Item: BlackLine
Rating: 10
Author: Ralph Richter

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

BlackLine is used for Account Reconciliations, Automated Journal Entries, and Automated Corporate Allocations. Separately, we use a BlackLine product called Smart Close to harmonize and automate our general ledger processes and tasks. BlackLine has enabled efficiency savings, quality improvement, stronger internal controls, and harmonization across regions and company locations. Efficiency gains have enabled our Shared Services environment to significantly expand without adding staff. Productivity gains within our accounting teams have enabled more focus on analysis and project management.

Pros and Cons

Highly user friendly
Highly reliable tool, as it consistently works and works well
Makes life easier for auditors, as our auditors compliment the tool
Improves discipline to encourage process harmonization and singularization
Helps to spur ideas of new ways to automate and document to further improve value

Although powerful, the Transaction Matching Module is difficult to learn and understand
The Sandbox, or test environment, of BlackLine does not link to Production, so everything you do in Sandbox must be recreated in Production and vice-versa

Most Important Features

Ease of use, which helps user adoption
BlackLine personnel often act as partners who are eager to help ensure optimization and understanding of their tools, many times without additional cost
Consistency, as BlackLine is a singular tool and works the same for all customers.
Finance personnel maintain the most control over the tools, so we can implement BlackLine quicker, and work more effectively with the user community, as opposed to waiting in line for our number to come up with our IT Department

Return on Investment

FTE savings of 10 with a projection of 20 when all modules are rolled out to all entities
Over $100k annual reduction in auditor fees due to simplification and harmonization of work
Audit findings have decreased over 50%, which can be specifically attributed to BlackLine

Key Insights

Do you think BlackLine delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with BlackLine's feature set?

Yes

Did BlackLine live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of BlackLine go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy BlackLine again?

Yes

Other Software Used

SAP Concur, Nakisa Lease Administration, Microsoft Power BI, SAP BPC (Business Planning and Consolidation)

Likelihood to Recommend

BlackLine helped us gain significant efficiency, quality and control improvements, which allowed us to increase workload in our Shared centers without adding people. Audit findings were reduced, and reconciling items in account reconciliations were reduced in both quantity and time outstanding. Automation of journal entries and account reconciliations have allowed better insight as to how things are done, and helped to eliminate unnecessary journal entries, while enabling more consistency in supporting documentation, which greatly helped both our auditors and personnel reviewing and approving journal entries. The Smart Close tool is a HUGE asset if you use SAP. Substantial opportunity for efficiency and quality gain, internal control improvement, and process simplification and harmonization.

Optimize your accounting and finance team with BlackLine

Overall Satisfaction with BlackLine