Auto-Reconciling 58% of Accounts with BlackLine

The Results

Removed the need for manual reconciliations. Once the BlackLine platform was deployed and configured with business rules, the reconciliation team took to it “like a duck to water.”

“Once they understood it would remove the need for manual reconciliations they were very happy indeed,” he says. “For them, it was like going from the stone age to the jet age in one step.”

Auto-reconciled 58% of accounts. During the three years since the deployment, the volume of accounting work has doubled, however the team dedicated to account reconciliation has remained at just three people. In 2016, 58 percent of accounts were auto reconciled as were more than 95 percent of bank statement transactions.

Introduced rules and relationships between accounts. Gowing says the finance team found it could achieve more with the software than had initially been hoped. They were able to introduce things such as rules about relationships between accounts, which support the internal integrity of the financials. This simply wasn’t possible in a manual environment.

Increased internal customer satisfaction rates. “Our internal customer satisfaction rates increased from low fives to high sevens, low eights,” he says. “This was helped by the fact that shifting from manual processes to automated processes meant the number of mistakes was dramatically reduced.”

Embedded alerts within the system. He says the finance team is now also able to spot issues before the business knows about them. For example, they can see if someone is sitting on cash and hasn’t banked it within the policy timeframe. “We can then alert their manager and quickly overcome the issue. We’re essentially using the system to generate alerts which is very useful.”

Provided remote access to external auditors. The company’s external auditors have also benefited from the change. They can access the BlackLine platform remotely and gain better insight into the state of all accounts and the reconciliation process.

Gowing says Toga Group plans to make further use of the BlackLine platform in coming years. An agreement has recently been signed to deploy BlackLine Intercompany Hub and there are plans to introduce Financial Close Management in the future, as well.