Skillz, Inc., a mobile eSports platform, was facing significant risk in its financial close process. The team was dealing with control deficiencies and a process that lacked structure, visibility, and accountability. Hadas Bram-Mostyn, Director, Corporate Accounting, and her team were under pressure to not only remediate these deficiencies but also establish a streamlined, reliable month-end process, all while managing their day-to-day responsibilities.

Skillz turned to BlackLine as a transformative solution and quickly began to see results. “I am not joking when I say that BlackLine changed our lives in less than six months,” says Bram-Mostyn. Approaching BlackLine as a “whole suite”, the team benefited from Account Reconciliations, Task Management, Variance Analysis, and Financial Reporting Analytics. “Obviously, each module is amazing with its own benefits, but together we’ve seen our work unified across our close, accelerating our ability to execute, our impact on the organization, and overall morale,” says Bram-Mostyn.

With BlackLine’s Account Reconciliations module, Skillz was able to implement formal sign-offs and checklists, which were critical components for management review controls. The introduction of Task Management gave the team structure, including clear deadlines and priorities to guide them through the month-end close. According to Bram-Mostyn, these improvements had a significant impact on morale and productivity. “Things that look little to us added tremendous impact on our team members and organization.”

Financial Reporting & Analytics (FRA) added even more efficiencies for the team at Skillz. With balance sheets and profit-and-loss statements mapped directly within the platform, users could easily trace fluctuations in financial statement line items (FSLIs) and link directly to reconciliations and variance analyses. This level of integration reduced the need for manual cross-checks and enabled real-time insights.