BlackLine

Excel is an extension of Accountants....we are comfortable with Excel and can adapt it for many activities such as balance sheet reconciliations and month-end close lists. For 20 years of my career, that's what the organizations I worked for used. So, when we were looking for a solution, we wanted something that was based in Excel. After we participated in a Blackline demonstration, we realized to be effective the platform didn't have to be Excel-based. We were confident all of Blackline's features (data importing, recon templates, matching, system certifications, etc.) could be more efficient, accurate, complete, and controllable than Excel or a solution where Excel is the tool's platform.

Blackline outperformed both FloQast and Vena in our RFP. The staff felt that Blackline was the most user-friendly. Both FloQast and Vena try to sell you on linking to already saved documents instead of saving documents onto their systems. They're both more of an Excel Add-On. We felt that Blackline allowed more flexibility and I actually like the idea of having support saved in the reconciliation system. Also, you don't necessarily need Excel experience to use it and we have some staff (non-accountants) that we wanted to use the system to track grants, claim submission due dates, etc., not related to month-end close. These staff members easily grasped Blackline but struggled with Vena and FloQast.

The Q&A tool has similar abilities to allow users to query in many ways but is bound by the limitations of Microsoft Excel, which is not a concern when using Blackline. Blackline is a standalone tool and I personally have not incurred any downtime or unexpected outages with the site.

I have not had the opportunity to use other account reconciliation tools. Prior to Blackline, we performed all of our balance sheet reconciliations manually in excel. Moving to Blackline was a huge improvement. They really provide all the tools necessary to be successful. Very happy with the time savings we've realized.

BlackLine provides a single source for your end users to perform their work with direct connects to your ERP(s).

I have not used another product like BlackLine. We considered moving task management to Workday, but the product is more efficient in BlackLine.

We use Cognos for some reports and other features but we are excited about getting those same reports from a unified system that also house and tracks our data maps and our universal chart of accounts. We are using the new open access to data from all other areas to develop key metrics for measuring one plant against another, even if their scope in size is different.

We did not explore options for other products. I used Blackline at prior companies so suggested it for my current company.

I haven't used or searched for other products. This makes it difficult to assess how it stacks up against the competition. However, I can fairly say that Blackline has all the features you would need to help the intra and back-ends of the accounting close process and would be a great investment.

The company is midsize, everything was performed manually before; Blackline was a great step in the proper direction. It was easy to adopt, reduced manual work, shortened the close time, and was very easy to use for everyone. The customer service is a pleasure to deal with.

Just have access to account reconciliations.

The BlackLine system was more intuitive and seemed to offer more features than the competitors. Positive features included extract capabilities from other systems, including the general ledger. The email communication, which is triggered by the due dates, is a great feature that assists in driving policy and companywide accountability.

BlackLine actually works really well with Intacct. we use both and they complement one another.

I was not involved in the selection of BlackLine and have not used any other similar software.

NA

N/A

SharePoint is just a repository, so it is nearly useless for reconciliations. BlackLine allows for better analysis of accounts, it provides workflow options to show that the reconciliations and tasks have been certified, and since it is web-based there's no chance of anyone deleting or moving files and losing data.

For FloQast, the answer is easy as they have built their platform around integration with existing Excel workbooks which is exactly what we were trying to get away from. Cadency has a lot of similarities to BlackLine and in some areas it had a more fluid UI experience however the key differentiator was BlackLine's Data Import Template. The DIT allows users to upload directly into BlackLine large amounts of data which becomes crucial whenever updates are made to the company's existing Chart of Accounts.

Backline is the first of a kind that we have used for our monthly account reconciliation processes. Compared to our previous tools and platform, it is by far the best in terms of

• handling the volume of transactions without having to face the problems of performing such tasks in excel.
• available technical support for the timely resolution of issues

We did not evaluate anything other than BlackLine.

Blackline is ahead of the curve with their automations and innovative thinking. They are always engaging with customers to understand the needs and wants.

From the cost perspective, BlackLine stands out over Cadency, since the company was really focus on budget when looking for new solutions to manage month end close activities, one of the reasons we selected BlackLine was the portfolio solution and price were align to our needs, as well as we couldn't find a major difference for the cost in terms of quality of the solutions offered.

No other products were reviewed. We were impressed with Blackline's reviews and customer recommendations.

Blackline is the first reconciliation software I have used. I went from always performing reconciliations in Excel to having this robust centralized system that offers time-saving functions even outside of the reconciliations.

We only looked at BlackLine, based on reputation and customer reviews.