Overview
Managing company cash is one of the most critical responsibilities for startup founders and finance teams. Treasury operators must constantly monitor account balances, upcoming payments, liquidity risks, and cash allocation decisions while maintaining confidence that the business can meet its short-term obligations.
This project explores the redesign of a treasury management platform that helps finance teams gain visibility into cash positions, monitor liquidity health, and take action on critical financial events.
The goal was to transform a data-heavy experience into a clear, actionable command center that supports both strategic decision-making and daily treasury operations.
Problem
The existing platform provided strong treasury functionality, including cash monitoring, payment planning, and liquidity forecasting. However, it lacked clear visual hierarchy and users struggled to quickly identify what required attention.
Several usability challenges emerged:
Financial data lacked a clear hierarchy.
Critical alerts competed visually with secondary information.
Users had difficulty connecting high-level liquidity health with account-level details.
Operational workflows required navigating across multiple screens before action could be taken.
The platform felt overwhelming during time sensitive financial decisions.
As a result, users spent more time interpreting information instead of acting on it.
User Research
Based on the research findings, I identified two primary user personas who would regularly use this treasury platform.
Startup Founders/CFO
The goal is to understand total cash position in under 30s, spot liquidity risks before they become urgent and communicate runway to board clearly
Their behaviors are checks dashboard first thing and last thing, needs 90-day runway with scenario sensitivity and sometimes rely on mobile for quick checks on travel
Treasury Manager
The goal is to manage multi-bank account positions daily, ensure payroll and vendor payments are funded and flag liquidity stress to leadership early.
Their behaviors are like power users who want raw data available, manage 4–6 bank accounts across entities and run payment approvals twice weekly
Research
To better understand modern finance workflows, I analyzed treasury and spend management products such as Ramp, Mercury, and Airbase.
MERCURY: Strength is having clean account hierarchy, instant balance clarification and simple on-boarding process. Weakness is limited runway forecasting, no multi account aggregation and lack of alerting design
RAMP: Strength is having strong spend categorization, policy-based controls and real-time receipt capture.
Weakness is outbound treasury not primary, no liquidity modeling and limited cash visibility
AIRBASE: Strength is having efficient approval workflows, strong vendor management and budget vs actual tracking.
Weakness is that it is not a treasury product, cash position is secondary and offer complex navigation
Insights
Several design patterns consistently appeared across successful fintech platforms:
Executive-level metrics surfaced first.
Alerts were prioritized based on business impact.
Financial health was summarized before exposing detailed transactions.
Recommendations were paired with clear next actions.
Complex financial information was presented through progressive disclosure.
Based on these research insights and findings, this redesign focuses on creating a clear and visually engaging information hierarchy across the platform, including onboarding, risk states (normal, caution, and high risk), and key workflows such as payments, liquidity management, and account details, enabling users to quickly understand their financial position and take action with confidence.
Treasury Platform at Normal Condition
Using cards offers strong visual hierarchy that give users a clear understanding of their current state of treasury.
Using cards offers strong visual hierarchy that give users a clear understanding of their current state of treasury.
Using cards offers strong visual hierarchy that give users a clear understanding of their current state of treasury.
Liquidity Page
The liquidity experience was designed using a card-based layout and clear data hierarchy to surface critical financial information at a glance, making it easier for users to assess cash position, identify risks, and make informed decisions quickly.
Account Page
The account page organizes account balances and fund statuses into a structured hierarchy, allowing users to quickly distinguish between available, processing, and locked assets.
Alerts Page
By leveraging color-coded alert states, the design creates a clear visual hierarchy that helps users immediately identify urgent issues and respond to high-priority risks more efficiently.
Cash Runway Page
By visualizing cash across different accounts, the cash runway page helps users quickly understand available liquidity, assess financial stability, and make more informed treasury decisions.
Final Reflection & Key Takeaways
The redesigned project transformed a data-heavy treasury platform into a structured financial command center.
By prioritizing liquidity health, surfacing actionable insights, and creating a clearer hierarchy between strategy and operations, the platform enables finance teams to make faster and more confident treasury decisions.
Designing for treasury operations reinforced me the importance of balancing information density with usability. Unlike consumer products, financial platforms must communicate complexity without overwhelming users. The most valuable design decision was not adding more information. It was helping users understand which information matters most.
