BlackLine home page Financial Close Management
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.
Account Reconciliations
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.
Task Management
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.
Transaction Matching
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.
Journal Entry
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.
Compliance
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.
Variance Analysis
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.
Smart Close for SAP
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.
Accounts Receivable Automation
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.
Cash Application
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.
Credit & Risk Management
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.
Collections Management
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.
Disputes & Deductions
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.
Team & Task Management
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.
AR Intelligence
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.
Intercompany Financial Management
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.
Intercompany Non-Trade
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.
Intercompany Balance & Resolve
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.
Intercompany Net & Settle
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.
BlackLine for Midsize Organizations
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.
BlackLine for Large Enterprises
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.
BlackLine for Banking & Financial Services
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.
BlackLine for Consumer Products & Services
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.
BlackLine for Energy & Raw Materials
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.
BlackLine for Healthcare & Life Sciences
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.
BlackLine for Manufacturing
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.
BlackLine for Retail
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.
BlackLine for Technology, Media & Communications
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.
SAP Solutions by BlackLine
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.
Companies Running on Oracle Close Faster with BlackLine
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.
BlackLine is Built for NetSuite
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.
Agile Solutions for Dynamic Organizations
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.
Environmental, Social, and Governance
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.
Recruiting & Retaining Top Talent
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.
Enabling an ERP Transformation
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.
Customer Success
Customer Success Stories
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.
BlackLine returns $2.77 for every dollar spent
Collaborative Accounting Experience
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.
Advance your modern accounting journey with BlackLine’s Optimization Academy.
Modern Accounting Playbook
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.
Transform with a clear vision and predictable approach
BlackLine Services
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.
Learn more about BlackLine’s comprehensive training and education services.
CUSTOMER SUPPORT
Global Support
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.
Access our support team 24x7x365.
Developer Portal
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.
Explore our APIs to maximum integration.
BlackLine Community
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.
Login to learn, collaborate, and get the help you need.
Events
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.
BeyondTheBlack EMEA 2023
Upcoming Webinars
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.
On-Demand Webinars
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.
White Papers
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.
12 Keys to Financial Operations Excellence
Blog
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.
Explore the latest in F&A innovations.
Accounting Glossary
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.
Your guide to key F&A terms and definitions.
Global Support
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.
Access our support team 24x7x365.
About BlackLine
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.
Leadership
BlackLine's leadership team is built on experience and expertise. Every executive is committed to ensuring transformational success for every customer.
Diversity, Equity & Inclusion
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.
Environmental, Social & Governance
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.
In the News
Explore original-content media coverage, commentary and analysis of BlackLine at top-tier business, trade, local and vertical media outlets, as well as contributed articles written by BlackLine experts and placed with leading media organizations.
Press Releases
Stay up to date on the latest corporate and high-level product developments at BlackLine. Here you will find a one-stop resource listing recent and historical news items, including announcement of new clients/partners, awards, new offices/facilities, personnel appointments/ changes, major software enhancements, executive speeches and upcoming events.
Investors
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.
Awards & Recognition
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.
Take the next step in your career.
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.
Be a leader. Join the leader.
Consulting Alliances
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.
Solution Provider Partners
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.
Software & Cloud Partners
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.
Business Process Outsourcers
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.
Global Visibility into Account Reconciliations
Every second, more than $2,100 worth of items are sold on eBay, accounting for nearly $70 billion in transactions generated each year. eBay, Inc.’s position as a global commerce giant is fortified by another roughly $100 billion in commerce enabled by its other brands, such as eBay enterprise, PayPal, Bill Me Later, and StubHub.
THE CHALLENGE
For eBay, facilitating such an extraordinarily high volume of commerce creates a whirlwind of financial dealings with vendors, merchants, and advertisers. eBay has more than 100 legal entities around the world, including multiple entities in many countries of operation, and the corporation must reconcile hundreds of balance sheet accounts for each of them.
With a few exceptions, eBay strives for a single instance of SAP ERP for global visibility into its financial picture. However, an intricate system of accounts complicated its month-end financial close resulting in a process that could take up to 10 days. A major reason for this extended cycle was that the company relied on a mostly manual, paper-based account reconciliation system—with employees repeatedly tracking down supporting documents in three-ring binders, making copies, and then refiling.
Tom Hoover, senior manager of finance systems at eBay, recalls a lot of running around by everyone in accounting. “Because of the nature of our business, we often get requests for documentation that goes back several years,” he says. “So, our people in accounting would have to go to offsite storage centers to hunt down the documents. It was very labor-intensive.”
When supporting documentation was required for several different legal entities, it set off rounds of phone calls and emails to track down and file the necessary paperwork. Language barriers, time differences, and planned or unplanned days off all contributed to potential hold-ups. A 24-hour lag time was built into the financial close cycle to account for these inefficiencies but couldn’t prevent some open-ended accounts due mainly to the sheer number of accounting teams across the globe.
WHY BLACKLINE
After a discovery phase where eBay identified several inefficiencies in its global financial close processes, the business sought a vendor that could help with the modernization effort. That search quickly identified BlackLine as the best option to deliver the accounting functionality needed. eBay chose BlackLine in part because of its seamless integration with SAP ERP Financials, and implemented the Journal Entry, Task Management, and Account Reconciliations modules, going live with all three simultaneously with little to no customization. Upon implementation, BlackLine was processing approximately 10,000 account reconciliations, 17,000 journal entries, and what had been 7,000 manual-based tasks.
Though the implementation was virtually hassle-free, an early and expected challenge was bringing the hundreds of eBay employees who would be using the new technology up to speed with how it works and interfaces with SAP ERP. To aid with training, as well as to create a traceable audit trail, eBay used BlackLine functionality to designate specific users as either system or local administrators. eBay then trained the administrators in its various legal entities around the world, who in turn trained their direct reports.
This training, according to Hoover, was considerably easy. “I administer multiple financial systems, and by far, the fewest number of questions I receive involve BlackLine,” he says. eBay also made good use of video and web-based training through BlackLine U.
THE RESULTS
Prior to migrating platforms, eBay had taken steps to transfer and consolidate the accounting operations for its repeatable, non-critical reconciliations to a single shared services center in India. While centralizing these accounting functions created efficiencies, there was some sense of controllers losing a bit of visibility into their local accounts. This became a non-issue when eBay transitioned to BlackLine’s cloud model. “It was a seamless move for us because we didn’t lose any of the visibility; it was just being done somewhere else. And with BlackLine’s on-demand, web-based system, we had visibility into it all the way through the entire process,” Hoover says.
With key reconciliations processed in one of three major regions serving its legal entities—Europe, Asia, and North America—the multi-language and multi-currency functionality within BlackLine were important as well. Throughout the transition, eBay had local administrators on-hand in each of these regions and India, but in the end, there was constant global visibility through the BlackLine system.
This improved visibility from having an always up-to-date snapshot of account reconciliations or tasks enables a larger benefit: better organization of financial processes at the enterprise level. According to Hoover, employees are benefiting by something as simple as now being able to check on progress by logging into the BlackLine system from home.
In a nutshell, the new landscape means much less running around. “As far as reconciliations and accounting functions were concerned, BlackLine took care of that in one stop. It was palpable,” Hoover says. “I sit next to the accounting department, and it was easy to get a sense of the efficiencies gained with BlackLine.”
eBay’s financial close cycle is now three days, which allows auditors and tax preparers to begin and complete their tasks in a shortened window because incomplete reconciliations are nonexistent. The business has streamlined its auditing processes with the auditor self-service capability in the BlackLine system, whereby eBay can assign permission to auditors to log into the system directly.
With up to roughly 40 active audit accounts inside of BlackLine at a time, the increased visibility into account reconciliations allows those auditors to find what they need without having to rely on eBay’s dedicated resources. This holds true for Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) compliance as well. In the past, eBay had to set aside resources to work with SOX compliance teams to ensure the needed reconciliations were complete. Today, an interface proactively sends over a list of the reconciled accounts directly to those SOX teams based on rules and alerts set up by administrators in the BlackLine system.