The challenge

Amtrak operates more than 300 high-speed trains daily, transporting customers across 21,000 miles in the United States and Canada.² Amtrak is a federally chartered corporation, with the federal government as a majority stockholder.³ In fact, according to Amtrak’s Senior Director of Treasury, Tara Ashmore, 40% of the company’s budget comes from state and federal support. The government delivers this funding to Amtrak in three large installments each year. “We continually have to manage around those payments,” says Ashmore. “As a result, liquidity management is fundamental to what we do.”

To manage its cash position, Amtrak needed a way to better forecast the company’s cash flow.⁴ Most cash flow forecasts in the industry rely on a generally accepted accounting principles view of accounting and transactions. However, Amtrak’s treasury team knew that a liquidity-based view would be more effective for its unique situation. “We needed to become a data-driven treasury department,” says Ashmore. “And we recognized that the best source of data was the bank.”

While meeting with J.P. Morgan Payments in October 2022, Ashmore requested a forecasting tool and learned that the bank already had such a solution in beta mode.⁴ Amtrak then implemented the beta solution and provided feedback as J.P. Morgan Payments finished enhancing and building out the tool. Amtrak went live using the Cash Flow Intelligence* tool, which is built into the J.P. Morgan Access® platform, in May 2023.⁴

After increasing visibility into its cash flow position, the Amtrak treasury team wanted to further strengthen their financial controls by sharing insights with their colleagues in finance. The company began using the J.P. Morgan Payments SAP plug-in for real-time treasury (SAP RTT) to manage station cash reconciliation as part of an ongoing effort to centralize its treasury management system through SAP implementation.⁴ Leveraging SAP RTT’s real-time cash position, reporting, reconciliation and real-time payment tracking, Amtrak could track payments end-to-end across the company and enable real-time processing for accounts payable and receivable.⁴

The solution

Ashmore shared that after working closely with J.P. Morgan Payments, Amtrak implemented the solution with only a few clicks. Doing so meant Amtrak had access to cutting-edge artificial intelligence and machine learning technology without having had to invest significant internal resources.

Right away, Amtrak put the Cash Flow Intelligence tool to use to find previously invisible patterns in the company’s cash flow and used the tool to segregate cash flows into categories.⁴ For example, it separated daily credit card receipts, monthly receipts from state and agency partners, and more infrequent federal receipts throughout the year. Ashmore shared that this significantly increased projection accuracy because the large payments no longer interfered with daily and monthly forecasting.

This accuracy helped Amtrak free up balances that they had set aside to cover cash flow issues. By investing these idle balances, Amtrak generated better returns for the company. It also provided an opportunity to receive more grant-based funding for large infrastructure projects. According to Ashmore, this is because many federal programs require companies to provide self-generated income, also called program income, as a baseline for matching funds. “Money that isn’t actively invested is money lost,” says Ashmore. “Our ability to generate investment income contributes to Amtrak’s ability to secure funding for projects that we’re trying to complete.”

SAP RTT also generated benefits for the Amtrak finance team. With this API tool, Amtrak gets real-time updates about its banking activity.⁴ This provided Amtrak greater visibility into payment status, FX and fees. Plus, with real-time bank reporting, the company achieved near-100% reconciliation by leveraging existing rules, which empowers executives to maintain clear control over cash flow.⁴

The results

Through its relationship with J.P. Morgan Payments, Amtrak discovered a cash forecasting solution that supported the company’s overall business goals of increasing ridership and maintaining excellence in customer service. With J.P. Morgan’s digital dashboard within SAP, Amtrak can view balances and transactions received from the bank during the day and more precisely manage its overall cash position.⁴ The company plans to continue pursuing digital evolution and system enhancement as the company expands its routes and improves its services.⁴

Amtrak’s next step in modernization is migrating its treasury management system to S/4 HANA, the latest enterprise resource planning system (ERP) from SAP. This upgrade will further enhance forecasting and improve collaboration within the company through unified payments capabilities, like lockbox and statement reporting, that comes pre-configured within the SAP platform.**

Disclaimer

*Cash flows are estimates and are no guarantee of future results.

**Versions S4/HANA and ECC 6.0 and above

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