Not many people know this, but CS Lucas initially started out as a consultancy. In 1996, when requested by a client to evaluate treasury systems for a major client, we discovered something: every solution was costly, cumbersome, and unsuitable for real business needs.

That moment of realisation was our turning point.

What started as a simple question—“Why can’t treasury management be elegant and affordable?” started to journey to developing the CS Lucas system as you see it today.

From our first Alpha Station in 1998 to today’s cloud-native platforms, we’ve navigated every major technology shift while staying true to our core mission: simplifying treasury management and focusing on customer requirements.

Our timeline shows the milestones, but the real story is in the decisions we made, the challenges we overcame, and the innovations that shaped CS Lucas.

Watch our complete journey unfold in the video below

Real-Time Visibility, Real Business Impact

Many treasury departments still rely on spreadsheets for cash management, despite the risks and limitations.

With CS Lucas, your treasury team gains:

• Automatic bank balance retrieval across all accounts and locations
• Collaborative forecasting where team members update projections directly in the system
• Instant consolidation with automatic roll-ups by various groupings
• Advanced modeling including cycle forecasting and what-if scenarios

From Insight to Action

Visibility is just the beginning. The system helps you optimize your cash position through:

• Identifying and covering short-term deficits with money market loans
• Maximizing returns on surplus cash through strategic investments
• Managing the complete lifecycle of all treasury transactions
• Ensuring timely settlements with automated alerts and bank instructions

Enterprise-Grade Security and Compliance

Built with institutional requirements in mind, CS Lucas provides:

• Maker-checker segregation
• Complete audit trails
• Granular access controls
• IFRS-compliant journal entries for seamless accounting integration
• Over 200 standard reports plus powerful PowerBI dashboards

This page provides a summary of all system updates, including new features, enhancements, bug fixes, and other changes released each quarter. Our goal is to keep you informed about the continuous improvements we make to deliver a more secure, efficient, and user-friendly experience.

Please refer to the logs below for detailed information on the changes implemented in each release.

Release 101 to 108

CHANGE LOG 2025 Q3

CHANGE LOG 2025 Q2

CHANGE LOG 2025 Q1

CHANGE LOG 2024 Q4

CHANGE LOG 2024 Q3

CHANGE LOG 2024 Q2

CHANGE LOG 2024 Q1

CHANGE LOG 2023 Q4

CHANGE LOG 2023 Q3

CHANGE LOG 2023 Q2

CHANGE LOG 2023 Q1

Real-Time Treasury Insights: A Guided Tour of Our Dashboards

In today’s fast-paced financial environment, treasury teams need accurate, real-time information at their fingertips to make confident, timely decisions. At CS Lucas, we’ve built a suite of dashboards that provide exactly that—clear visibility, flexible reporting, and powerful forecasting tools.

To give you a closer look, we’ve created a short video walkthrough highlighting just a few of our dashboards in action.

🎥 Watch the Video Tour Below

In this guided tour, Isabella from our team walks through two key dashboards:

• Cash Position Dashboard – Instantly shows your group’s total liquidity and breaks it down by entity, currency, and bank
• Cash Forecast Dashboard – Visualizes projected cash flows and highlights upcoming surpluses or shortfalls

Just the Beginning

This video features only a small sample of the dashboards available in CS Lucas. The full platform includes tools for managing funding, investments, risk exposures, and more—designed to support both day-to-day treasury operations and strategic planning. A wider set of example dashboards can be found here and we continue to refine and expand our library.

👉 Ready to experience better treasury visibility?
Watch the video now and get in touch to explore our full dashboard suite.

Treasury management doesn’t have to feel like a balancing act. For many teams, keeping up with manual processes, disconnected systems, and ever-evolving demands eats into valuable time.

That’s where the new CS Lucas microservice comes in. Designed to streamline workflows, automate routine tasks, and deliver real-time insights, it integrates seamlessly into your existing setup. The goal? To empower teams to focus on strategy, not busywork.

Making Treasury Simpler and Smarter

If you’ve ever wrestled with keeping Excel or Power BI dashboards up to date, you’re not alone. These tools are invaluable for analysis, but managing them manually can be frustrating. The CS Lucas microservice solves that:

• Real-Time Data at Your Fingertips: A quick OTP login refreshes your dashboards with the latest treasury data—no manual imports, no outdated numbers.
• Informed Decision-Making: Reliable, up-to-date visuals of cash flow and liquidity help teams act with confidence.
• Compliance Made Easy: Audit trails and data controls are built in, ensuring accuracy and accountability without extra effort.

By automating the repetitive, this microservice allows teams to focus on the decisions that drive real impact.

Why Microservices Are the Future

As businesses evolve, the tools we use must evolve too. Microservices represent a modern, scalable approach to solving specific challenges without overhauling entire systems.

Here’s why this matters for treasury operations:

• Quick to Deploy: New features or integrations can be live in hours, not weeks, making it easier to adapt to changes.
• Flexibility at Scale: As your business grows, this module scales with you, no need for costly upgrades.
• Easy Integration: Seamlessly connects with your accounting systems, CRMs, and more, ensuring treasury is a fully integrated part of your organisation.

Solving Real Treasury Challenges

Treasury teams face unique challenges, and the CS Lucas microservice is designed to tackle them directly:

• Automated Bank Connectivity: Secure APIs pull bank statements and reconcile accounts in real time, saving hours of manual work.
• Streamlined Payment Workflows: Automates validation and ensures global compliance standards are met, reducing risk while improving efficiency.
• Effortless Integration: Whether it’s a new banking partner or an updated accounting system, integrations are smooth and fast, often completed within hours.

The Technical Edge

For those curious about what makes this microservice tick, here’s a look under the hood:

• Cloud-Native and Scalable: Unlike traditional systems, this microservice is designed to adapt to your needs without the heavy lifting of infrastructure changes.
• API-Driven Integration: Real-time data flow connects treasury to enterprise platforms like HR and CRM systems, breaking down silos and enabling collaboration.
• Future-Ready Automation: From automated bank statements to payment workflows, this module is built to handle complex processes with speed and accuracy.
• Rapid ROI: Whether deploying new capabilities or integrating existing systems, the microservice delivers value almost immediately.

A Solution for the Entire Organisation

This isn’t just a win for treasury—it’s a win for the whole organisation. By improving workflows and automating processes, this microservice:

• Fosters Collaboration: Teams across departments can work with consistent, up-to-date data, reducing miscommunication.
• Saves Time: Automation frees up time for teams to focus on higher-value work.
• Adapts to Change: Whether you’re facing new regulations, scaling operations, or adopting new systems, this module is built to grow with you.

Leading Treasury into the Future

As someone passionate about building tools that make work easier and smarter, I’m excited to share how the new CS Lucas microservice can help transform treasury operations.

It’s designed to bring clarity to complexity, deliver real-time insights, and seamlessly integrate into the tools teams already use. For businesses ready to streamline processes and boost efficiency, this microservice is a step forward.

Let’s build systems that work as hard as our teams do.

Bank reconciliation is a crucial process that ensures the accuracy of a company’s financial records against the bank’s account statements. A reconciliation statement serves to validate that payments have been processed and deposits correctly recorded. This process is essential not only for detecting fraud but also for identifying any unintentional discrepancies. After all adjustments, the ending balance on the reconciliation statement should match the bank account balance.

Bank reconciliation can be carried out using either an ERP system or the CS Lucas TMS. For effective matching to the bank statement, the reconciliation system needs to have access to complete cash journals. When using ERP for reconciliation, treasury journals need to be created manually to ensure completeness. Conversely, if reconciliation is done on CS Lucas, non-treasury cash activities must be imported into the system.

Between the two options, it is often preferred to have CS Lucas push treasury data to the ERP system because treasury transactions generally have less volume. Furthermore, the CS Lucas TMS is designed to generate complex treasury journals automatically and push them into the ERP system seamlessly. For this reason, performing reconciliations on accounting systems is generally recommended as best practice.

However, there is one scenario where using the CS Lucas TMS for bank reconciliation is justified: when the entity managing treasury functions acts as an in-house bank or operates regional treasury activities. In such cases, CS Lucas already has the majority of transactions, providing a robust platform to match treasury transactions against its cash book.  Please see CS Lucas user guide on bank reconciliation.

Syndicated lending has grown rapidly over the past decade to become an essential source of financing for large corporations and institutions. Under a syndicated loan structure, a group of banks join together to provide credit facilities and distribute risk across multiple lenders. Whereas a single bank may only be able to commit a few hundred million dollars, a syndicate can offer billion-dollar credit lines and term loans.

For borrowers, syndicates allow more access to financing with potentially better terms than direct bi-lateral agreements.  It is also an opportunity to establish banking relationships with banks that they do not otherwise have dealt with on a regular basis.

The Expanding Scale and Complexity of Syndicated Lending

Today’s large facilities routinely include 10 or more lenders across multiple continents. Tracking details with Excel becomes unrealistic across such vast and dynamic structures.

There are rollover dates, renewal terms, mandatory pre-payments, covenant compliance, reporting deadlines, administration fees, and much more to orchestrate. Keeping tabs manually exposes tremendous operational risk. Missing a single interest or fee payment under the strict terms of syndication agreements has dire consequences.

On a large scale, even the smallest oversight could cost a business significant penalties or early repayments.  Such technical breaches may trigger cross default clauses and jeopardize corporate reputations with credit markets more broadly. Yet nearly 50% of borrowers still track lending obligations spreadsheets according to recent industry surveys.

The Need for Specialized Technology Solutions

To address this pressing need, treasury teams are relying on CS Lucas Treasury Management System’s dedicated syndicated loan modules.

Let’s explore some of the key capabilities of CS Lucas:

1. Central Database for All Lending Details

CS Lucas lets the treasury team maintain critical information, exposure and facility details in a unified structure. This covers volumes, rates, currencies, compliance terms, documentation, counterparties, jurisdictions, timelines, and associated analytics.

2. Dynamic Cash Flow Projections

The system generates forward-looking projections of expected cash flows such as loan repayment profile and exposure. This tracking covers any periodic interest or principal payments across an unlimited number of concurrent structures.

3. Covenant Threshold Monitoring

To avoid any risk of breaching any covenants, the system monitors the current status against periodic covenant tests for earnings, leverage, liquidity, or other metrics dictated by lending agreements. Alerts notify appropriate stakeholders as threshold limits approach.

4. Milestone Scheduling

Important events are diarised to prompt users on upcoming compliance certifications, renewals, rate resets, term expirations, pre-payment options, mandated drawdowns, and all other key timeline events organised to inform users on upcoming compliance certifications, renewals, rate resets, term expirations, pre-payment options, mandated drawdowns,.

5. Settlement Control Collaboration

Scheduled payment notifications electronically from the TMS to settle against pre-defined bank accounts.

6. Custom Analytics and Reporting

Robust analytics around current and projected future exposure, counterparty concentrations, risk-adjusted return on capital, geographic exposure, industry exposure and other aspects help treasury teams make informed decisions. Management and auditors gain on-demand reporting.

7. Accounting Compliance

Specialist tools guarantee lending treatments comply fully with evolving IFRS accounting standards. This avoids surprises or restatements and provides information to the finance team with appropriate details for disclosures.

In summary, CS Lucas Treasury Management System is crucial for managing the complexities of syndicated lending. Its comprehensive features streamline loan management, reduce manual errors, and ensure compliance. With capabilities like central data storage, cash flow projections, covenant monitoring, and settlement control, it’s a strategic asset for treasury teams navigating the demanding world of syndicated loans. This technology is more than a convenience; it’s essential for maintaining corporate financial stability.

In todays day and age, restructuring your treasury functions through modernization, flexibility and preparation can allow for real time up-to-date reports that allow for improved short and long term decision making.

In this webinar, Zohain Saeed, our BDM for South-East Asia will be covering the management of the following topics using the CS Lucas system:

• Term Loans
• Money Markets
• Investments
• Foreign Exchange

Whether you are handling treasury management for your company or relying on the reports from your team, this webinar provides useful insights. We look forward to seeing you there.

For organizations that want to keep treasury accounting independent, CS Lucas TMS provides complete, integrated accounting capabilities that can operate separately from your corporate systems.

Common Use Cases

This independent approach is often chosen by:

• Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs) used for treasury operations
• Dedicated legal entities established for treasury funding and investment
• Ring-fenced treasury operations that require separate accounting
• Organizations seeking simplified treasury architecture

These examples represent common scenarios where organizations choose independent treasury accounting, though this option is available to any organization based on their specific needs.

Complete Treasury Accounting in CS Lucas TMS

CS Lucas TMS delivers comprehensive accounting functionality:

• Full chart of accounts management
• Direct journal posting with double-entry bookkeeping
• Multi-currency support with automated FX calculations
• Independent month-end closing processes
• Complete trial balance maintenance
• Comprehensive audit trails

This integrated accounting capability enables treasury operations to function within CS Lucas TMS without external dependencies.

Benefits of this Approach

• Simplified architecture – no integration complexity
• Single source of truth – all treasury data in one place
• No reconciliations – eliminates system mismatches
• Faster implementation – weeks instead of months
• Direct control – treasury owns its accounting

Full Reporting Capabilities

Generate and print all necessary reports directly from the TMS:

• Trial Balance reports
• General ledger listings
• Journal entries with documentation
• Period-end financial statements
• Transaction-level audit trails

Choosing the Right Approach

There’s no right or wrong choice, t’s about what works best for your organization. At CS Lucas, we support both approaches and stand ready to help you implement the solution that aligns with your specific requirements.

Integration with ERP – When treasury data needs to flow into your corporate ERP for consolidated reporting, we recommend following the integration approaches outlined in our blog post CS Lucas Accounting System Integration . This ensures data consistency and eliminates manual processes.

Independent Treasury Accounting – When treasury operates as a separate entity or when organizational preferences call for distinct accounting systems, CS Lucas TMS provides all necessary accounting capabilities within the platform itself. Special purpose vehicles and ring-fenced treasury entities commonly take this approach, though it’s equally suitable for any organization that finds value in maintaining treasury accounting independently.

The Bottom Line

CS Lucas TMS can serve as your complete, auditable treasury accounting system, either integrated with your ERP or operating independently. The choice between integration and standalone operation depends entirely on your organizational structure and operational needs.

For organizations that prefer separation from operational accounting, the independent approach provides comprehensive accounting capabilities without integration complexity. Meanwhile, organizations requiring consolidated reporting can follow our proven integration approaches. Both paths maintain full financial rigor and audit compliance CS Lucas supports whichever best serves your treasury requirements.

FAQ 01 – Are you able to integrate via AP/AR? 

Approach 1: Direct GL Posting with CSL Treasury Subsidiary Ledger (Recommended)

The CSL treasury module will become the subsidiary ledger of ERP for treasury transactions. It replaces ERP AP/AR modules, which are not appropriate for treasury-related transactions. |

Process:

• CSL will generate general ledger journals for treasury instruments, which will be imported and posted to the general ledger account in ERP.
• These general ledger journals will be mapped to the ERP general ledger chart of accounts by CSL. These ERP accounts will act as “control accounts”.
• CSL maintains detailed treasury transaction records to support the balances on these ERP control accounts and provide analysis thereof.
• Account reconciliation occurs between GL and CSL subsidiary ledger only.

Approach 2: AP/AR Module Integration

Maintains existing AP/AR structure with custom integration development.

Process:

• Additional transformation programs are required to read standard CSL general ledger integration files and transform these into suitable formats for updating AP/AR.
• Data flows through the AP/AR modules before the general ledger accounts are updated.
• Multiple processing layers and reconciliation points.

Recommendation: Approach 1 We strongly recommend Approach 1 for the following reasons:

• Simplified Architecture – Direct posting to GL using data organised specifically for this purpose.
• Better Data Integrity – A unified CSL treasury subsidiary ledger reduces the risk of discrepancies.
• Less Maintenance – There is no additional need to maintain a body of codes that transform the general ledger-ready journals for posting into AP/AR.
• Proven Method – Leverages CSL’s tested standard integration capabilities

Approach 2 Limitations:

• Requires significant custom development and ongoing maintenance
• Complex multi-layer data flow increases error potential

Approach 1 provides a more robust, lower-risk, and lower-cost solution with minimised technical complexity.

FAQ02 – How should the accounting system treat reversal journals from CS Lucas?

The CS Lucas system maintains full control over all journal reversals and does not rely on the accounting system to initiate reversals.

Trade Amendment and Deletion Process

When users make trade amendments or deletions within the CS Lucas system:

• The system automatically generates a reversal journal if the original journals have already been posted
• All trades must receive approval before posting is permitted

Month-End Journal Processing

Month-end journals in the CS Lucas system are designed with automatic reversal functionality:

• Each month-end journal automatically generates a corresponding reversal journal
• Reversal journals are created on the first day of the following accounting period

Accounting System Integration

The accounting system should process all journals received from CS Lucas as standard journal entries, without requiring special handling or reversal procedures.

FAQ03 – Should the ERP system revalue journals posted by CS Lucas?

ERP system must NOT revalue any General Ledger chart of accounts items (except “Cash at bank”) used for treasury transactions that CS Lucas system is posting to. If these journals are revalued or changed and booked (either manually or via integration), we will not be able to provide support to reconcile General Ledger balances (base and currency amount) to the CS Lucas system.

The reason revaluation is not necessary are as follows:

a) CS Lucas will book transactions using the appropriate accounting rate so that the base currency amount are correctly stated. Where necessary, CS Lucas will recompute the appropriate average period exchange rate from the archived end of day rate.

b) At month end, the CS Lucas system generates month end journals for the following purposes:

i)      accruals for interest income and expenses.

ii)     amortization/accretion journals.

iiii)   revaluation journals to compute the FX gains and losses.

iv)     revaluation if monetary assets and liability.

c) Unless otherwise stated, all month end journals above are reversing in nature posted on the following day of the month end.

d) Settlement journals for transactions booked in the CS Lucas assume these above month end journals and their reversal. These settlement journals computes the correct FX realized amount and analyze it between capital and revenue as appropriate.

e) The “Cash at bank” accounts are not revalued by CS Lucas. Therefore, the Cash at Bank account needs to be restated for month end revaluation in the usual manner by the ERP system.

FAQ04 – Is CS Lucas able to maintain entity-specific accounting exchange rates for journals?

Yes, CS Lucas is able to maintain entity-specific accounting exchange rates and automatically apply them in journals. This is achieved by setting up the rates and configuring entity preferences to ensure the correct rate is used in calculations.

FAQ05 – Can we use incremental adjustments or running balance method instead of reversing accruals each month?

While incremental adjustments may seem more efficient, our system uses monthly accrual reversals as the standard approach based on accounting best practices for journal management.

Our system reverses accruals each month to ensure that accrued amounts remain accurate and up-to-date with the most current underlying data, rates, and transaction activity. When accruals are reversed at month-end, the system recalculates amounts based on actual activity during the period, including any changes in balances, rates, or adjustments that may have occurred.

The reversal method provides several critical advantages over incremental adjustments:

Accuracy and Error Prevention: This approach prevents the accumulation of rounding errors and ensures that accrued amounts reflect the true position rather than carrying forward potentially outdated estimates. This is especially important for foreign exchange (FX) calculations, where transactions occur at different rates. Incremental adjustments carry the risk of compounding errors that could occur if accruals were simply adjusted month-over-month, particularly when there are many movements in the month.

Transparency and Auditability: The reversal method provides greater transparency and auditability, as each month’s accrual is calculated fresh from the actual data, making it easier to trace and verify calculations. This creates a clean, defensible audit trail for your calculations.

This systematic approach eliminates the risk of compounding errors and provides the reliability and accuracy required for proper financial reporting. The reversal method remains robust as complexity increases, handling high-volume transaction environments and complex calculations with consistent accuracy.

FAQ06 – Can I maintain independent accounting and reporting for my treasury and operational transactions?

Yes, CS Lucas TMS provides complete accounting capabilities that can operate independently from your operational accounting in the ERP system. To find out more, refer to this blogpost.

This article will cover the information exchanged between CS Lucas and the accounting (Enterprise Resource Planning) system, as well as the methods employed to facilitate this exchange.

Information sent from CS Lucas 

Accounting Journal

CS Lucas sends accounting journals to the general ledger of the account system, which are derived from various treasury and banking transactions maintained in the system, such as money market, term loan, foreign exchange, non-deliverables, investments in bonds and equity, calls and sweep. 

These journals are created at different stages of a transaction’s lifecycle, including inception, month-end, and final redemption, and may also be generated for interest and principal payments made during the transaction’s lifetime.

CS Lucas provides users with the flexibility to choose from various accounting treatments, which are specified in the user guide. These treatments are applied consistently during setup, in accordance with generally accepted practice. Regardless of the selected treatment, all journals generated by CS Lucas comply with International Financial Reporting Standards

Journal posting

To post or integrate the journals to the general ledger of the accounting system, the standard approach is to use the CS Lucas journal file. See Specification. This file can be configured to be sent at a specified frequency, with the recommended best practice being once a day. However, users can also manually trigger the posting as needed.

CS Lucas does not offer integration services to enable the accounting system of our clients to read the CS Lucas journal file. However, we do provide support to our clients and their accounting system suppliers in understanding the specification, structure, and content of our file.

Information to CS Lucas 

Cash flow data is sent to CS Lucas by the accounts payable and receivables modules of the accounting system. CS Lucas utilizes this data and overlays it with treasury transactions, funding plans, and other cash flow activities that are not commonly included in the AP/AR module. The aim is to create a consolidated cash flow for single or multiple entities.

Import of AP/AR activity

We import an accounts payable and accounts receivable snapshot via a flat file that conforms to our specified format. This file is read at scheduled intervals and replaces any previous snapshots in the CS Lucas system for the same date range. The recommended best practice is to generate the file from the accounting system for payment and receipt due on or after the current day.

Frequently Asked Questions

Our FAQ for ERP integration can be found here.

This article provides an overview of the integration between banks and the CS Lucas Treasury Management System, highlighting the benefits, methods, and costs of integration.

BENEFITS

Integrating CS Lucas with your bank offers several benefits, including:

Accurate and up-to-date information for planning: With integration, bank balances and electronic statements are automatically retrieved and populated in real-time, enabling faster and more informed decision-making.

Streamlined payment processing: Integration enables payment instructions to be automatically pushed to the bank for settlement, reducing manual intervention and delays.

Reduced errors: Integration eliminates the risk of user errors when manually entering data between the e-banking platform and CS Lucas, reducing the possibility of errors in payment execution.

Enhanced fraud prevention: The use of automated systems for transferring files reduces the risk of tampering, improving security.

Increased efficiency: Manual retrieval and preparation of banking files can be time-consuming and tedious. Additionally, staff turnover requires ongoing training, which can be costly, and layering checks and balances to reduce payment errors can also be time-consuming. Integration streamlines these processes, reducing the risk of errors and improving efficiency.

INFORMATION EXCHANGE

During the integration process, information is exchanged between the bank and CS Lucas in two directions:

Bank to CS Lucas

The bank sends electronic bank statements and bank balances to CS Lucas. This information is typically delivered once a day, either at the end of the business day or at the start of the next. The bank statements and balances provide up-to-date information on the account balances and transactions, which are essential for cash planning and fund tracking. The bank statements are also used for bank reconciliation and can be automatically imported into CS Lucas or accounting system if the bank provides them in a compatible format. The manual way of getting this information from the bank is to log in to the e-banking portal and download the statements or check the latest available balance, usually provided in excel or CSV format.

CS Lucas to Bank

The CS Lucas sends payment instructions to the bank, which include the payee’s bank details, currency, amount, and value dates. By sending this information to the bank, CS Lucas initiates payment transactions. The manual way of sending payment information to the bank is through the e-banking platform, where the data needs to be created individually. Some banking platforms allow uploading payment information using spreadsheets to handle large volumes of line items.

 METHOD OF EXCHANGING INFORMATION

There are two ways for the bank and CS Lucas to exchange information.

1.     File exchange

File exchange involves a sending system providing information in a pre-defined format and placing it in a staging location for the receiving system to read and populate as required. While file formats are typically based on industry standards such as SWIFT MT or ISO20022, most companies create their variations with unique fields and data, creating a “dialect.” The sending and receiving systems must consider these variations to ensure a successful exchange.

You may subscribe to SWIFT Alliance Lite II or an approved SWIFT bureau to “push” and “pull” the integration files.  In such cases, the files will be located in the “Autoclient” and need to be sent to a staging SFTP that our system can access.  

For security purposes, files are encrypted with keys to prevent unauthorized access and tampering, and transfer over the network is also encrypted to prevent snooping. Access to the staging location, typically a server, is strictly limited.

Timing is critical for file exchange to work correctly. The receiving system must set a specific time to read the sending location, and the sending system must ensure the file is in place before that time. Near-real-time exchange can be achieved if the receiving system polls the staging location periodically, which may range from every few seconds to several times a day, depending on the use case.

Preparation and testing of a file exchange integration system can be done asynchronously by the sender and receiver. This means that both parties can prepare their systems to send or receive test and sample files, and once ready, the file transport can be tested for the end-to-end processing between the systems.

API-based

API involves a secure connection between two systems for data transfer, where the calling and handshake process between the systems is agreed upon for secure communication and exchange format.

API data exchange happens in real-time, but if the sending or receiving system processes data in batches, real-time data exchange only occurs at set intervals when the batches are processed, particularly in the banking industry.

Testing API-based integration systems must be a collaborative effort between the sender and receiver. Any issues arising during the exchange must be resolved and troubleshot in real time.

APPROACH

To assist our customers in evaluating integration with their banks, we suggest the following steps:

Determine the number of banks and accounts involved. Typically, only primary accounts require integration due to the higher volume of transactions and fluctuating balances.

·       Contact the respective banks to understand the integration options available to customers and specifically to them.

Estimate the bank’s fees based on projected transaction volume and value.

Consult with CS Lucas regarding the integration method provided by the bank. By formally instructing the bank and CS Lucas to collaborate on this matter, we can act on your behalf and work with the bank to complete the integration process.

Discuss any integration costs associated with CS Lucas system.

Assume the role of a project sponsor for the integration project. CS Lucas and the bank will collaborate to ensure a successful integration.

COST OF INTEGRATION

There are several cost to consider

·        The bank typically determines the method of integration available to their customer.  We have also found situation in some banks where they provide alternative methods but and these are not universally available to all their customers. Therefore, it is recommended that customers speak with their bank to determine the integration options available to them.

        Banks typically charge fees for providing integration services. These fees may include a one-time setup fee per account and ongoing fees based on the number of accounts and transaction volume. The prices and practices may vary depending on the bank. A corporation’s total integration cost will depend on its relationship and negotiation with its bank.

·        If you intend to use the SWIFT Alliance Lite II platform or to rely on a SWIFT service bureau, you will have to consider the set up and on-running cost of this which is not insignificant.

·        There is no cost of integration to the CS Lucas system when the following conditions are satisfied *:

        a) the format for integration of the file is well formed based on standard format e.g. ISO20022, SWIFT MT, BAI and Bacs.

        b) the exchange of file is “staged” at a SFTP server.  We can offer to host this or it may be provided by the customer or their bank.  

        c) encryption and decryption of these files are based on Open PGP standards.

* Please contact your CS Lucas account manager or your banks to determine whether these conditions are met in your specific set up.  If these conditions are not met, we can provide an estimate of the effort and cost involve.  We are happy to meet with your banks and help if necessary.  We can also advise on the most cost effective approach after weighing the different cost involved (if any) against your business needs.

In todays times, investment & debt management requires flexibility and quick responses by treasurers for directors to make swift, real-time decisions.

In this webinar, Chee Seong Tan, Founder & CEO of CS Lucas (an established treasury management system) talks about some of the most common questions he’s received from clients and is here to answer your queries and concerns regarding investment & debt management:

• Make your short term cash count (forecasting, managing & segmenting cash flows)
• Linking cash management to investment execution
• Protecting & monitoring the investments (utilizing reports)
• Monitoring investment exposure

Whether you are handling the treasury management or relying on the reports from your team, this webinar provides useful insights. If you missed the webinar, Chee Seong Tan is still taking questions so do feel free to get in touch with any queries you may have.

https://vimeo.com/826783785?share=copy

Chee Seong is the Founder aqnd CEO of CS Lucas, a leading provider of web-based treasury and investment management solutions. For over 25 years, he led the design of a treasury system for buy-side financial market clients, including fund management and corporate treasury sectors. Current users of the system span across Europe, Asia, Australia and South America.

The CS Lucas Solutions is easily deployed so clients can avoid relying on stale data from error-prone spreadsheets when making important treasury and cash decisions. The system delivers:

• Real time team collaboration for cash forecast, payments, borrowing and investments
• Total control over financial and operational risk
• Seamless integration to banking and accounting systems

We are pleased to announce that the company has successfully renewed its ISO27001 certificate from 19 Sep 2022 to 8 Sep 2025.

Maintaining our ISO 27001 certification is of great importance to us. The team at CS Lucas works hard to ensure we are following the international security standards that our customers and partners expect from our Treasury Management System. We offered a transparent look into the working processes of our Security Management Systems to provide objective evidence that we conformed with the requirements of ISO/IEC 27001:2013 standards.

At CS Lucas, we take the risk of cyber security threats and the need to ensure business continuity is maintained seriously. We strive continuously to provide our customers with secure technology delivered with repeatible and auditable processes.

Lyra Tolentino, CS Lucas HR and Office Manager, says, “Work-life post-pandemic has changed significantly with more remote working and online web meetings. While we welcome all these changes heartily, we are also aware of the changes they pose to data security and privacy.”

About ISO/IEC 27001:2013

ISO/IEC 27001:2013 specifies the requirements for establishing, implementing, maintaining and continually improving an information security management system within the organisation’s context. It includes provisions for assessing and treating information security risks tailored to the organisation’s needs.

ISO 27001 Certificate

We love the spreadsheets! It is a massive boost to personal productivity.
Nothing beats the spreadsheet to quickly sieve through voluminous data to clean, analyse and discern patterns with charts. And often, we see spreadsheet use for printing nicely formatted forms!

Spreadsheet misuse

But we notice all of our clients struggle dealing with spreadsheets to various degrees. The challenges we are all too familiar with: are difficulty locating a correct version, overwriting a final version or errors lurking in formulae. New team members are error prone as they inherit and work with spreadsheets prepared by others. Sharing spreadsheets between members exacerbates these problems by several factors.

Borrowing and investment transactions may not be voluminous in a corporate (non-bank) environment. Still, each transaction is a large-ticket item of value ranging from tens of thousands of dollars to many millions, depending on the size of an organisation. Clients face compliance and audit challenges relying on spreadsheets.

The spreadsheet’s flexibility means that security is laissez-faire leading to a “best-effort” basis for accountability. Several clients have found this situation “disturbing” and unprofessional. Some regard this as unacceptable because it degraded data quality, accountability and security.

Spreadsheets’ deceptive cost

Many perceive the spreadsheet as “free” because it comes with Office 365. This perception is dangerously erroneous. A recent study showed that maintaining spreadsheets for a medium business for consolidation costs as much as $4.5 million annually. [1]. We think this is further under-stated for the following reasons:

• A more experienced (aka costly) person needs to review spreadsheets for mistakes. To avoid this work, the person often ends up doing the work himself. In either case, it is an expensive use of scarce resources.
• Spreadsheets, unlike a system, are personal and unstructured, and work cannot be easily (or safely) delegated. Management ends up doing work that is below their pay grade.
• New joiners spend excessive time understanding the nuances to avoid mishaps.
• Some staff spend excessive time formatting to beautify a spreadsheet instead of actual work.

Without intending to, some spreadsheet grows into a “major system” for critical financial processes. But there is usually no systematic backup for it as you would a formal system. It is only a matter of time before the disaster will happen. In fairness, most people are not unaware of such risk. But it is real; a simple search will return many real-life horror stories.

Usage-based pricing to the rescue

The reality is that transaction volumes at some corporate treasury are modest. And keeping a production-grade treasury system smoothly ticking over is a significant undertaking. Developing such a mature system takes time. Over a quarter of a century, in CS Lucas’s case, and cost millions of dollars. After that, the technology provider must protect the system with state-of-the-art security to neutralise threats from critical vulnerabilities. Finally, for such a system to remain fit for purpose, it must be enhanced continuously in response to ever-changing best practices and comply with regulatory (accounting) standards.

At CS Lucas, we believe this low usage versus high maintenance cost problem is to charge based on use. In fact, under such arrangement, for those with indeed modest needs, the Essential edition is available at no charge. This arrangement works best for our client and us in the long term.

The spreadsheet has its place – just not for transaction management and integration. Finally, our team has a wealth of experience and tools to get you on-boarded with the proverbial one-click-of-the-button!
Give us a call to find out more.

[1]https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-do-you-calculate-cost-spreadsheet-helene-abrams

At CS Lucas, we believe that all our customers should have access to live and recorded learning modules to help you navigate the system and pick up new tips and tricks for your professional development.

In this module, we covered:

• Booking short term loan/ placements
• Inter-company borrowing/ lending
• Limit control and set up
• Reporting & Journals

CS Lucas has launched a new Treasury Management System designed to ensure the reliance upon spreadsheets in treasury is eliminated. We believe that treasurers should be working with the best tools available to them in order to perform to industry standard. That is why we have developed CS Lucas Essentials. 

 CS Lucas Essentials is our new, cost effective treasury management solution that will provide treasurers with quick access to an industry proven and matured system. We have created five Essential Editions, made to answer to the day-to-day needs of treasurers.  

Essential: Built for small treasury teams who rely on spreadsheets to manually keep track of their treasury operations. Maximize your value add by using a treasury management system for free. With the Essential Edition, all your cash management needs are met, you’ll have access to: 

• 2 accounting centres 
• 2 financial instruments 
• 5 forecast lines 
• 10 open transactions 

Find out more 

Professional: Built for treasury teams with power users that need a treasury management system to manage financial instruments, deliver cash visibility with ease and provide accounting integration. For a monthly fee of $50 per user, you’ll have access to: 

• 5 accounting centres 
• 4 financial instruments 
• 15 forecast lines 
• 40 open transactions 
• 1 systems integrations 

Find out more 

Business: Built for established treasury teams who want a scalable treasury management system  to help collaborate in real-time across time zone and geography. The Business Edition’s unlimited forecast lines, custom dashboards and team rooms help your treasury department work cohesively on one secure platform. For a monthly fee of $180 per user, you’ll have access to: 

• 20 accounting centres 
• 5 financial instruments 
• Unlimited forecast lines 
• 100 open transactions 
• 2 systems integrations 
• Team rooms 

Find out more 

 Enterprise: Built for enterprises with treasury departments who need a system that will work to meet the demands of their operations. The Enterprise Edition offers extensive integration to price feeds and trading portals, provides reports on demand and allows unlimited access to all necessary cash management tools. For a monthly fee of $350 per user, you’ll have access to: 

• Unlimited accounting centres 
• All financial transactions 
• Unlimited open transactions 
• 5 systems integrations 
• Team rooms 
• Access to Bloomberg, ICD and ERP terminals 

Find out more 

Unlimited: A treasury system that is designed to meet bespoke enterprise-wide security, audit and service level compliance.  This dedicated platform is fully scalable to unlimited users.  Help  take control of all treasury and payment operations around the globe 24/7. Call an advisor to discuss this option.  

Contact us 

Each of our Editions comes with email, telephone and chat support, as well as access to onsite user guides and training videos.  

As a company, CS Lucas has been dedicated to providing award winning treasury solutions for the last 25 years. A treasury management system is necessary for treasury operations to run smoothly. Tracking cash forecasts, multiple transactions and ensuring compliance is met cannot be done through spreadsheets and should not be done over multiple platforms. A treasury management system, like CS Lucas ensures the secure hosting of your company’s financial data in one place. A treasury management system like CS Lucas Essentials, ensures that your company’s financial data is securely hosted, reliably – with no complexity and no cost.  

Our treasury management system uses a multitude of embedded software to support our solution, and from time to time, security vulnerabilities are discovered within these products. These products release patches to resolve or mitigate security vulnerabilities found in their software which are announced via email security bulletins. We keep up-to-date on these bulletins; log relevant vulnerabilities, perform a risk assessment and decide if and when the patches will be applied to our TMS – and released to you.

The versions are reviewed monthly and updated below as changes occur. 

Product	Edition	Infra	Release/Build	End-of-Support
CS Lucas Application	W6	s601	108	Not yet announced
CS Lucas Application	W6	s505	107	31-Dec-25
CS Lucas Application	W6	s505	106	31-Dec-25
CS Lucas Application	W5	s505	105	31-Dec-25
IBM Websphere Application Server		s601	8.5.5.27	Not yet announced
IBM HTTPS Server		s601	9.0.5.24	Not yet announced
IBM DB2		s601	11.5.9 SB 62071	Not yet announced
Windows Server 2022		s601	2022	Not yet announced
IBM Websphere Application Server		s505	8.5.5.24	Not yet announced
IBM HTTPS Server		s505	8.5.5	31-Dec-25
IBM DB2		s505	11.5.8	Not yet announced
Windows Server		s505	2022	Not yet announced
Windows Server		s505	2016	12-Jan-27 (Extended)

Last updated: 23 September 2025

Cash forecasting has and always will be a practice that successful businesses utilise to stay ahead of unprecedented events. COVID-19 created a level of financial strain that businesses could not have accounted for. In times like these, keeping a close eye on your cash flow, monitoring your position and having a clear view of your finances will help future proof your organisation.

Tips for cash forecasting:

• Analyze your cash flow.

Begin forecasting by assessing your business’ current cash flow and conducting a deep analysis of your incoming receipts and outgoings payment. Ensure you take note of any late payments and increases or decreases in sales. Share your forecast so that it may be consolidated with others to provide a wide overview of affairs. This way you can collaborate on strategy to manage cash positions. You will need to see cash plans using different time buckets and planning horizons depending on whether you are controlling daily payments or negotiating with banks on a medium-term re-financing plans. 

• Prepare for the best and worst-case scenarios.

Use the data you have pulled to start rolling cash flow forecast. Keep in mind that you will need to be flexible in your estimations due to the pandemic. Give yourself some wiggle room on either side of your estimated base scenario. How much depends on the nature of your business and how customers are also affected by the pandemic.  Of course, there are many other variables to consider when trying to consolidate your cash forecast and cash flow to implement strategic planning. However, with this overview, you will be able to understand what strategies you need to implement to get through periods of uncertainty.

• Find out what support you are entitled to.

Governing bodies have quickly responded to the needs of businesses during the pandemic. And as businesses begin resuming their operations and re-shifting their targets, governing bodies worldwide are providing funding grants and support initiatives. Keep an eye out for programmes that you may qualify for on your government’s website. Banks are also working to help their customers during this time. Banks will provide guidance on what you can do to relieve financial pressure off your business – so ensure you keep your bank knowledgeable of any large in-goings, out-goings, late payments or invoices you may be preceding.