Stop Missing Liquidity Gaps: Use Claude to See Cash Risks Early

Build a Liquidity Assistant Prompt That Reflects Your Policy

The core of using Claude for liquidity gap detection is a well-designed system prompt that encodes your treasury policy, risk appetite and reporting style. Instead of starting with generic instructions, translate your existing policies and reporting templates into explicit guidance.

Here is an example base prompt you can adapt for your organisation:

You are a senior treasury liquidity risk analyst for <Company Name>.

Your objectives:
- Detect upcoming liquidity gaps within the next 1, 4 and 12 weeks.
- Highlight potential covenant risks on our main credit facilities.
- Propose simple, actionable mitigation options (e.g. drawdowns, shifting payments, short-term investments).

Inputs you may receive:
- Daily bank statement exports (by entity, currency, bank).
- Short-term cash flow forecasts from ERP (AP/AR, payroll, taxes, capex).
- Credit facility overviews (limits, maturities, covenants, utilisation).
- Management reports and liquidity risk memos.

Always:
- Quantify projected gaps by week and currency.
- Show utilisation versus limits for key facilities.
- Flag if any covenant headroom falls below <X%>.
- Explain your reasoning in clear, non-technical language.
- Use <Company Name> policy: maintain minimum cash buffer of <Y days> of operating outflows.

Output:
1. Executive summary (max 10 bullet points).
2. Detailed analysis by time bucket (1, 4, 12 weeks).
3. Identified risks (ranked by severity and urgency).
4. Recommended actions with pros/cons.

Once this base prompt is stable, use it as the foundation for all liquidity-related conversations with Claude, so results stay consistent across users.

Set Up a Weekly Liquidity Risk Review Workflow with Claude

Move from ad hoc analysis to a repeatable AI-assisted liquidity review. Define a simple workflow your team runs every week, ideally at the same time, with a consistent input bundle. This can initially be manual uploads to Claude; later, you can automate via APIs.

A pragmatic weekly workflow could look like this:

• Export latest short-term cash flow forecast from ERP/TMS (e.g., 12-week horizon).
• Download bank statement aggregates and facility utilisation reports.
• Attach relevant covenant and limit summaries (static PDFs or docs).
• Paste these into a Claude conversation using your standard liquidity assistant prompt.
• Ask Claude to compare the new week’s view to last week’s and explain key changes.

Example instruction to run each week:

Using the attached files, update last week's analysis. Focus on:
- Any new or larger projected gaps in the next 12 weeks.
- Changes in facility utilisation and covenant headroom.
- New counterparties or customers that materially affect inflows.
- A short summary I can paste into our weekly treasury committee update.

Over time, you can measure how often this workflow surfaces issues earlier than your previous process, and adjust thresholds accordingly.

Use Claude to Stress-Test Liquidity Scenarios Systematically

Finance teams often run only a few liquidity scenarios because they are time-consuming in spreadsheets. Claude can help you design and analyse multiple liquidity stress scenarios based on your actual forecast and historical behaviour, without restructuring models each time.

After loading your base cash forecast and facility overview, you can ask Claude to apply parameterised shocks. For example:

Based on the attached 12-week cash forecast and facility overview, run the following scenarios:

Scenario A (Receivables delay):
- Assume the top 20 customers (by volume) pay 20 days later than forecast.

Scenario B (Market shock):
- Assume short-term interest rates increase by 150 bps for all variable-rate facilities.

Scenario C (Combined stress):
- Apply both Scenario A and B together.

For each scenario, report:
- Weekly net liquidity position vs. our minimum cash buffer policy.
- Facility utilisation and covenant headroom.
- Weeks where headroom < 10% or buffer is breached.
- Recommended mitigating actions.

This approach standardises how scenarios are defined and evaluated, making stress-testing a regular part of liquidity governance instead of an occasional exercise.

Let Claude Draft Management-Ready Liquidity and Risk Memos

Translating complex cash and risk data into clear management narratives is time-intensive. Once Claude has analysed your inputs, you can use it to draft liquidity risk memos tailored for CFOs, boards or banks, significantly reducing manual writing effort while improving consistency.

Example prompt sequence after analysis:

Using your previous analysis of our 12-week liquidity outlook, draft a 1-page management memo for the CFO.

Requirements:
- Start with a 3-4 bullet executive summary.
- Highlight any projected liquidity gaps above EUR <X> and when they might occur.
- Summarise covenant headroom on our main facilities.
- Outline 3 concrete mitigation options with pros/cons and timing considerations.
- Use concise, non-technical language suitable for a board pack.
- Assume the audience has not seen the detailed spreadsheets.

Finance teams can then review, adjust and approve the memo, turning a 2–3 hour drafting task into a 20–30 minute review while maintaining strong oversight.

Define Clear Alert Rules and Ask Claude to Monitor Against Them

Early detection depends on clear thresholds. Work with your treasury team to define a small set of liquidity alert rules (e.g., minimum cash days, utilisation ratios, concentration risks). Then instruct Claude to check each new data set against those rules and summarise breaches.

Example configuration prompt:

When I give you new liquidity data, always check against these rules and report breaches:

1. Minimum liquidity buffer:
- Cash & undrawn committed lines must cover at least 45 days of average operating outflows.

2. Facility utilisation:
- No single facility should exceed 85% utilisation for more than 2 consecutive weeks.

3. Covenant headroom:
- If headroom on any covenant falls below 15%, flag as 'amber'. Below 10%: 'red'.

4. Customer concentration:
- If the top 5 customers represent more than 40% of forecast inflows in any month, flag concentration risk.

Always output:
- A table of rules vs. status (OK / Amber / Red).
- Short explanation and suggested follow-up actions for any Amber or Red.

By standardising these rules, every Claude-assisted analysis becomes immediately comparable over time, making it easier to spot deterioration trends early.

Document and Version Key Prompts and Templates Centrally

Once you have high-performing prompts and workflows for AI-driven liquidity monitoring, treat them as assets. Store the latest versions in a central repository (e.g., Confluence, SharePoint, internal wiki) and assign ownership for maintaining them.

Include in your documentation: the base liquidity assistant prompt, weekly review instructions, standard stress scenarios and memo templates. Train your treasury and controlling teams to use these consistently so that Claude’s outputs become part of your standard operating model, not just individual experiments.

Expected outcome: by implementing these tactical practices, organisations typically reduce manual liquidity analysis effort by 30–50%, increase the frequency of forward-looking reviews without adding headcount, and, most importantly, identify potential liquidity gaps and covenant pressures several weeks earlier than with spreadsheet-only processes. That extra time is where real funding cost savings and risk reduction are realised.