Item: BlackLine
Rating: 8
Author: Emily Jefferson

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We primarily use BlackLine to substantiate the month-end close for our growing portfolio of managed entities. Since we utilize many different banking solutions and have multiple bank accounts per entity, the volume of transactions we have to reconcile monthly was much too tedious to do manually with our accounting ERP. As such, we had previously spent a week out of our close just reconciling bank activity; now we are able to reconcile the cash accounts daily, with BlackLine doing most of the work.

Pros and Cons

Bank reconciliation
Audit and attestation
Month-end close

Module-based pricing
Unintuitive reporting
No dark mode

Most Important Features

Transaction matching
Month-end close
Reporting

Return on Investment

More than halved our accounting close

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

Sage 100, Quadient Accounts Payable

Likelihood to Recommend

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.

Make Your Deadlines Less Dreadful

Overall Satisfaction with BlackLine