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Connie had heard about BlackLine, but this was the first time she had someone on her team who’d actually used it. “I’ve never thought BlackLine could work for us here. But maybe it could save us some time.”
Morris shook his head. “I would never trust that the books were correct. I like to get my hands dirty—I want to see the spreadsheet, the numbers, right in front of me.”
“We saw everything with BlackLine,” said Vinny. “And nobody stayed late.”
“But we’ve never had a restatement or even a significant deficiency from our auditors. I don’t see the issue,” Morris countered.
Our processes are the problem, thought Connie. The company had grown rapidly in the past few years, but their close process had never changed. Doing things manually was becoming unsustainable.
Connie knew there would come a day when, no matter how hard they tried or how late they stayed the close wouldn’t—couldn’t—be done on time. “Morris, we have a great team. But can you honestly say that you trust everybody’s numbers, especially when it’s day 10 and we’ve stayed late all week?”
Morris crossed his arms. “I hate risk. Using some big system instead of the human brain? That doesn’t seem smart. I’ve been in Accounting for 20 years. We’ve always done it this way because it’s always worked. Who can argue with that?”
Connie noticed Morris hadn’t answered her question. “From what I know of BlackLine, you’d still be using your brain.” She smiled. “I hate wasting our talent on manual work. Our team could be focusing on more important things than ticking and tying and hole punching checklists for storage in binders.”
“That’s why I loved BlackLine,” said Vinny. “At my old company, we implemented their Modern Accounting Playbook, BlackLine MAP. It helped us automatically reconcile 92% of transactions so that our team could focus on the exceptions. It saved us a lot of time.” He studied Morris, who still seemed uncomfortable. “What would change your mind?”
“Proof,” said Morris.
