit, and prints not one value. Computed: a 1.833× deal inside a fund at 0.892 TVPI.
The Venture Capital AssociateWhat defending a position costs, and how many companies a reserve pool actually defends.
Financial Risk ManagementA fund inside every limit that cannot meet a redemption — and the number that decides it is the one with no currency attached.
Business ValuationThree advisers land 26.8 per cent apart on one company, and the whole gap turns out to be 1.96 points of perpetual growth.
Quantitative FinanceThree models agree to a quarter of one per cent about a number that one unobservable input moves a hundred and three times as much.
Asset ManagementFour people quote four returns for one mandate, all correct and 2.7017 points apart — forty-eight times the manager’s net skill.
Alternative InvestmentsA manager reports 13.29 per cent and the endowment earns 6.26 — both correct, and only a third of the advertised advantage arrives.
Venture CapitalOne company out of twenty-eight returns 56.7 per cent of the fund, and half the capital goes in after the decision — at half the return.
Machine Learning for FinanceFive people quote the accuracy of one credit model, all five are right, and the number that decides how much money it makes is none of them.
Commercial Real Estate InvestingThe equity earned 8.6647 per cent and the investor received exactly 8.0000 — the preferred return, and nothing above it.
Mergers and AcquisitionsThe board paper says the deal creates 13,436,667 of value. The arithmetic says it destroys 17,530,855. Nobody is lying.
DerivativesThe treasury report says the hedge cost 1,233,698. That is the interest differential, not a cost.
Financial Planning and AnalysisRevenue 3.0190 per cent above budget and operating profit 16.3209 per cent below it, in the same quarter, with every figure correctly stated.
Energy TradingA position report that is 91.7031 per cent hedged and correctly computed, on a book that is short 2,542,000 MWh — and a margin call of 198,400,000 the next morning.
Construction Cost ControlA contract sum of 26,301,102 became a final account of 29,153,363 on the building that was drawn — and 85.8 per cent of what was lost was knowable on the day it was signed.
Trade FinanceSix routes to payment on one 4,200,000 export order cost between 178,040 and 223,268, a spread worth 14.8 per cent of the margin, and a day of buyer credit costs 1,031.76.
Cost AccountingOne factory costed twice on the same 13,440,000 of overhead, and 4,053,091 moves between four product families.
Pricing StrategyA list price of 148.00, a pocket price of 112.51, and the nine deductions in between — with what one point of price is actually worth.
Contract ManagementA bid 5.50 a unit cheaper, signed on paper worth 9.81 a unit more — and 94.68 per cent of it was knowable on the day of signature.
Capital MarketsFour defensible readings of one bond, the cost of an issue under each convention, and the placement discount computed at a constant discount.
Financial RegulationThree ratios pass and the fourth is in breach by 1,956.0 million: the output floor, the liquidity buffer after encumbrance, and the loan split.
Bank ManagementFour defensible readings of one balance sheet, the deposit beta measured two ways, and the liquidity that lasts 3.9 days.
The Real Estate WorkoutFour ways out of one broken loan, discounted to today, and the 58.7 cents at which a payoff beats enforcement.
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