Item: BlackLine
Rating: 9
Author: Lidia McClune

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We implemented BlackLine as part of our Finance Transformation process. It gave us great visibility not only of the month end close process, but the day-to-day accounting functions as well. We were able to reduce time to close and save hours of manual work and spreadsheets. We currently utilize the Reconciliations, Tasks and Matchin modules, but with the help of the Optimization team, we were able to automate AT and Fixed Assets Rollforward reconciliations. Great company

Pros and Cons

Reconciliations
Customer Service
Listen to clients

Access customer instances to analyze data and suggest improvements more often
Reach out to customers on a regular basis to check on their pain points using BlackLine.

Return on Investment

saved hours with accounting teams
moved out of manual spreadsheets
reduced audit testing and fees

Support Rating

We love our designated RSM, who responds within minutes of our requests. There is of course the general case log where you can put your issue and BlackLine staff responds usually within a few hours. We prefer one RSM dedicated to our company approach, as they become familiar with where we are in the process, and it is easier to resolve issues as they arise. Also, having one dedicated RSM helps with suggestions for improvements and expansion. We had a confusing experience at one point when we were assigned an Optimization team to help us going forward, but we still had an RSM we loved that knew our instance very well. But besides that, most of the support people we interacted with were able to solve our problems one way or another together with our System Admin.

Partnership

In general, BlackLine helped us a lot with our month-end close process. The fact that they spent time to design these Optimization teams is a great step towards being a customer-centric company. We recently learned about their Optimization Academy, which we plan to explore further to help us with our Optimization. I am not familiar with the Moderating Accounting Playbook or Accelerators, but so far we are satisfied with the options they provide to help their customers achieve full utilization of the product we own.

Alternatives Considered

We do not have experience with other similar products, but when we looked into other options, we discovered that at the time BlackLine offered the most advanced solution at a very competitive pricing.

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

Likelihood to Recommend

BlackLine is a great solution for your Accounting close process needs. It is very easy to us for your month-end reconciliation and documentation of tasks. It has great technology to support transaction matching and journal entries. It has capabilities to help with your intercompany accounting processes and financial reporting. If an onboarding is well-thought from the very start, it can be a very powerful solution. The challenge we have is how to utilize all that BlackLine has to offer when we already have an ERP system that offers some of these capabilities (like journal entries).

Great Solution

Overall Satisfaction with BlackLine