As a provider of outsourced accounting and HR services to the grocery, retail, and hospitality industries, FLORES has a diverse customer base. “Our biggest challenge is that we have different clients who have different needs,” says Allison Yandall, director of accounting at FLORES.

“Some clients just want to make sure the bills are paid every day. And then other clients want to know that every single balance sheet account is reconciled and accounted for, and every P&L account is in line.”

Prior to 2021, FLORES’ management team relied on spreadsheets to reconcile all client balance sheet accounts.

“We would type the ending balances from our GLs into an Excel sheet to show the actual balance. We would then type into another column the balance we expected, and then explain any variances in another column,” says Yandall. “On a monthly basis we reconcile over 9,000 accounts, so that was a lot of manual work.”

“Working in Excel, there was no good way to attach backup that showed how we got those numbers. In order to do an audit of the work prepared, you had to know where we stored that backup—and we had to trust that the backup was being saved where it was supposed to be saved.”

FLORES’ reliance on spreadsheets also left staff with little visibility into individual client accounts.

“One of my biggest hurdles was overseeing not only that the work was being done, but that it was being done accurately as well,” says Yandall.

When a client, in preparation for going public, requested tighter controls around all of their accounting processes, FLORES realized they needed a better reconciliation solution. “It spurred a conversation around how we could more efficiently meet various client needs,” says Yandall. “One thing we knew we had to do was move away from Excel.”

At the same time, FLORES’ owner was consulting with a grocery store chain that was rolling out BlackLine. “He suggested our team take a closer look at BlackLine, see if it was something we could use. We saw an opportunity to implement a tool that would increase our efficiency and give us more visibility.”

FLORES implemented BlackLine’s Account Reconciliations solution. The BlackLine implementation team “went above and beyond,” says Yandall, especially during Yandall’s maternity leave. Adds Brynn Williams, project manager at FLORES, “I can’t say enough about the support team at BlackLine. I’ve actually never found a support team that is that responsive, even with lower-level problems.”

Yandall calls the post-implementation call with the BlackLine team “one of the most amazing calls” she’s ever had. “We had a really great conversation about all the things that went well, the things that didn’t, and what would have made it easier. I felt that they were really interested in what I had to say, and they were both so passionate about BlackLine.”