BlackLine Systems

BlackLine Account Recs By the Millions

Stephanie Oneill — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 19:39:50 +0000

We know our clients do a ton of account reconciliations, but even we were surprised when we did the math! The following infographic recaps the number of account reconciliations completed with BlackLine in 2012. We expect 2013 to be even higher. (Click on the image to see full size.)

The Post Heard Round the World

Cate Bramble — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 18:42:13 +0000

In July 2012, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings posted on his personal Facebook page that Netflix streamed one billion hours of content in June 2012. An amazing fact, quickly picked up by other news channels. This was the first time Hastings used his personal Facebook page to post company information. Netflix hadn’t informed shareholders that the company would use Hastings’s personal page to broadcast material information. There wasn’t a press release with the same information or a post on the Netflix website, company Facebook page or Twitter feed, nor an SEC Form 8-K. I’ll bet many of you are thinking, “So, Hastings used a common form of social media to post information about the company. What’s the problem?” Publicly held companies, such as Netflix, are required to widely announce company information – especially information with the potential to move stock prices. Posting on a personal Facebook page looks suspicious, because the company didn’t broadcast the information anywhere else. Was Hastings’s post an innocent slip or an action that would violate Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) rules about selective disclosure? Let’s look at this event in context. In 2012, Congress passed a bill that updated the Video Privacy Protection Act to let you share your viewing history on social networks, like Facebook.

Reed Hastings lobbied Congress for the change.
Hastings is a member of Facebook’s board of directors.
More than a billion people use Facebook regularly.
Each Facebook user generates around $4 of revenue per year. A Google user generates roughly seven times that amount, according to a 2012 article on CNN Money.
People who install Facebook Home on Android phones can change the operating system to resemble Facebook and, in effect, create a “Facebook phone.”
Netflix is integrated with Facebook.

Welcome to the 21st century! The SEC determined in April 2013 that posting on Facebook and tweeting on Twitter equals a press release or post on a company website, but only if the company informs investors in advance which media outlets they plan to use. Jeff Corbin, chief executive at KCSA Strategic Communications and the author of Investor Relations: The Art of Communicating Value, says the SEC ruling is “a step in the right direction in terms of acknowledging that we’re in the 21st century, that this social-media thing is not a joke and that it’s here to stay.”

The Hunger for Big Data Insights

Cate Bramble — Wed, 02 Jan 2013 19:12:23 +0000

According to IBM, 90 percent of the data in the world today was created just in the last three years. How does a company embrace their petabytes and yottabytes, mine the data for actionable knowledge and communicate that knowledge to the right people? For most companies, that question remains unanswered, based on research published in the Fall 2012 issue of MIT Sloan Management Review. The researchers surveyed companies about their data usage. A picture emerged of organizations hungry for insights but unable to consume anything more than tidbits from their mounds of data: • 65 percent of respondents said their organizations were effective at capturing data, but just 46 percent of respondents said they were capable of mining the information and transmitting insights to the right people. • Only four percent of organizations use all of the data that they capture. • Nearly 30 percent of the surveyed organizations said that they use “not much” of the data they collect. Data must be visible to be useful. People can generate a competitive advantage and innovation only when the insights that would accelerate these achievements reach their inboxes. IT groups typically perform well on capturing, storing and protecting data. However, most IT departments are overwhelmed by having to decide how data should be delivered to increase business value. IT is not obsolete. It is the key to organizational transformation. MIT Sloan researchers suggest that companies need a “data-aligned culture” with “an organizational mindset that can nurture data’s metamorphosis from insight to value.” Increasingly, analytics guide business strategy. But companies must bridge the communication gap between IT, the people who analyze business data and the business itself. Data analysts must be empowered to write comprehensive recommendations and implementation plans that help answer the eternal question, What should we do next? Consider the astonishing capabilities of location analytics. When analysts combine location data with information about retail transactions, information emerges about which market segments are buying what, where, when – and why. Companies like Starbucks and McDonalds use location analytics to plan business expansion. Innovations from data mining can exact a steep price. A business uses analytics to achieve a competitive edge, but is forced to discard business models and regularly analyze petabytes of data. Then there are the personal costs. Discarding business models and continually tweaking business processes can unnerve people and challenge vested interests. This shifting, roiling business landscape appears in the research. Respondents who reported that analytics improved their company’s ability to innovate were also likely to report disorder in the power structure. Amidst this shifting landscape, organizations must guard against disconnecting the logic from newly standardized processes and operations. Social business is one way to increase personal connections and show more – not less – empathy to customers. Businesses that hunger for insights and innovation face sizeable challenges – some of those challenges as extensive as their hard drives full of data waiting to be analyzed.

Big Data and the Presidential Election

Cate Bramble — Wed, 05 Dec 2012 19:10:14 +0000

Big Data can generate smog or sense (and cents). That’s exactly what happened in the 2012 presidential election. Each of the four dimensions of Big Data – volume, velocity, variety, and veracity – were involved. So were outsourcing and insourcing.

Volume

Campaigns rely on massive amounts of data to get out the vote (GOTV). Communication must be clear, concise, timely and reach everyone. The Romney campaign couldn’t achieve these goals even after spending more than $40 million on outsourcing their technology services and basic IT operations. Technologist John Ekdahl, a volunteer with the Romney campaign, wryly blogged that “a supposedly small-government candidate gutted the local structure of GOTV efforts in favor of a centralized, faceless organization in a far off place” – campaign headquarters in Boston TD Garden. Romney’s campaign strategy relied on Orca, a voter-tracking app that was largely untested and completely unknown to its expected users when it went live at 6 a.m. on Election Day. (The 60-page manual for Orca was issued the night before the election, attached to an email that few people received.) Orca crashed with the first influx of data and throughout the day, and there were bandwidth problems. The Obama campaign preferred insourcing. The campaign bought hardware and software licenses and hired an IT department. Campaign technologists relied on open-source tools and cloud-based infrastructure impervious to issues of scale and Hurricane Sandy. Nicknamed Narwhal, the Obama GOTV system went live long before the election. The app nicknamed Gordon generated GOTV data on Election Day. Ars Technica analyzed Federal Election Commission filings and concluded that President Obama’s campaign underspent Governor Romney’s campaign on IT products and services by $14.5 million.

Velocity

The Obama campaign received real-time updates in nanoseconds. Pending problems were announced through community help tickets entered primarily by volunteers. Along with Orca crashes and bandwidth problems, server spikes caused the Romney campaign’s ISP to reject data, fearing a denial of service attack—and they had no backup plan. The campaign was forced to glean information about the election from television newscasts and phone conversations.

Variety

The Obama campaign used data from purchase histories, voter registration and campaign contacts to personally reach certain types of voters. Republicans used the same kinds of data to generate television advertising, direct mail and robocalls.

Veracity

Republicans chose to believe that the polls oversampled Democrats. Internal polls used Republican turnout levels that were more favorable and influenced the campaign strategy. That’s how Republicans misread and misunderstood the reality of Election Day. Many Republicans now feel that the reality of technology doesn’t match the hype. Part of the problem lies in relying on strategists, not technologists. Volunteers for the Romney campaign were told that Orca was a “mobile app,” but people were unable to download the app onto their smartphones, because Orca was actually a mobile-friendly website. And a 60-page manual for a website? That might have been acceptable when user manuals required sacrificing multiple trees, but not today.

IFRS vs. GAAP Reporting

Susan Hols — Mon, 03 Dec 2012 19:05:17 +0000

Create comparative financials to identify changes between standards

In order to provide consistency in financial reporting globally, there is a movement away from GAAP toward IFRS. International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) are a set of accounting standards developed by the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) that is becoming the global standard for the preparation of public company financial statements.[1] Some differences between the reporting standards will impact:

Revenue Recognition
Impairment
Lease Capitalization

Although the timing and exact requirements are a moving target, it can’t hurt to start planning now. Once adopted, there will be a three-year look-back related to the IFRS Statement of Financial Position (GAAP Balance Sheet). So, if adopted in 2016, financial presentation will begin in 2013. Here are some ideas of items you may want to include on your checklist to prepare for this impending change. TO DO:

Identify resource needs
Identify G/L accounts that will be impacted
Determine where source data for impacted accounts resides:

Are system or programming changes required?
Are changes to manual processes needed?

Create different scenarios to determine the impact of the potential accounting changes
Analyze changes to determine business impact:

Management decisions
Budgeting process

Network with peers in similar industries – discuss best practice ideas
Work with your internal and external auditors – make sure you are all on the same page
Document a change management plan
Check for updates at IFRS.com

Ultimately, having an effective reporting tool to create pro-forma IFRS financial statements to compare to GAAP financial statements and explain difference between the standards will ease the burden of implementing required changes. In addition, a reporting tool that provides a central repository to track, document, support and sign-off on the appropriateness of the differences will create efficiencies and lend transparency to your financial reports. Learn more in this helpful overview.

[1] IFRS.com, retrieved November 9, 2012, from http://www.ifrs.com/ifrs_faqs.html

My Book Report on “Double Entry – How the Merchants of Venice Created Modern Finance,” by Jane Gleeson-White

Jeff Adler — Mon, 29 Oct 2012 22:53:57 +0000

When we think about books on accounting, we usually think about debits and credits and official pronouncements from governmental and professional agencies. However, this book by Jane Gleeson-White gives some amazing insight on the life of Luca Pacioli. As many of you know, he is the Franciscan monk credited with creating our double entry bookkeeping system. The book not only talks about accounting as a driver for financial reporting, it also points out the critical nature of accounting as a measurement tool in keeping track of what is important. And, in doing that, it also points out some of the shortcomings of what accounting measures. For example, Robert F. Kennedy, in making a speech about the Gross National Product (GNP), said, “… It does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.” In a cost-benefit analysis done by the Ford Motor Company in 1971, a decision had to be made about whether or not to include an additional safety feature on the Ford Pinto. It would cost the company $137 million to include this safety device in their production. The value put on the lives of people who could have been killed or injured was $49 million. As many of you may know, Ford did not include the $11 safety feature and at least 500 people burned to death in Pinto crashes, far more than the 180 estimated by the company. Economist Joseph Stiglitz believes what we measure affects what we do, and better measurement will lead to better decisions—or at least different decisions. I think you will find this an interesting read, not only for its historical value on how double entry bookkeeping was created, but in its ability to show us how we, as accountants, can take a leadership role in measuring the right things—the things that are important to our businesses, our communities and our fellow human b

Driving Quality Accounting – It’s Easier than We Think

Caitlin Steel — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 22:52:27 +0000

TQM, Six-Sigma, ISO … there is a growing alphabet soup of management concepts for addressing the quality of products and processes. All of these distinctions have fancy training, certifications and theoretical ROI to prove their worth. But when you are on the ground, running your accounting team, what applies? How do you judge? How do you motivate and reinforce your team to consistently produce quality accounting, even when the pressure is mounting? We need simple, easy-to-understand methods that don’t distract the team or take us away from the priority tasks we face every day. One idea is to use simple criteria and a grading system to evaluate the results of our work. For example, when reviewing account reconciliations, you can grade on three things:

Was the work complete?
Was it timely?
Would another user find the information useful?

Give each criterion a value of 1-10, and collect the scores from all reconciliations produced by the team. Then, review the results with them. Use the review to determine the cause of issues and focus on seeking solutions. You can resolve the timeliness issues with new tools and remove distractions when necessary. Let the team come up with ideas, implement a few changes and see if scores improve next time. We don’t really need fancy process improvements or transformations. We simply need to stick to the principals we all learned in Accounting 101 and apply some common sense management to continuously review and evolve how we work. Simply focus on the purpose of the work to determine the right questions to ask and find solutions when the answers don’t meet your quality standards. And, most importantly, involve others, so they understand the standards and are invested in reaching them.

Help Us Help You

Luke Weiss — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 00:05:54 +0000

The BlackLine Support team is here to serve you and loves doing it! If you have any questions or concerns about your BlackLine service, please do not hesitate to call us at 818.223.9008. In order to ensure we get you all the information you need in the most efficient way possible, we’ve created this handy checklist. It helps you compile the details we need to assist you.

Provide as much relevant detail as you can about your issue. Dates and times are beneficial and can help us verify your case faster.
Share your end goal and how you expect the system to work for you.
Note the specific tool you are having trouble with and exactly what you are experiencing.
Describe the steps you took before experiencing the symptoms; keep things in chronological order, if possible.
Remember to be as specific as possible in describing your case – the more details, the better!

In addition, BlackLine has many great resources available for you 24-7-365. Our tutorials, online community, training videos and tools on the support portal can help you find the answers you need without having to pickup the phone. Our mission is to help you find the answers you need as quickly as possible. We hope these guidelines make it easy for you.

Plug Your Data Leaks

Max Solonski — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 17:16:25 +0000

As I discussed in my previous post, unscrupulous people are just waiting to capitalize on your data leakage. To minimize a possibility of becoming a victim of information theft, let’s first consider the following concepts:

Information has value. This value is fluid, difficult to estimate and often overlooked. Unlike currency, where if you add $1 to another $1 you will have $2, insignificant pieces of information can turn valuable when combined together. For example, if you know somebody’s email address and a few facts about their personal life, it is often doable to figure out their banking password. Thousands of people, from legitimate analytics companies to underground criminal syndicates, are seeking ways to connect the dots and monetize your information.
Stolen information is irrecoverable. While there might be change to recover from your wallet when taken by a pickpocket, when your private information leaks out to the Internet, it becomes public and there is no way to make it private again. In fact, if you try to wipe or hide information that accidentally leaked to the public, you will make it even more visible. Ask Barbra Streisand, who this phenomenon, called the “Streisand Effect,” was named after.
When information is outside of your control, it means that somebody else controls it. A “private” profile on a dating site is not that private after all; it is potentially accessible to the site operators, hackers and all people who may learn your password. The private data outside of your control is always at risk of becoming public.
Digital information is searchable. If you lose your car keys, it is highly unlikely that somebody will find them on the same day halfway across the globe. If you misplace something on the Internet, somebody who is looking for it can get ahold of it very quickly—no matter where they are located.
Pieces of information are connected and traceable. There is a good chance that your prospective employer’s recruiter can see a questionable party picture you once posted to a social media site and read comments you anonymously left in someone’s blog.
Information is easy to share, and we often share information without realizing it. If you use the same username or password to access your online banking account, blog and favorite Internet store, you are sharing pieces of your information that can be maliciously used by others.
The Internet and social media lack face-to-face interaction, and without this live contact, people tend to be more open and share more. Imagine reading your tweets publicly on stage in front of millions of people—this may encourage you to question what you post a little more carefully.

So, how do you deal with the fact that your information wants to escape through all possible gaps and cracks only to be discovered, sold, purchased, used or misused by others? Don’t let it happen! You are the ultimate source of information about yourself—everybody else can just alter or relay this information. Do not unnecessarily share your personal data (remember, it has value). Your dental office doesn’t need to know your social security number (they will ask for it) or make a copy of your driver’s license. If your grocery club card application has a field for “Occupation,” leave it empty. If an online shop asks for your date of birth, fake it. Keep your private information private—plug the leaks!

Your Data is Leaking

Max Solonski — Wed, 17 Oct 2012 22:37:33 +0000

As biological creatures, we perceive everything around us using the five senses that evolution has been polishing for us over millions of years. For many, if something is silent and invisible, does not smell and cannot be licked or poked at—it does not exist. Technological progress started testing this axiom roughly 150 years ago with inventions and discoveries like electricity, radio and x-ray. But it was not until the social media revolution crept upon us and caused an explosion of data over the last decade that we faced something as immense and unexplainable as the universe of information. Today, we find ourselves in a rapidly expanding ocean of data that is difficult to comprehend. To put this in perspective, each day we generate more information than the entire history of mankind created through 2001. The human brain is not engineered to process digital information or large numbers. We use analogies (“this disk holds 200 large books”), we still keep information on our computers in “files” and “folders,” and recently we adopted the word “cloud” to describe inexplicably large amounts of information stored in a hypothetical hyper-library outside of our mental grasp. Still, without a clear understanding of how information lives and transforms around us, we create and interact with it every day and, more often than not, we misuse or mishandle the information because we don’t know how to treat it. Whenever there is lack of clarity or understanding, there can be people who may try to exploit it. Crooks and con artists of various calibers peruse the Internet looking for lost or misplaced data that can be turned into real monetary value. The most important thing you can do to protect yourself is be aware. Then, take proactive steps to avoid having your private data compromised—be vigilant! Stay tuned for my next post, Plug Your Data Leaks, to learn how.