BlackLine home page Financial Close Management
Close faster with complete and accurate results.
Empower Accounting to manage and control the end-to-end financial close process by automating accounting workflows, providing a centralized and secure workspace to perform period-end accounting activities, and streamlining financial reporting.
Account Reconciliations
Standardize, control, and streamline reconciliations.
Increase accuracy and efficiency across your account reconciliation process and produce timely and accurate financial statements. Drive accuracy in the financial close by providing a streamlined method to substantiate your balance sheet.
Task Management
Drive visibility, accountability, and control across every accounting checklist.
Standardize, accelerate, and centrally manage accounting processes – from month-end close tasks to PBC checklists – with hierarchical task lists, role-based workflows, and real-time dashboards.
Transaction Matching
Match, analyze, and reconcile millions of transactions in minutes.
Streamline and automate detail-heavy reconciliations, such as bank reconciliations, credit card matching, intercompany reconciliations, and invoice-to-PO matching all in one centralized workspace.
Journal Entry
Centralize, manage, and automate journal entries.
Create, review, and approve journals, then electronically certify, post them to and store them with all supporting documentation. Automatically create, populate, and post journals to your ERP based on your rules.
Financial Reporting Analytics
Control, validate, and streamline financial statement analyses.
Perform pre-consolidation, group-level analysis in real-time with efficient, end-to-end transparency and traceability. Reduce risk and save time by automating workflows to provide more timely insights.
Variance Analysis
Continuously monitor for risk with automated fluctuation analysis.
Calculate and identify account balance and activity fluctuations automatically to continuously monitor for risk, ensure the effective and timely execution of critical management review controls, and support agile decision-making.
Smart Close for SAP
Simplify, standardize, and automate your financial close in SAP.
Streamline and automate activities in SAP with task scheduling and execution, activity monitoring, and outcome verification.
Accounts Receivable Automation
Maximize working capital and release cash from your balance sheet.
Maximize working capital with the only unified platform for collecting cash, providing credit, and understanding cash flow. Transform your accounts receivable processes with intelligent AR automation that delivers value across your business.
Cash Application
Apply customer payments to invoices automatically.
Transform your order-to-cash cycle and speed up your cash application process by instantly matching and accurately applying customer payments to customer invoices in your ERP.
Credit & Risk Management
Create and operate risk polices with dynamic insights.
Understand customer data and performance behaviors to minimize the risk of bad debt and the impact of late payments. Monitor changes in real time to identify and analyze customer risk signals.
Collections Management
Release cash from customers and reduce DSO.
Improve the prioritization of customer calls, reduce days sales outstanding, and watch productivity rise with more dynamic, accurate, and smarter collection management processes.
Disputes & Deductions
Resolve customer disputes promptly to collect debt.
Accelerate dispute resolution with automated workflows and maintain customer relationships with operational reporting. Unlock full control and visibility of disputes and provide better insight into how they impact KPIs, such as DSO and aged debt provisions.
Team & Task Management
Maximize your time with data-driven prioritization.
Make the most of your team’s time by automating accounts receivables tasks and using data to drive priority, action, and results. Monitor and analyze user performance, ensuring key actions quickly.
AR Intelligence
Turn payment data into actionable, real-time intelligence.
Automatically process and analyze critical information such as sales and payment performance data, customer payment trends, and DSO to better manage risk and develop strategies to improve operational performance.
Intercompany Financial Management
Unlock growth capacity with tax-effective intercompany operations.
Centralize, streamline, and automate end-to-end intercompany operations with global billing, payment, and automated reconciliation capabilities that provide speed and accuracy. Ignite staff efficiency and advance your business to more profitable growth.
Intercompany Non-Trade
Automate, optimize, and manage intercompany non-trade transactions.
Ensure consistent regulatory and tax compliance by automating non-trade transactions and invoices while enforcing trading relationships and policies, as well as required taxes and transfer pricing.
Intercompany Balance & Resolve
Centralize, streamline, and automate intercompany reconciliations and dispute management.
Seamlessly integrate with all intercompany systems and data sources. Automatically identify intercompany exceptions and underlying transactions causing out-of-balances with rules-based solutions to resolve discrepancies quickly.
Intercompany Net & Settle
Streamline and automate intercompany transaction netting and settlement to ensure cash precision.
Enable greater collaboration between Accounting and Treasury with real-time visibility into open transactions. Integrate with treasury systems to facilitate and streamline netting, settlement, and clearing to optimize working capital.
BlackLine for Midsize Organizations
Get set up quickly for a streamlined and automated close.
The path from traditional to modern accounting is different for every organization. BlackLine’s Modern Accounting Playbook delivers a proven-practices approach to help you identify and prioritize your organization’s critical accounting gaps and map out an achievable path to success.
BlackLine for Large Enterprises
Save time and cost, decrease risk, and elevate the organization.
BlackLine’s foundation for modern accounting creates a streamlined and automated close. We’re dedicated to delivering the most value in the shortest amount of time, equipping you to not only control close chaos, but also foster F&A excellence.
BlackLine for Banking & Financial Services
Invest in your future by unifying and automating accounting work.
To sustain timely performance of daily activities, banking and financial services organizations are turning to modern accounting and finance practices. It’s no longer a matter of whether or not to digitally transform. It’s a matter of when and how.
BlackLine for Consumer Products & Services
Adapt to changing consumer preferences with agile accounting.
To mitigate financial statement risk and increase operational effectiveness, consumer goods organizations are turning to modern accounting and leading best practices. Simply sticking with ‘the way it’s always been done’ is a thing of the past.
BlackLine for Energy & Raw Materials
Energize your accounting team by creating capacity with automation.
While you are innovating to produce safe, reliable, and sustainable products and services, our solutions help accounting teams save time, reduce risk, and create capacity to support your organization's strategic objectives.
BlackLine for Healthcare & Life Sciences
Align healthcare accounting teams to revenue-driving activities.
Working capital, cash flows, collections opportunities, and other critical metrics depend on timely and accurate processes. Ensure services revenue has been accurately recorded and related payments are reflected properly on the balance sheet.
BlackLine for Manufacturing
Unlock capacity and strengthen resilience by automating accounting.
To respond and lead amid supply chain challenges demands on accounting teams in manufacturing companies are higher than ever. Guide your business with agility by standardizing processes, automating routine work, and increasing visibility.
BlackLine for Retail
Tie out millions of transactions automatically.
Retailers are recalibrating their strategies and investing in innovative business models to drive transformation quickly, profitably, and at scale. Save time, reduce risk, and create capacity to support your organization's strategic objectives.
BlackLine for Technology, Media & Communications
Transform the way you work.
You've transformed the way we experience the world. It's time to embrace modern accounting technology to save time, reduce risk, and create capacity to focus your time on what matters most.
SAP Solutions by BlackLine
BlackLine is part of your SAP financial mission control center. Our solutions complement SAP software as part of an end-to-end offering for Finance & Accounting. BlackLine solutions address the traditional manual processes that are performed by accountants outside the ERP, often in spreadsheets.
Companies Running on Oracle Close Faster with BlackLine
Global brands and the fastest growing companies run Oracle and choose BlackLine to accelerate digital transformation. BlackLine delivers comprehensive solutions that unify accounting and finance operations across your Oracle landscape.
BlackLine is Built for NetSuite
Gain global visibility and insight into accounting processes while reducing risk, increasing productivity, and ensuring accuracy. Close the gaps left in critical finance and accounting processes with minimal IT support.
Agile Solutions for Dynamic Organizations
Adapt and innovate with a hyperconnected Accounting function and give everyone the insights and freedom to thrive by connecting your data, processes, and teams with intelligent automation solutions for accounting needs.
Environmental, Social, and Governance
ESG is an opportunity for F&A teams to have a direct impact on how their organizations interact with the communities around them and how they deliver value to their stakeholders.
Recruiting & Retaining Top Talent
Rising labor costs and shifting expectations are contributing to unprecedented change in the labor market and altering the way companies and their executives think about talent management.
Enabling an ERP Transformation
ERP transformations are business transformations. Finance and accounting expertise is not only needed to prevent ERP transformation failures, but F&A leaders are poised to help drive project plans and outcomes.
CFO & CIO Collaboration
Finance and IT leaders share a common goal of equipping their organizations with ways to work smarter to enable competitive advantage. This intersection between CFO and CIO priorities is driving more unity in terms of strategy and execution.
F&A Transformation
F&A teams have embraced their expanding roles, but unprecedented demand for their time coupled with traditional manual processes make it difficult for F&A to execute effectively. Transformation is necessary to address these challenges.
IPO Readiness
F&A leadership can have a significant impact by creating sustainable, scalable processes that can support the business before, during, and long after the IPO. This company-wide effort crosses multiple functional areas and is reinforced by critical project management and a strong technology infrastructure.
Mergers & Acquisitions
Timely, reliable data is critical for decision-making and reporting throughout the M&A lifecycle. Without accurate information, organizations risk making poor business decisions, paying too much, issuing inaccurate financial statements, and other errors.
Revenue Cycle Optimization
The revenue cycle refers to the entirety of a company’s ordering process from the time an order is placed until an invoice is paid and settled. The inability to apply payments on time and accurately can not only lock up cash, but also negatively impact future sales and the overall customer experience.
Regulatory Compliance
While the responsibility to maintain compliance stretches across the organization, F&A has a critical role in ensuring compliance with financial rules and regulations. Together with expanding roles, new expectations from stakeholders, and evolving regulatory requirements, these demands can place unsustainable strain on finance and accounting functions.
Customer Success
Customer Success Stories
In good company.
More than 4,000 companies of all sizes, across all industries, trust BlackLine to help them modernize their financial close, accounts receivable, and intercompany accounting processes.
BlackLine returns $2.77 for every dollar spent
BlackLine Community
Join an exclusive community of peers, partners, and BlackLine experts.
BlackLine users around the world gain access to a digital hub of insight, information, and engagement that enables the exchange of ideas and leading practices for peak F&A performance.
Learn, collaborate, and get the help you need.
Services
Guided, connected, and committed to your success.
BlackLine Services combine leading practices and expert guidance with best-in-class technology to help your F&A organization seamlessly implement sound processes and solutions, identify new opportunities for accounting optimization, and expand into areas you never imagined you would have the time to tackle.
Professional Services
Build a foundation for world-class accounting.
Whether planning your first implementation or expanding your BlackLine platform, leverage expert guidance to help you build and execute your vision, drive unified, automated, and continuous accounting processes, and enable Finance and Accounting to deliver strategic business value.
Training & Education
Accelerate adoption and drive productivity and performance.
One of the critical success drivers for any software technology is effective user training and adoption. Whether you are deploying for the first time or creating a sustainable education program for maximum value creation, explore how you can take the next steps to upskill your users.
Customer Success
Your success is our success.
From onboarding to financial operations excellence, our customer success management team helps you unlock measurable value. Through workshops, webinars, digital success options, tips and tricks, and more, you will develop leading-practice processes and strategies to propel your organization forward.
Transformation Services
Go beyond with end-to-end transformation.
Powerful technology is only part of the story. Successful transformation requires expert guidance from a trusted partner. Explore offerings that unlock new transformation opportunities and make transformation a reality.
Global Support
World-class support so you can focus on what matters most.
BlackLine provides global product support across geographies, languages, and time zones, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. We are here for you with industry-leading support whenever and wherever you need it.
Events
Connect with peers across Finance & Accounting.
Whether new to BlackLine or a longtime customer, we curate events to guide you along every step of your modern accounting journey.
BeyondTheBlack APAC 2023
Upcoming Webinars
Hear from F&A thought leaders and customers like you.
Explore our schedule of upcoming webinars to find inspiration, including industry experts, strategic alliance partners, and boundary-pushing customers. And, earn CPE credits while you're at it.
On-Demand Webinars
Catch up on the latest finance transformation guidance.
Check out our most recent webinars dedicated to modern accounting. If you recently attended webinar you loved, find it here and share the link with your colleagues.
White Papers
Dive into digital finance transformation.
Explore the future of accounting over a cup of coffee with our curated collection of white papers and ebooks written to help you consider how you will transform your people, process, and technology.
12 Keys to Financial Operations Excellence
Blog
Stay on top of the latest accounting trends.
BlackLine Magazine provides daily updates on everything from companies that have transformed F&A to new regulations that are coming to disrupt your day, week, and month. Check back often for the latest commentary and guidance.
Explore the latest in F&A innovations.
Accounting Glossary
Brush up on key accounting terms.
Whether you're new to F&A or an experienced professional, sometimes you need a refresher on common finance and accounting terms and their definitions. BlackLine's glossary provides descriptions for industry words and phrases, answers to frequently asked questions, and links to additional resources.
Your guide to key F&A terms and definitions.
Developer Portal
Integrate your accounting operations with open APIs.
Our API-first development strategy gives you the keys to integrate your finance tech stack - from one ERP to one hundred - and create seamless data flows in and out of BlackLine.
Explore our APIs to maximum integration.
About BlackLine
Since our founding in 2001, BlackLine has become a leading provider of cloud software that automates and controls critical accounting processes.
Companies come to BlackLine because their traditional manual accounting processes are not sustainable. We help them move to modern accounting by unifying their data and processes, automating repetitive work, and driving accountability through visibility.
Leadership
BlackLine's leadership team is built on experience and expertise. Every executive is committed to ensuring transformational success for every customer.
Diversity, Equity & Inclusion
At BlackLine, we live by these tenets and always put people first. We are committed to fostering an environment where differences are valued and practices are equitable.
Environmental, Social & Governance
BlackLine is committed to doing our part to create a more sustainable and equitable world, from setting high environmental standards in all BlackLine workplaces to supporting employee health and wellbeing, building strong relationships with suppliers from underrepresented communities, protecting customers’ data security and privacy and giving back to the community.
In the News
Explore original-content media coverage, commentary and analysis of BlackLine at top-tier business, trade, local and vertical media outlets, as well as contributed articles written by BlackLine experts and placed with leading media organizations.
Press Releases
Stay up to date on the latest corporate and high-level product developments at BlackLine. Here you will find a one-stop resource listing recent and historical news items, including announcement of new clients/partners, awards, new offices/facilities, personnel appointments/ changes, major software enhancements, executive speeches and upcoming events.
Investors
BlackLine is a high-growth, SaaS business that is transforming and modernizing the way finance and accounting departments operate. Our cloud software automates critical finance and accounting processes. We empower companies of all sizes across all industries to improve the integrity of their financial reporting, achieve efficiencies and enhance real-time visibility into their operations.
Awards & Recognition
In addition to accolades for the quality, performance and benefits of our software, BlackLine has been the recipient of many industry awards recognizing the fast growth of the company, outstanding achievements of members of the management team and exceptional customer service.
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Consulting Alliances
Delivering Succesful Digital Transformations
Global and regional advisory and consulting firms bring deep finance domain expertise, process transformation leadership, and shared passion for customer value creation to our joint customers. Our consulting partners help guide large enterprise and midsize organizations undergoing digital transformation by maximizing and accelerating value from BlackLine’s solutions.
Solution Provider Partners
Guiding Customers to Long-Term Success
BlackLine’s Solution Providers are experienced business software resellers who know and understand the finance and accounting function and the associated challenges that organizations face. They ensure our customers’ success with BlackLine from the initial solution validation process through deployments and long-term customer care and long-term success.
Software & Cloud Partners
Integrate Your Finance Tech Stack
BlackLine and our ecosystem of software and cloud partners work together to transform our joint customers’ finance and accounting processes. Together, we provide innovative solutions that help F&A teams achieve shorter close cycles and better controls, enabling them to drive better decision-making across the company.
Business Process Outsourcers
Driving Automation with Your Outsourcing Provider
BlackLine partners with top global Business Process Outsourcers and equips them with solutions to better serve their clients and achieve market-leading automation, efficiencies, and risk control. By outsourcing, businesses can achieve stronger compliance, gain a deeper level of industry knowledge, and grow without unnecessary costs.
ONLY 14% OF GLOBAL CFOs CONFIDENT THAT FINANCE FUNCTION HAS SKILLS NEEDED FOR GROWTH POST PANDEMIC
Research from BlackLine suggests Finance and Accounting is struggling to keep up with the pace of digital transformation across the wider business
LOS ANGELES, LONDON, SINGAPORE and SYDNEY – Nov. 9, 2021 – A global survey of C-suite executives and finance professionals commissioned by BlackLine, Inc. (Nasdaq: BL), a leading provider of financial controls and automation software, has revealed that just 14% of CFOs are confident that their finance function has the skills required to help their organization grow and adapt over the next five years. Furthermore, more than a third (35%) of C-suite respondents believe Finance and Accounting (F&A) is failing to keep up with other areas of the business when it comes to digital transformation.
The survey of 1,150 business leaders and finance professionals (conducted by independent research agency Censuswide across the US, UK, Germany, France, Singapore and Australia) suggests that talent acquisition and retention are high on the C-suite’s agenda as companies seek to implement more aggressive growth strategies post-pandemic. However, it also identifies a major skills gap that threatens F&A’s ability to provide the consultancy, analysis, planning and due diligence required to support these broader business goals.
New Generation of Talent Critical for Growth
With close to a third (32%) of C-suite respondents saying they are planning to focus more on international markets for growth and acquisitions and a similar number (31%) planning to be more aggressive when it comes to acquisitive growth over the next 12 months, skills will be critical. Many C-suite executives plan to invest heavily in talent with nearly a quarter of these respondents (24%) focusing on developing existing talent from within, and a similar number (23%) on new talent acquisition at a leadership level to drive post-pandemic recovery and growth.
The Finance Challenge
The research showed that skills and talent are particular concerns for CFOs. When asked what their most pressing business concerns are for the next five years, many CFOs (32%) said maintaining a robust balance sheet is their number one priority, but almost the same number said the same of acquiring new talent (30%). This concern is likely being driven by a skills shortage within F&A, something that was acknowledged by most survey respondents, with only a fifth (20%) expressing confidence that F&A currently has the right skillset.
The Post-Pandemic Skills Gap: Need for Talent With Concurrent Tech and Business Skills
When asked about the skills their organization currently has within the finance function, both C-suite executives and finance professionals highlighted a number of vital gaps. More than a third (38%) of respondents said that not everyone in their finance team has the broad business leadership knowledge or skills required today. A similar number (35%) said that not everyone in their finance team has the skills to help with more strategic work (like analysis and planning).
31% of global CFO respondents said they do not currently have enough people with software and technology experience within the finance function. Furthermore, when asked what the biggest challenge is for recruiting future F&A talent, more than a third (36%) of overall respondents noted that it is difficult to find candidates with both technology and F&A skills.
“It’s positive to see that so many companies are now focusing on growth and that business leaders plan to pursue ambitious strategies to make this happen. The global economy is in a period of recovery and it is vital that the finance function, which lies at the heart of business, is appropriately skilled to address the many challenges ahead,” said BlackLine CEO Marc Huffman. “Business leaders must ensure that we retain and develop the people we have and are also in a position to attract the best the market has to offer; but as the survey shows, this can be challenging.”
The Way Forward
Responses suggest there are a number of areas businesses could invest in to help solve this modern-day skills gap, including updating outdated technology or processes. The importance of addressing these issues is clear, with a quarter of respondents (25%) saying legacy technology and processes at their organization make it difficult to attract the best candidates. In fact, legacy technology and processes were seen as more of a challenge for recruitment than being able to offer a competitive salary (19%). Other challenges and opportunities identified include:
The need to reduce transactional, mundane work. When asked about the biggest negative impact on finance employee retention the top three issues were: a lack of opportunities to develop new skills because transactional work takes up so much time (28%); no time to focus on future career development (26%); and becoming bored with the mundane, repetitive nature of the job (26%).
Addressing outdated perceptions of F&A roles that make it challenging to recruit good candidates. When asked what stops people from starting a career in F&A, a lack of understanding about F&A’s integral role within the wider business was identified as the main reason by both C-suite execs and finance professionals.
Revising traditional educational pathways that young F&A candidates tend to follow. 29% of C-suite and F&A professionals believe academic courses need to focus more on technology skills.
Mr. Huffman continued: “Finding people with the right technology and F&A skills seems to be at the heart of the issue. To attract the best and the brightest finance talent moving forward, we must reevaluate tools, training and development, in addition to the perceived role that F&A plays within the business. Delivery of business growth as opposed to purely survival will be dependent upon building a finance function that is as technology literate as it is financially literate. People need to be freed from the mundane and given the space to focus on strategic business insight and value.”
More information, including a detailed whitepaper on the research, can be found here.
Notes to editors
A qualitative survey was conducted by Censuswide with 575 C-level and 576 F&A professionals in six markets (the US, UK, France, Germany, Australia, and Singapore), with minimum annual revenues as follows:
UK: 50m GBP
France: 50m EURO
Germany: 50m EURO
Singapore: 20m SGD
US: 150m USD
Australia: 20m AUD
Additionally, four qualitative interviews were conducted with university academics lecturing in Finance and Accounting in the following markets: US, UK, France and Germany.
**About BlackLine
**Companies come to BlackLine (Nasdaq: BL) because their traditional manual accounting processes are not sustainable. BlackLine’s cloud-based solutions and market-leading customer service help companies move to modern accounting by unifying their data and processes, automating repetitive work, and driving accountability through visibility. BlackLine provides solutions to manage and automate financial close, accounts receivable and intercompany accounting processes, helping large enterprises and midsize companies across all industries do accounting work better, faster and with more control.
More than 3,700 customers trust BlackLine to help them close faster with complete and accurate results. The company is the pioneer of the cloud financial close market and recognized as the leader by customers at leading end-user review sites including Gartner Peer Insights, G2 and TrustRadius. Based in Los Angeles, BlackLine also has regional headquarters in London, Singapore and Sydney. For more information, please visit blackline.com.