Chapter 1

The Challenge: Late Nights & Longer Closes

Half-eaten dinners littered the conference table, empty soda cans flanking each container. It was what was left of the team’s standing order from Sal’s Italian at the end of every month. Connie sat in front of a stack of paper nearly a foot high and sighed.

They were finally finished with July’s close. She’d been a controller for almost a decade, and while she loved her job, the close never got any easier.

Connie had done the math: a decade in Accounting meant 120 closes. At 15 days a close, that was 1,800 days—nearly 5 years!—spent working late in the office and tossing and turning over journal approvals.

The newest accountant on the team, Vinny, started gathering up the empty food boxes. “That was brutal. I’ve never seen so many spreadsheets in my life.”

Connie smiled. “And that was an easy month. Right, Morris?” She turned to a man in glasses, still hunched over his close binder, triple-checking numbers.

He looked up, bleary eyed. “What? Oh. Yes. This was nothing. Last year we stayed late so many days that Sal already knew our order when we called. I didn’t make it home before 10 pm for an entire week. You know how it is.”

Vinny paused, “Not really. I’ve been in Accounting for almost seven years, but I know it doesn’t have to be like this.”

Despite her fatigue, Connie perked up. “What do you mean?”

Morris looked skeptical. He’d been an accountant for a long time and was the first to admit that the close was time-consuming. But he didn’t trust that there was an adequate substitute for hands-on work. Making sure the numbers were right took time and a human eye.

“Vinny, maybe you’ve just been lucky.”

“I was really fortunate. Closing the books at my last company was nothing like this. I only stayed late from time to time and I could get my close tasks done from anywhere. Even when I needed to put in extra hours, I could do it from home. That’s because we used BlackLine.

Next