BlackLine

Account Reconciliation is BlackLine's strength from having GL balances imported during the close process to uploading data within those recs that can be easily reviewed and balanced. The Preparer/Approver roles prevent someone who prepares a reconciliation, tasks, or journal entry from being the approver as well and timestamps on the process allow management to determine the timeliness of both. The approver can decertify recs/tasks/JEs and provide reasoning which is sent back to the preparer to correct all within the BlackLine system. BlackLine could use a better view of the overall close when a customer is using multiple modules instead of treating everything separately.

BlackLine is invaluable to our close process. The time saved from moving paper and auto-certifying can be used for better review of the data. It allowed our CFO and Board of Directors to have confidence that our close process was timely and accurate.

A longer implementation of learning the ins and outs of BlackLine will improve the success of the system over time. There a quite a few fields we did not use as the organization as a whole did not have them defined prior to implementation.

The online training is great but quite still feels more like it's theoretical versus real use case scenarios. We find that users retain the knowledge when the training is closer to what they know.

BlackLine has always had our back from the implementation to add additional functionality to the system. During the COVID shutdown, they provided unlimited support and training for our staff to get the best out of the system. If we have an issue with the system it is easy to open a ticket and get a quick response no matter what level the issue may be.

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.

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.

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.

BlackLine performs rather quickly considering the amount of data we were pushing in and out of it.

It is helpful in documenting everything we need it to for SOX compliance. It reduces the time spent answering auditor questions as we direct them to BlackLine for the majority of schedules and support.

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.

The team has always responded to my questions in less than 24 hours with an appropriate answer.

Easy to use, and any time a new team member is hired it takes only one training session for them to become masters in the software.