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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Elevate control in the cloud.
Unify all compliance documentation, projects, and stakeholders in one globally accessible, cloud platform to maximize visibility. Link controls to related risks, narratives, and projects, and ensure version control.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Powerful technology is only part of the story.
To truly transform your finance and accounting processes, you need the guidance of a trusted partner. Our proven approach has helped thousands of customers identify and address bottlenecks to free up capacity, strengthen controls, and deliver measurable results.
Your playbook for rapid success and proven value.
Using our unique experience and expertise, we will help you identify your most pressing accounting challenges and quickly deploy our software by providing a clear vision and predictable, confident delivery and implementation.
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.
Industry-leading customer support anytime, anywhere
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.
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.
Join an exclusive community of more than 350,000 accounting professionals.
BlackLine users around the world get access to key resources to develop expertise, interact with peers in F&A to exchange ideas and leading practices, and share their feedback to guide future product development.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
We are here for your mission-critical accounting operations.
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.
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.
BlackLine's leadership team is built on experience and expertise. Every executive is committed to ensuring transformational success for every customer.
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.
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.
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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.
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.
Wondering what it's like to work at BlackLine? Don't take our word for it. We've been voted Best Place to Work by Inc. Magazine four years in a row. Built in LA ranks us in their top 20 best places to work in LA. Better still? We have in-office and remote-work openings all over the world.
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.
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.
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.
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.
June 19, 2019
Reconciliation in Accounting is the process of ensuring account balances are correct between two accounts at the end of an accounting period. Reconciliations help automate the financial close process.
Accountants perform account reconciliation with the following steps:
Compare account balances between various independent systems
Verify statements and reports for accuracy and investigate discrepancies when identified
Take action to correct these identified discrepancies
This process is an important internal control. Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act mandates that public companies include an assessment of their internal controls over financial reporting with their annual report.
More specifically, companies must reconcile all balance sheet accounts that could contain a significant or material misstatement. Doing so allows entities to identify and post all necessary adjustments to the general ledger in a timely manner, ensuring the completeness and accuracy of the financial statements.
Many organizations are unable to complete the reconciliation process in a timely manner, which introduces risk. Companies that adopt a more automated, Continuous Accounting approach benefit from a more preventive control environment and reduced risk of misstatement.
The account reconciliation process is generally carried out after the close of a financial period:
Accountants go through each account in the general ledger of accounts and verify that the balance listed is correct and accurate.
This involves comparing the general ledger account balance with other independent sources of this data, such as bank and credit card statements.
When discrepancies are found, accountants investigate and take appropriate corrective action.
This may involve making journal entries to correct balance errors.
All information found, analysis performed, and actions taken are stored for audit purposes.
The account reconciliation process must be completed before a company can certify the integrity of its financial information and issue financial statements.
Account reconciliation software automates all of the steps in the account reconciliation process. It takes in data from all sources of financial information, such as ERP systems, bank files or statements, credit card processors, and merchant services.
It then compares account balances between these sources, and identifies any discrepancies so they can be investigated by accounting staff. This removes the burden of manually performing this task, and frees accountants to focus on analyzing discrepancies.
Account Reconciliation software features include:
Automated review and approval workflows with proper segregation of duties
Reconciliation templates and checklists to standardize processes
Integrated storage of supporting documentation for easy review and audit
Links to applicable policies and procedures for easy reference
BlackLine Account Reconciliations is designed to streamline all aspects of the account reconciliation process. It adds proper controls and automation, imports data from any source, and is compatible with all major ERP systems.
Configurable validation rules allow for the auto-certification of low-risk accounts, significantly reducing the workload of accounting staff. When discrepancies do exist and require analysis, customizable templates, checklists, and integrated storage for supporting documentation ensure that reconciliation processes are standardized across the organization.
BlackLine Transaction Matching further automates processes by enabling the comparison and validation of transaction-level account data. This allows accountants to view the exact transactions that are not matching in various systems and statements, decreasing the time spent locating discrepancies. This is particularly useful for high-volume reconciliations, such as credit card reconciliations.
Finally, when correcting journal entries are required, the BlackLine Journal Entry product automates this portion of the process as well.
Templates are designed to replace error-prone spreadsheets, allowing accountants to perform reconciliations within the BlackLine software. Accountants can automatically roll-forward items, attach support, and eliminate formula errors. For example, an amortizable prepaid template guides the preparer to enter specific details, including the prepaid name, total amount, and to and from dates, which automatically create an online amortization schedule in BlackLine.
Throughout the life of the prepaid, if the month-end GL account balance matches the expected balance in BlackLine, the account is auto-certified.
Auto-certification is a notable benefit in BlackLine. Organizations can configure rules based on their internal policies and controls to further optimize the account reconciliation process.
This approach increases control globally and at the account level, allowing organizations to implement thresholds and set the frequencies automatically.
Accountants are freed from worrying about incomplete or messy reconciliations and can instead focus on the high-risk accounts, analysis, and adding strategic value to the organization.
One of the challenges of a manual reconciliation process is accountability. With no automation around workflow and no reportability of status, it’s difficult to ensure policies are adhered to and work is being completed timely by the appropriate resources.
Accountants must manage workloads individually, set calendar reminders, and follow up with managers via email to complete reconciliations on time. Leadership must then rely on word of mouth or manual checks to ensure policies were properly followed.
BlackLine, on the other hand, automatically tracks and manages assignments, workflow, status, and due dates. The system also captures a complete audit trail, so a record is always available of who prepared, approved, and reviewed a reconciliation, along with the date and time the action occurred.
And what’s more, BlackLine automatically enforces segregation of duties. The same person cannot prepare and approve a reconciliation—an essential point of control.
Ever spend hours at the copy machine scanning and copying supporting documents for audit purposes? What about organizing those papers or looking through binders and digital folders to find them—and then sending them off to a third-party storage site once they’ve reached a certain age?
And what if a document is missing or incomplete—a control issue for auditors to feast on.
With BlackLine’s cloud platform, supporting documentation is easily stored and accessible at the item or account level, so you never have to go searching again. The uploading user’s name and the date and time is automatically recorded with the attachment, and no one else can edit information.
Furthermore, BlackLine allows you to group like accounts together, so supporting documentation can be attached once rather than duplicated for multiple accounts.
Lastly, read-only access to BlackLine can be granted to auditors, eliminating the need to provide supporting documentation separately. This self-service approach allows auditors to view completed reconciliations and access the support they need for testing and assessing controls on their own.
Time and time again, we’ve seen organizations that approach implementation with a narrow scope create more challenges down the road. This stems from the mentality of, “let’s fix account recs today and worry about streamlining variance analysis tomorrow.”
For example, Company A wants to improve verification, simplify audits, and enhance internal controls, so they implement BlackLine’s Account Reconciliations solution. In the rush to get through the implementation process and minimize disruption, the organization opts for a limited data import, thinking, “we don’t reconcile these accounts, so let’s not import those files.”
But this approach doesn’t save time. In fact, it creates more work, now and in the future.
Company A may have streamlined reconciliations with a “quick implementation” approach, but when they’re ready to add more functionality—like Variance Analysis—they’ll need to import their data (and likely, more of it) all over again.
And each subsequent software implementation, instead of getting easier, requires more time, more money, and more effort.
Leadership expert Stephen Covey’s adage, “begin with the end in mind,” isn’t just sage advice for individuals. It’s also great advice for anyone implementing accounting software solutions.
Organizations that approach streamlining the financial close with a big-picture mentality realize that the very first software implementation—be it a solution that auto-certifies reconciliations or one that matches millions of transactions—is the most critical.
These companies address key issues in the beginning by importing all their data, fixing broken processes, identifying and addressing long-standing discrepancies, and preparing accountants for ongoing (but manageable) change.
Read this blog to learn more about how your organization can improve the account reconciliation process.