7 minute read
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.
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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.
November 29, 2022
7 minute read
Are corporations that need to protect working capital prepared for the coming financial headwinds?
In today’s world of accounting management, uncertainty and market volatility have become the norm. Ongoing financial and political upheavals have led CFOs and accounting teams, seeking to protect net working capital (NWC), to make decisions in a crisis-to-crisis fashion.
Corporations should therefore pay close attention to the most recent PwC report. “Working Capital Study 22/23” provides an all-too-real overview of how corporations are trying to navigate market uncertainties and why they should consider making adjustments to their financial strategies.
At the outset, the report highlights a few positive NWC ratio indicators. Since 2020, there has been a 2.5% fall in annual NWC day (a five-year low), a €0.8 trillion increase in working capital, and continued recovery from the heightened levels of the pandemic.
But the report also warns about “trouble brewing under the surface.” It speaks to impending financial “headwinds” that include rising inflation, supply chain disruptions, and the war in Ukraine and characterizes companies around the world as being unprepared for what’s to come:
“So is this the cue for high fives all round and a sigh of relief for having weathered the storm? Unfortunately, the short answer is no. The working capital ratios set out in the last annual financial statements show some signs of recovery. But, when we dig into the details, there are still some worrying trends and untapped opportunities to boost capital efficiency.”
To properly and sustainably protect NWC and manage accounting processes, it’s critical that companies ask some key questions:
How are we currently reacting to post-pandemic market curveballs?
How do these behaviors fit into our long-term business strategies?
Could these reactions be negatively impacting NWC?
Do we have untapped resources that could help develop more sustainable strategies to combat unpredictable market volatility?
Let’s take a look at what corporations are currently doing to try to guard against economic “turbulence” and how they can develop better long-term financial strategies to combat today’s market uncertainties.
“Just-in-Case” Approaches
The overall picture of cash position as laid out in the PwC report—declining by 10% in 2021 from 70 to 63 days—is encouraging and indicates that companies are operating with a “cash buffer to withstand uncertainties.”
Yet the report raises the concern that there is a “lag” that may lead to “a false sense of security.” Furthermore, as corporations try to stay ahead of unrelenting supply chain disruption, they adopt “just-in-case” approaches, such as:
Over-ordering, which can lead to inventory levels that fail to match market demand
High stock write-offs
Increased allocation planning driven by shortfalls and constrained capacity
Reactionary approaches might provide some salve, but they also exponentially increase “the risks of future obsolescence by extending the response time to dips in demand, as well as increased capital consumption from running at higher safety stock levels.”
The report states that corporations seem to be missing the fact that inventory performance has remained largely static. “Improvements in the working capital ratio have stalled,” the report notes. “And while it is still better than before the pandemic, we’re starting to see more signs of supply chain disruption filtering through to working capital performance.”
These issues are exacerbated by rising inflation (which the report predicts will continue for the next two years) and less access to borrowing due to rising interest rates. With central banks increasing interest rates to combat inflation around the world, corporate cash flows are coming under intense pressure. The result of this “lending squeeze” will mean that both funding and working capital will become more costly.
Driving Efficiency & Financial Resilience
With predictions of slow and weak growth, stubborn inflationary pressure, and high financing costs, the report encourages corporations wanting to protect working capital, steer through economic turbulence, and boost growth to ask themselves some key strategic questions. For example:
What is the optimal level of working capital for their businesses?
What adverse economic developments could jeopardize their working capital position?
How can they uncover and release cash that’s tied up?
Are operational processes ready to react to future disruption and proactively protect cash flow?
It’s worth zeroing in on that last question about readiness. It underscores the need for companies to adopt automated AR processes to free up working capital not available to treasury and lines of credit. This allows customers to keep spending and minimizes risk, bad debt, and revenue being backed out of the business.
By expanding team capacity and improving decision intelligence, organizations will be able to optimize working capital, brace for ongoing market shifts and volatility, and strengthen sustainable planning and growth efforts.
Improve Resiliency by Optimizing Working Capital
With “wider economic and liquidity headwinds looming” and debt funding becoming more expensive, the PwC report indicates that companies should “rethink” the way they approach working capital and stock reduction write-downs.
“The pressure on liquidity is steadily increasing,” states the report. “This makes it more important than ever to sharpen your focus on cash flow management and drive working capital optimization.”
But just how to get there? Is there a way for companies to achieve accounts receivable excellence in order to mitigate the evolving pressures on working capital?
Here at BlackLine, we answer that question with a resounding yes. We’re accustomed to working with organizations needing to protect working capital so they can optimize AR business performance and soften the impact of inflation pressures, interest rate hikes, and supply chain bottlenecks.
We do this through the adoption of next-generation, intelligent AR automation, an approach that gains efficiencies across processes, departments, and global entities, saving many hours of staff time and, even more importantly, strengthening organizations’ ability to navigate unpredictable, volatile market changes.
By replacing inefficient, manual AR processes, companies can increase working capital. They are also better able to manage behavioral changes of customers facing cash crises, work through supply chain disruptions, and quickly prioritize payment processes, effectively reducing days sales outstanding (DSO) lag time.
Accounts receivable optimization helps to offset the problems created by operating in “just-in-case” mode and address issues in a holistic, sustainable ways, such as:
Optimizing business performance. Increases working capital and availability of cash that are critical to a company’s success; collects more cash and significantly reduces DSO by increasing overall productivity and prioritizing the actions that have the highest impact.
Maximizing AR team capacity and efficiency. Improves productivity and morale while reducing costs by eliminating manual and error-prone processes; elevates control, gains visibility, and measures all parts of the process while achieving global standardization.
Elevating AR intelligence and data-driven decisions. Improves clarity and real-time decision intelligence by providing the most accurate, up-to-date data that’s critical for sales, operations, and treasury departments.
Improving customer and business relationships. Better communication and operational efficiency allow companies to become more reliable, trusted business partners, which could not be more important in challenging times.
According to the report, companies trying to protect working capital are sitting on unused resources. In fact, PwC estimates that companies have on their balance sheets €1.49 trillion in excess working capital, “money that could be put to much more productive uses.” One effective use of this surplus would be to automate AR systems.
One example of a company that has been able to harness the efficiency of AR automation is Brambles. The large supply chain logistics company adopted BlackLine’s Cash Application platform to streamline the cash application process. Prior to implementing Cash Application, Brambles outsourced its cash application process which made it costly and difficult to manage. Some of its regions, such as Africa and Latin America, didn’t have any automated processes.
Intelligent automation now ensures minimal manual intervention with matching algorithms accurately processing receipts without remittances. Brambles systematically implemented Cash Application region by region, enabling the organization to standardize the process while adhering to local requirements. As a result, the company’s Latin America team was able to move from manual processing to an auto-match rate of more than 75%. Overall company-wide auto-match rates rose from less than 38% to more than 80%. In places like the United States, they were as high as 92%.
The transformation of cash application processes positively impacted collections and cash flow and improved working capital, even as the company continued to grow.
Benefits Brambles achieved from automating cash flow processes:
Increased global auto-match rate from less than 38% to over 80%
Gained global visibility into cash flow
Improved ability to accommodate local requirements and acquisitions
Standardized the cash application process
Reassigned staff to perform customer-valued work
Learn how BlackLine’s solution provides the technology and know-how to replace time-consuming, manual processes and better protect NWC for the long-term—no matter how unpredictable and volatile global markets get.