How To Control, Validate & Streamline Financial Statement Analyses

In recent years, many organizations have streamlined or automated key closing activities. However, pre-consolidation processes often remain time-consuming and highly manual. For example, companies must analyze variances at the consolidated or financial statement level for control and audit purposes.

Because results are recorded and validated at the local level, identifying, explaining, and aggregating fluctuation explanations is a siloed, ineffective, and administrative exercise.

For many companies, the process goes something like this:

1) Financial data is exported from consolidation systems

2) Variances are calculated in spreadsheets

3) Explanations for unusual or unexpected items are sourced and compiled through emails or shared files

The result of these reactive, inefficient steps is that ad-hoc or real-time analyses are nearly impossible. There is also a disconnect between corporate financial reporting teams and local business and accounting leaders.

Things get even more complicated when you introduce multiple entities, currencies, and reporting jurisdictions. Now you’ve got additional complexity and risk, among other challenges, including:

• Limited time to investigate exceptions 

• Increased risk of human error

• Delayed reporting or ineffective controls

• Difficult, time-consuming audits

BlackLine has a solution to these challenges: BlackLine Financial Reporting Analytics. It enables analysis and validation of group-level or consolidated financial data with direct, real-time visibility into the local or underlying details.

With this modern solution, you have a centralized workspace with end-to-end transparency. Financial Reporting Analytics automates ledger-to-ledger, statutory-to-GAAP, tax-to-GAAP, and system-to-system reconciliation to ensure the completeness and accuracy of consolidated fluctuation calculations. This helps teams eliminate time wasted on manual workflows and redeploys Finance and Accounting to focus on exceptions and other priorities.

To help speed up decision-making and reporting capabilities, you can view consolidated financial statements, drill into account details, view validations, and assign, perform, and document fluctuations and exceptions at any level, any time, and from anywhere.

At BeyondTheBlack 2022, Therese Tucker, BlackLine’s founder and executive chair, unveiled many of the key features of BlackLine’s new solution, demonstrating how the company can further enable a faster close for its customers.

Unified Data & Streamlined Workflows: Seamlessly import information from other systems, define and manage account groupings, and easily map general ledger accounts to your balance sheet and income statement line items within BlackLine. Easily assign ownership of required explanations, reviews, and controls certifications to local business units.

Centralized Documentation: Attach and store all supporting documentation and aggregate explanations in one location. Report on status, incomplete items, and other KPIs with purpose-built dashboards and reports.

Automated Calculation & Enhanced Control: Calculate variances, set thresholds and tolerances, and flag unusual items automatically without the need for spreadsheets or emails.

Multi-Currency Capability: Translate data in multiple currencies using multiple rate types.

It’s time to replace error-prone, reactive processes with a proactive, preventive approach that strengthens key controls and enables more timely insights.