Enhance Your Reconciliations with BlackLine Account Analysis Template Controls

BlackLine’s account analysis template controls provide a powerful way to standardize the commenting and analysis procedures within your organization’s account reconciliation process.

Activating account analysis template controls within your BlackLine reconciliation product adds a new section to your chosen template. It displays the previous and current period balances and provides a dedicated space where team members can explain fluctuations between balances.

As an organization grows, it may have a sudden spike in revenue in the current period that, as someone reviews those entries, triggers an understandable question of what caused the increase. The gain could result from the organization landing a large client or order or a surge in smaller transactions that combine to create a large total.

Because these scenarios can have different implications for the organization’s ability to collect and recognize the revenue, it can be helpful for reviewers or auditors to quickly understand the factors driving the increase.

The dedicated comment field within a BlackLine account analysis template control provides this space. Management or auditors can see what’s going on without having to drill down into other fields or ask questions about the factors causing the large increase.

One advantage of activating the template controls is standardizing the organization’s approach to comments among the various reconciliation templates. Just as the templates increase efficiency and standardization within each specific reconciliation, activating the account analysis control ensures a consistent approach to understanding and commenting on fluctuations.

If someone has a question about the organization’s performance, they can access the information they need without having to drill into the underlying data or to search for comments.

Any organization using BlackLine’s account reconciliation product can add account analysis template controls to their various templates by asking their administrator to activate the feature within the desired template.

As with any customization, BlackLine’s best practices call for the administrator to clone the standard template and add the control to the cloned template. This allows the organization to maintain an unaltered copy of the original template if it needs to restore or revert to it.

If you’re interested in improving your financial close process or learning more about how BlackLine can help, contact our team.

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Sensiba San Filippo LLP (SSF) is a BlackLine Partner and award-winning tax, audit, and consulting firm. Our professionals help clients leverage BlackLine’s easy-to-use suite of powerful finance automation tools to improve their finance function’s efficiency and controls. We take the time to understand your goals and work alongside you through every step of the process including planning and implementation, system optimization, and training your staff. Visit us online to learn more about our BlackLine Software Services.