How Controllers Can Eliminate Errors, Delays, and Complexity by Improving Intercompany Processes

Controllers often find themselves grappling with fragmented and error-prone intercompany processes that disrupt financial close cycles and increase operational risk. Misaligned data, manual reconciliations, and inconsistent policies across entities lead to delays, heightened audit risks, and costly inefficiencies. These bottlenecks strain resources and compromise the accuracy of financial reporting.

Inefficient intercompany processes come with hidden financial risks that can significantly impact an organization’s bottom line. Those risks can include compliance penalties, audit failures, and regulatory fines that often stem from inconsistent data handling and a lack of standardization across global entities.

Persistent reliance on manual processes slows down the financial close, making it difficult for controllers to produce timely and accurate enterprise-wide reports. These delays can obscure critical insights and disrupt strategic decision-making.

Intercompany is riddled with challenges that complicate the financial close and increase operational risk for controllers.

1) Unmatched transactions across entities: Discrepancies between intercompany transactions are common, leading to time-consuming reconciliations and delayed closings. Resolving these mismatches often requires manual intervention, increasing the risk of errors.

2) Lack of standardization: Without consistent processes across global entities, controllers struggle to enforce policies and maintain accurate reporting, exposing the organization to compliance risks.

3) ERP system limitations: While ERP systems handle transactional data, they often fall short in managing complex intercompany transactions, leaving controllers to fill gaps with spreadsheets and manual adjustments.

4) Cost of manual reconciliations: Labor-intensive reconciliations not only consume valuable time but also increase operational costs and the likelihood of errors, impacting overall efficiency.

Addressing these issues requires a standardized, technology-driven approach that streamlines processes and reduces manual intervention.

For controllers, intercompany accounting can be a tangle of noise and complexity highlighted by the challenges discussed above. It's a time-consuming process that keeps teams stuck in reactive, rear-looking detective work, instead of focusing on what truly matters: providing expert financial guidance to the business. Unlike CFOs, whose focus is often broader and more strategic, controllers are uniquely positioned to fine-tune these processes at the operational level—where errors are caught early, data is standardized, and inefficiencies are rooted out before they escalate. 

The challenge: How do you move from constant error correction to proactive oversight?

The answer lies in automation. By implementing proactive controls and automation around intercompany processes, controllers and their teams can reduce risk, streamline audits, and gain quicker insight into financial positions across subsidiaries. This shift accelerates the close and empowers controllers to deliver actionable insights that drive business decisions.

BlackLine addresses these challenges by providing a unified platform that streamlines intercompany transactions, enforces standardization, and ensures real-time visibility, empowering controllers to eliminate errors, reduce complexity, and accelerate the close.

BlackLine offers the only holistic solution that revolutionizes intercompany accounting by addressing the most persistent challenges that controllers face. BlackLine will help your organization:

• Gain Visibility and Unify Data from Multiple ERPs: With seamless integration capabilities, BlackLine consolidates data from multiple ERP systems, ensuring consistency and real-time visibility across all entities.

• Standardize Billing Across Entities: BlackLine enforces global standardization for intercompany billing, reducing discrepancies and simplifying compliance with local and international regulations.

• Increase Accuracy with AI: Advanced AI-driven automation detects anomalies, flags potential issues, and optimizes reconciliations, empowering controllers to close faster with greater confidence.

Controllers are uniquely positioned to drive process standardization in intercompany accounting because they sit at the intersection of financial accuracy, compliance, and operational efficiency. Their deep understanding of transaction flows, regulatory requirements, and reporting standards enables them to identify bottlenecks and inconsistencies that disrupt the financial close.

By leading standardization efforts, controllers can enforce consistent policies across global entities, minimize errors, and streamline reconciliations to reduce audit risks and accelerate closing cycles. They’ll also empower the finance organization with clearer insights and stronger governance. With BlackLine, controllers can ensure smoother, more compliant operations worldwide.

BlackLine is the only solution for controllers looking to transform their intercompany accounting from a source of frustration into a streamlined, automated process.

Our holistic solutions manage both trade and non-trade transactions and frees up controllers to shift their focus from tedious processes to strategic oversight, enabling faster closes, reduced risk, and greater financial accuracy.