What “cash at Friday close” should actually mean
Board packs often show a single cash figure. The cut-off, FX source, and sweep timing behind that figure deserve more attention than they get.
Ask five people in a Hong Kong finance function what “cash at Friday close” means and you may hear five slightly different answers. Some mean balances after local bank cut-off. Some mean after regional sweeps. Some mean a Tuesday morning download labelled with Friday’s date because the FX rate file arrives late.
In cash position verification work, we rebuild the reported figure from statements and funding notes for an agreed date. The gaps that appear most often are mundane:
- FX rates taken from a dashboard screenshot rather than the rate source named in the treasury policy
- Intercompany sweeps booked in one entity’s cash but not yet in the other’s
- Overnight placements shown as cash available when break costs make them effectively trapped until Monday
None of these automatically means the board pack is wrong in a material sense. They do mean directors may be comparing apples to oranges across weeks, especially around long weekends and Chinese New Year.
A practical discipline
Write the cut-off rule in one sentence on the face of the cash pack: time zone, which banks, whether sweeps are included, and which FX source applies. Then keep that sentence stable for a quarter so trend lines mean something.
If lenders or auditors are about to ask harder questions about liquidity, verification against bank evidence for a single high-stakes date is often the right narrow engagement before commissioning a broader control review.