BlackLine

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.

BlackLine is suited for automating mundane tasks and streamlining processes. For example I used to have to manually tie out Excel balance sheet recs to the TB. It was time consuming but necessary to ensure we were within our controls. Now with BlackLine we don't have to do the tie out as it's all automated with the system. Also if a rec is certified but the balance changes after the system will automatically notify the preparer which prevents us from having a higher risk of unreconciled balances.

BlackLine is well suited for the journal entry, accounting rec, and close process. It aims to simplify and reduce manual effort.

BlackLine is a great solution for your Accounting close process needs. It is very easy to us for your month-end reconciliation and documentation of tasks. It has great technology to support transaction matching and journal entries. It has capabilities to help with your intercompany accounting processes and financial reporting. If an onboarding is well-thought from the very start, it can be a very powerful solution. The challenge we have is how to utilize all that BlackLine has to offer when we already have an ERP system that offers some of these capabilities (like journal entries).

I think blackline can be suited for all types of business with a bit of modification. But it is well suited for any corporate or backend finance function. It can replace various excel manual processes. It will be difficult to use where technical like usage if accounting standard or taxation guidance is required or any law changes

E.g. when you would like to design your own account recon ways - it can help with a great many perks. You can import accounts in various ways as well. There you have them rules to auto-certify, also the threshold is there for the same reason. Bulk review. Dual-level (and even more ;)) approval. Quickly to perform, easy to understand and oversee. Fast to review and, oh, there are the notes you can leave for one an other!

Idea implementation though is a bit of a hard nut to crack here - one needs to upload the idea on a very place called Product Ideas, where others can upvote those. The necessary minimum? I do not know. But some says, there were ideas implemented for free for all BL users... SO, I do believe them.

BlackLine is particularly helpful for bank transaction matching. The auto-certification rules save us so much time versus manual matching. This has allowed our staff accountant more time to work on higher-level and more value-added tasks. The task management piece has also been very nice because we were able to set up task dependencies. This prevents an employee from signing off on a task until another necessary prior step is performed. It was a bit of a challenge to determine which templates to use for reconciliations because certain templates allow for accruable/prepaid items and others allow for list items that do not change. However, after this was explained in more detail, we were able to assign the right templates.

If you want to complement your ERP and enhance your close process, BlackLine is the choice. It has a bit of a learning curve initially, but once you relate the system to your use cases it is a powerful tool. The teams behind BlackLine are very friendly and love the product they service. This is a huge plus. Not to mention, many of the employees used to work outside of BlackLine while using/implementing BlackLine. This is great to hear how they used or molded the system for their business use so we can relate at times as a customer.

BlackLine has completely automated our monthly close processes and is extremely efficient. BlackLine has reconciliation templates already created for users but they also can be customized to different needs, which I think is super beneficial. We use their matching feature for some of our larger reconciliations, and it has seriously been a lifesaver. Their technical support is very helpful and typically responds before 24 hours.

The recon system is very easy to use, while the report run and search engine is hard to find,also the file is hard to find. A little bit hard to manager grouped item. Also change the key account information is not that easy. Submit and approval is easy to find

For global companies with locations in various timezones/countries, having a central repository for Account reconciliations and journal approvals is vital.

I see it for an enterprise solution, small businesses may not really get the full benefit, the cost may exceed the benefits.

I in fact recommended Blackline to a CFO at a med device start up because he was looking for something to "corral his month end JEs and recons". In a more remote work based world having a system like Blackline has gone from a nice to have to a must.

Blackline has helped us become more efficient in our close and move us from a 5-day close to 3 days. It also allows us to maintain all of our close documents with time-stamped approvals in one spot across the organization. You will almost always have to buy additional features to get the full benefit of the software, for instance, the reporting package to get more insight into close metrics, etc.

It is well-suited for all types of enterprises and the financial services industry. I recommend this tool to every company due to many reasons like it manipulates false requests and restricts users to changing account balances. It offers centralized storage for reconciling items and supporting data by saving our money and time.

Any company with a high volume of reconciliations would benefit from using BlackLine to decrease workload, improve visibility, and have a good audit trail.

BlackLine is great for large companies that need to organize their accounting tasks and assign them to associates. It helps make getting through audit a breeze. It is also great for reconciling multiple and/or large data sets and freeing up associates from manual data manipulation. The cost may be prohibitive to smaller organizations.

It is good for an entity with a lot of BS accounts and requires standard templates. Auditors appreciated our adoption to Blackline as it gives them an easy way to validate our internal controls around reconciliation deadlines. Auditors can also get access to Blackline so it saves us time from having to send them every rec at yearend.

Smaller organizations might not find Blackline as helpful as it might offer more than what they need.

Well suited when there aren't significant exceptions. Once you get into exceptions that may be more industry specific, the rules in BlackLine don't fit and there doesn't seem to be many customizable features.

Bank reconciliations, intercompany, and fixed assets are some quick wins. Deferred revenue and accrual automation will take a bit longer but are doable in this system.

Blackline was quick and easy to implement. UMC experienced an immediate improvement in reducing time spent on our monthly close process. Users were able to begin utilizing Blackline right away because of the ease of use. Accounting staff were excited about the impact that Blackline had on eliminating manual processes and the use of paper.

Blackline is a great tool for centralizing reconciliations and tasks. It provides opportunities for automation and efficiencies that are easily implemented and maintained.

I only have experience with account reconciliations. We bring in our data a bit differently than most entities--for example, I am unable to go to the sub-ledger level due to my multitude of ERPs and the need for IT resources to create this data flow. Account reconciliation works very well for a global entity, bringing visibility to all our entities. Before, if you wanted to know about an account, you had to know someone in the entity, write an email, have them send an Excel spreadsheet, etc. BlackLine does away with all of that by providing one place to see everything for all entities.

BlackLine will ensure that the account reconciliations are prepared and reviewed timely based on the information in the setup. This has made auditing of the reconciliations much better and auditable.

BlackLine is great, especially during this COVID era, where the need for a distributed, virtual close management process is imperative. The ability to leave notes on tasks or reconciliations, review those notes, and keep a close eye on the status of month-end close when not in the same room with everyone is key now more than ever.

If you are a small organization, or not wanting to move away from your paper backup documentation, BlackLine might not be for you.

It has helped our remote teams to stay on the same page during close. Overall, it makes the close communications more efficient as it keeps statuses in the same place. However, it may not be a great solution for automated reconciliations yet. We do experience several issues where it clears the wrong items in our bank recs, usually an item that was for the same amount as another.