Likelihood to Recommend BlackLine has worked well for our companies, as we have a very old ERP system that is limited to what can be done within the system. Everything was done manually through Excel and binders to keep everything together, and each location had their own way of closing, so there was no consistency. It took longer to complete our close, and it created opportunities for a lack of separation of duties within the process. BlackLine has everything in one place, easy viewing of past months, strict separation of duties implemented (based on your specifications,) easy viewing for an auditor to get everything they need without a lot of hands on from the team, and works the same across all of our global locations, but in their local language and currency. BlackLine may not be a huge assist to those that have ERP systems that can handle doing the Recs, the JE's, the approvals, etc., all within its own system, as long as every location is on the same system. If they are all on different accounting systems, BlackLine can assist in providing consistency across all accounting locations, so processes can be the same no matter where they are located.
Read full review I gave this rating more from the standpoint that I enjoy using other bookkeeping platforms more than I enjoy QuickBooks Online Advanced. While QuickBooks Online Advanced is a solid platform that I have no issue working in, there are some areas that could be improved. The biggest of these areas is the overall design of the platform. I feel that when you first log in and are brought to the home screen, everything just looks cluttered.
Read full review Pros Saving time! Our manual process became automated the minute we "turned on" Blackline! Focus! By saving time using Blackline, our employees are able to focus on other job responsibilities and profit-generation Support! Blackline's support throughout our implementation and post-implementation has been exceptional. We always receive timely responses and get answers fast, when needed User Friendly! Their system is very easy to navigate. Even individuals in our organization that don't like or embrace change said the transition to Blackline was smooth and painless Read full review It allows us to link to bank accounts in order to get up-to-date, real-time information, which is so important in today's lightning speed work world. The "canned" reports are excellent and allow for extreme customization also. This makes them very helpful to both me and my clients. The user interface for QuickBooks Online Advanced is easy to navigate and is intuitive for novices. The screens are well laid out and have cohesiveness on each screen to match tasks with others that match up well. Read full review Cons Early functionality for Oracle users - a lot of the new products are only for use by SAP users. Access to API data to improve the reporting of data out of BlackLine. Ability to create reports in BlackLine across data sources. Ability to email reports out of BlackLine (either ad-hoc or scheduled reports) as opposed to the current process of having the user access BlackLine to retrieve the report. Read full review Proper advice in QuickBooks Online Pro for the usage if QuickBooks Online Advanced will be more efficient. More features and space in the app for organization of the self-created workflows. The stability of QuickBooks Online Advanced can still be better. There are still file-size issues and limitations on transactions and attributes of transactions. Steffen Jäschke Projektspezialist bei Steffen Jäschke EinzUnt Physik, Berechnungen
Read full review Likelihood to Renew Because this is a great tool with many possibilities and cool perks. Plus, as an admin - because I am both user and admin - I can say that this is easy to handle, you don't even have to be able to write a single piece of code to do so
Read full review QuickBooks Online Advanced is not like any other accounting software. With how great the software is now, I would definitely renew QuickBooks Online Advanced
Read full review Usability BlackLine could use a little work in getting around the system. The interface is not without its issues including lots of scrolling up and down and a lack of using the entire screen. Importing of the initial setup data could be better defined and reimporting data to add additional fields could pose an issue of overwriting data in a negative way.
Read full review QuickBooks Online Advanced is great and effective. I use it for almost three months and it definitely does their job
Read full review Reliability and Availability We never experienced an outage with BlackLine. The only time the system was unavailable was during planned outages for updates and upgrades usually Friday evening after 6pm pst until Saturday morning at 6am pst.
Read full review Performance BlackLine performs rather quickly considering the amount of data we were pushing in and out of it.
Read full review Support Rating In my experience, the support team is beyond exceptional. They are incredibly knowledgeable and dedicated to the customer. You can expect prompt, professional and succinct responses. I have been working with the support team for BlackLine for more than ten years where I have been a customer four times. If anyone does Support right, it is definitely BlackLine. Not only can you trust your financials, but you can trust the team to support you through all your objectives!
Read full review Online Training Trainings are available for all topics on the BlackLine U portal. These were incredibly helpful when first starting with BlackLine to get the hang of it. Trainings are useful for any module. I have personally used this to teach myself how to use the tasks and variance modules, which are now fully utilized by my organization. The support team is also very helpful in training our team on anything additional we have needed.
Read full review The online training was easy to follow and understand. The online training gave us the specific instructions to follow
Read full review Implementation Rating You will have to meet up with your final users, approver, internal auditor and accounting policy holder. Everyone has to agree. When you have a well written process, workflow, policy, approval requirement, and control, your implementation process will be much easier
Read full review Need to make an option for non-profit organizations
Read full review Alternatives Considered I have not used any products similar to Blackline. However, Excel does offer many similar functionalities to Blackline in terms of reconciling accounts. Blackline offers many benefits over simply using Excel. The reconciliations are organized and easy to find, and they roll over each month on their own. They include the ability to auto-certify if they meet the criteria that your team selects. They also include an audit trail of documentation and approval for each step.
Read full review I have not evaluated any yet. I have used QuickBooks since 2008 and I used Sage in the corporate environment before using QuickBooks. Honestly, I can't remember it because it was early 2000's. I thought about evaluating and looking because of the issues I've had with QuickBooks, but I haven't really investigated.
Read full review Scalability After implementing BlackLine our company acquired another large company with multiple operations. We were able to use the COVID shutdown to bring them on board with BlackLine with little effort in the setup and training of the users.
Read full review Return on Investment More insight into balance sheet account balances. Our team is more timely with getting errors fixed and monitoring important accounts. The task management tool helps us ensure that we are completing all accruals and reviews each month. This has led to fewer errors and missing accruals. Our use of BlackLine has greatly increased our efficiency by reducing manual work. Read full review Positive - time and accuracy: Improved bank feeds with rules for automating categorization (expense account) of transactions. Negative - time and efficiency: Very slow response in data entry such as estimates, purchase orders, invoices, sales receipts, bills & bill payment, and even check writing. Negative - time and error correction: Payroll taxes and sales taxes remain in their own silos and are very difficult to correct OR wrong to correct with regular ledger and transaction entries. Negative - time and reporting: Customer activity cannot be tracked using deposits or JE'd transactions. Reporting and research require the use of transaction forms such as invoices, sales receipts, payments, and credit memos. As an example, the transaction register for a customer can be sorted by various parameters. A default is "All" transactions but does not include all transactions -- you have to select "All plus deposits" and you will also not see checks. This is about the same for Vendor activity, where deposits (e.g. refunds) will not show in the vendor's activity register. A vendor credit memo is required, then the refund can be pushed against that credit balance. The credit memo will appear in the vendor register, but a deposit will not. Read full review ScreenShots