BlackLine

BlackLine provides a very user-friendly platform for journal entry and reconciliation preparation and approval. The software is very easy to navigate when searching for a specific entry, and all pertinent information is easily located.

Well suited for reconciliations of cash deposits from stores, amazing connection with SAP Hana fashion that allows me to save lot of time where reconciliation is already certified with no need to provide support for Audit purposes and for my reference if any adjustment is needed by using the Required adj reports. BlackLine improved my work life for month end activities by reducing my time spent on recs from 10 working days to 5 working days - a whole week !! love it

For my job I relay a lot of journal entry uploads. Until we brought BlackLine on, it was easy to load in SAP but all the other accounting and finance users could not get my backup easily without reaching out to me directly. BlackLine has given the ability to have this readily available to the others.

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 makes it easy to prepare and review reconciliations. It provides a summary of what is complete and what is remaining, giving management a quick complete snapshot of progress. In addition, the amortization schedule functionality streamlines the reconciliation process and provides an easy-to-read summary. BlackLine has streamlined our close and post-close processes giving our teams more time to focus on more value-adding.

The ease of use is really helpful for beginners. This system is easily adaptable and can be manipulated to suit your company.

Well suited in both our manufacturing and retail entities. Additionally connects with various ERP systems. The task module allows for designating key tasks clearly for close tracking.

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

BlackLine has been awesome at creating reconciliations in a uniform manner, allowing visibility into our close process, and being a repository for all of our supporting documents.

In my opinion, BlackLine is great if a company wants to improve visibility, reconciliation efficiency, management and overall organization of all things finance in one place. I think it would be less appropriate if the company is small and there wouldnt be much efficiency because of low volume.

In my experience, you will get what you put into BlackLine. I used to work with BlackLine in a previous role and it was only used to do reconciliations. It kept a good record of what makes up your GL balance and is easy to attach and find documentation pertaining to your rec. Upon joining this new organization, which utilizes BlackLine to a greater capacity, it's clear to me that if you are willing to dedicate the time and effort to utilize BlackLine, it can be an efficient tool. We use this now to record amortization, so we only have to make the initial entry.

Account reconciliation feature are perfect for day to day accountants. Need more work done on FRA to be more of an FP&A reporting feature

BlackLine allows us to have a more comprehensive and trustworthy insight to our financials which is essential to our public parent company. However, I would love to see BlackLine integrate more seamlessly with Yardi and other ERP systems to continue to mitigate risk with file transfer automation. The dashboards are also very intuitive for most users, however I would love to see interactive dashboards for system admins as well

It is overall a good product for Reconciliations based on other products that I use. It is laid out well and easy to train on.

BlackLine is a good tool help to reduce error when posting financial adjustment. The approver can clearly see all the supporting documents and related entries which certainly help to reduce time to find it manually.
The fallback will be the slow response from the system when searching the journal entries under department.

Good 1. Account Reconciliations 2. Journal Entries 3. Task Management 4. Team Structures Not So Good 1. Controlling of some user/account assignments by date 2. Alert Preferences at the User level 3. Programming Languages for AJD's

I have only used BlackLine with my current company, and I have always had success with using BlackLine as a solution. We have automated quite a few processes and continue to look for more ways to leverage BlackLine and its modules to optimize our processes. I approach any potential BlackLine project from the perspective that it may not be the solution, but I can try and have had much success. The only project that I have not been able to migrate to BlackLine is my SOX controls, but I will probably give them another try as I gain more experience with the system.

Blackline is a great tool to move toward automation and get a change management and automation plan in motion. I haven’t found anything that Blackline isn’t appropriate for. Generally the Blackline tool works great when it is set up and used as intended. That being said, it takes time and focus to implement correctly. Investment of time up front reaps the benefits.

It is helpful for companies that have a large amount of reconciliations or tasks to track on a monthly basis. It helps with approval workflows and audit trails.

It is suitable to use for organizations that have monthly and quarterly financial closes, to expedite the process, reduce manual effort, and ensure timely reporting. Our organization subjects to frequent audits, Blackline's comprehensive audit trail can simplify the audit process, provide transparency, and ease the burden of preparing documentation for auditors. On the other hand, Blackline is a cloud-based solution, so without reliable internet connectivity might struggle to access and utilize the software effectively when work from home.

In my opinion, BlackLine is well suited for the more popular ERPs like SAP, Oracle, Dynamics. Although we made it work with Deltek Vision, it required a lot of customization on our end in Vision to make the data integration work. the magic of BlackLine is in the intel of the actual application which helps us apply cash very quickly and better than our in house built application

BlackLine is very well suited to match large sets of data to generate 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 incredibly robust when it comes to transaction matching. The functionality of creating match rules helps the users come up with ways to match over 95% of the transactions and makes it easy to understand how to make sure that the data entered into your accounting ERP will jive with the given rules. BlackLine can also be used in many more situations, and the flexibility of the software allows for your accounting team's creativity to create automated solutions. While they do offer customer service and will work with you to build more automation solutions, I would recommend that you have a team that is more tech-savvy or innovative.