Close faster with complete and accurate results.
Empower Accounting to manage and control the end-to-end financial close process by automating accounting workflows, providing a centralized and secure workspace to perform period-end accounting activities, and streamlining financial reporting.
Standardize, control, and streamline reconciliations.
Increase accuracy and efficiency across your account reconciliation process and produce timely and accurate financial statements. Drive accuracy in the financial close by providing a streamlined method to substantiate your balance sheet.
Drive visibility, accountability, and control across every accounting checklist.
Standardize, accelerate, and centrally manage accounting processes – from month-end close tasks to PBC checklists – with hierarchical task lists, role-based workflows, and real-time dashboards.
Match, analyze, and reconcile millions of transactions in minutes.
Streamline and automate detail-heavy reconciliations, such as bank reconciliations, credit card matching, intercompany reconciliations, and invoice-to-PO matching all in one centralized workspace.
Centralize, manage, and automate journal entries.
Create, review, and approve journals, then electronically certify, post them to and store them with all supporting documentation. Automatically create, populate, and post journals to your ERP based on your rules.
Control, validate, and streamline financial statement analyses.
Perform pre-consolidation, group-level analysis in real-time with efficient, end-to-end transparency and traceability. Reduce risk and save time by automating workflows to provide more timely insights.
Continuously monitor for risk with automated fluctuation analysis.
Calculate and identify account balance and activity fluctuations automatically to continuously monitor for risk, ensure the effective and timely execution of critical management review controls, and support agile decision-making.
Simplify, standardize, and automate your financial close in SAP.
Streamline and automate activities in SAP with task scheduling and execution, activity monitoring, and outcome verification.
Maximize working capital and release cash from your balance sheet.
Maximize working capital with the only unified platform for collecting cash, providing credit, and understanding cash flow. Transform your accounts receivable processes with intelligent AR automation that delivers value across your business.
Optimize efficiency and ensure compliance in your invoice-to-cash process with automated invoice processing and a customer payment portal.
Apply customer payments to invoices automatically.
Transform your invoice-to-cash cycle and speed up your cash application process by instantly matching and accurately applying customer payments to customer invoices in your ERP.
Turn payment data into actionable, real-time intelligence.
Automatically process and analyze critical information such as sales and payment performance data, customer payment trends, and DSO to better manage risk and develop strategies to improve operational performance.
Release cash from customers and reduce DSO.
Improve the prioritization of customer calls, reduce days sales outstanding, and watch productivity rise with more dynamic, accurate, and smarter collection management processes.
Create and operate risk polices with dynamic insights.
Understand customer data and performance behaviors to minimize the risk of bad debt and the impact of late payments. Monitor changes in real time to identify and analyze customer risk signals.
Maximize your time with data-driven prioritization.
Make the most of your team’s time by automating accounts receivables tasks and using data to drive priority, action, and results. Monitor and analyze user performance, ensuring key actions quickly.
Resolve customer disputes promptly to collect debt.
Accelerate dispute resolution with automated workflows and maintain customer relationships with operational reporting. Unlock full control and visibility of disputes and provide better insight into how they impact KPIs, such as DSO and aged debt provisions.
Unlock growth capacity with tax-effective intercompany operations.
Centralize, streamline, and automate end-to-end intercompany operations with global billing, payment, and automated reconciliation capabilities that provide speed and accuracy. Ignite staff efficiency and advance your business to more profitable growth.
Automate, optimize, and manage intercompany non-trade transactions.
Ensure consistent regulatory and tax compliance by automating non-trade transactions and invoices while enforcing trading relationships and policies, as well as required taxes and transfer pricing.
Centralize, streamline, and automate intercompany reconciliations and dispute management.
Seamlessly integrate with all intercompany systems and data sources. Automatically identify intercompany exceptions and underlying transactions causing out-of-balances with rules-based solutions to resolve discrepancies quickly.
Streamline and automate intercompany transaction netting and settlement to ensure cash precision.
Enable greater collaboration between Accounting and Treasury with real-time visibility into open transactions. Integrate with treasury systems to facilitate and streamline netting, settlement, and clearing to optimize working capital.
Get set up quickly for a streamlined and automated close.
The path from traditional to modern accounting is different for every organization. BlackLine’s Modern Accounting Playbook delivers a proven-practices approach to help you identify and prioritize your organization’s critical accounting gaps and map out an achievable path to success.
Save time and cost, decrease risk, and elevate the organization.
BlackLine’s foundation for modern accounting creates a streamlined and automated close. We’re dedicated to delivering the most value in the shortest amount of time, equipping you to not only control close chaos, but also foster F&A excellence.
Invest in your future by unifying and automating accounting work.
To sustain timely performance of daily activities, banking and financial services organizations are turning to modern accounting and finance practices. It’s no longer a matter of whether or not to digitally transform. It’s a matter of when and how.
Adapt to changing consumer preferences with agile accounting.
To mitigate financial statement risk and increase operational effectiveness, consumer goods organizations are turning to modern accounting and leading best practices. Simply sticking with ‘the way it’s always been done’ is a thing of the past.
Energize your accounting team by creating capacity with automation.
While you are innovating to produce safe, reliable, and sustainable products and services, our solutions help accounting teams save time, reduce risk, and create capacity to support your organization's strategic objectives.
Align healthcare accounting teams to revenue-driving activities.
Working capital, cash flows, collections opportunities, and other critical metrics depend on timely and accurate processes. Ensure services revenue has been accurately recorded and related payments are reflected properly on the balance sheet.
Unlock capacity and strengthen resilience by automating accounting.
To respond and lead amid supply chain challenges demands on accounting teams in manufacturing companies are higher than ever. Guide your business with agility by standardizing processes, automating routine work, and increasing visibility.
Tie out millions of transactions automatically.
Retailers are recalibrating their strategies and investing in innovative business models to drive transformation quickly, profitably, and at scale. Save time, reduce risk, and create capacity to support your organization's strategic objectives.
Transform the way you work.
You've transformed the way we experience the world. It's time to embrace modern accounting technology to save time, reduce risk, and create capacity to focus your time on what matters most.
BlackLine is part of your SAP financial mission control center. Our solutions complement SAP software as part of an end-to-end offering for Finance & Accounting. BlackLine solutions address the traditional manual processes that are performed by accountants outside the ERP, often in spreadsheets.
Global brands and the fastest growing companies run Oracle and choose BlackLine to accelerate digital transformation. BlackLine delivers comprehensive solutions that unify accounting and finance operations across your Oracle landscape.
Gain global visibility and insight into accounting processes while reducing risk, increasing productivity, and ensuring accuracy. Close the gaps left in critical finance and accounting processes with minimal IT support.
Adapt and innovate with a hyperconnected Accounting function and give everyone the insights and freedom to thrive by connecting your data, processes, and teams with intelligent automation solutions for accounting needs.
ESG is an opportunity for F&A teams to have a direct impact on how their organizations interact with the communities around them and how they deliver value to their stakeholders.
Rising labor costs and shifting expectations are contributing to unprecedented change in the labor market and altering the way companies and their executives think about talent management.
ERP transformations are business transformations. Finance and accounting expertise is not only needed to prevent ERP transformation failures, but F&A leaders are poised to help drive project plans and outcomes.
Finance and IT leaders share a common goal of equipping their organizations with ways to work smarter to enable competitive advantage. This intersection between CFO and CIO priorities is driving more unity in terms of strategy and execution.
F&A teams have embraced their expanding roles, but unprecedented demand for their time coupled with traditional manual processes make it difficult for F&A to execute effectively. Transformation is necessary to address these challenges.
F&A leadership can have a significant impact by creating sustainable, scalable processes that can support the business before, during, and long after the IPO. This company-wide effort crosses multiple functional areas and is reinforced by critical project management and a strong technology infrastructure.
Timely, reliable data is critical for decision-making and reporting throughout the M&A lifecycle. Without accurate information, organizations risk making poor business decisions, paying too much, issuing inaccurate financial statements, and other errors.
The revenue cycle refers to the entirety of a company’s ordering process from the time an order is placed until an invoice is paid and settled. The inability to apply payments on time and accurately can not only lock up cash, but also negatively impact future sales and the overall customer experience.
While the responsibility to maintain compliance stretches across the organization, F&A has a critical role in ensuring compliance with financial rules and regulations. Together with expanding roles, new expectations from stakeholders, and evolving regulatory requirements, these demands can place unsustainable strain on finance and accounting functions.
In good company.
More than 4,300 companies of all sizes, across all industries, trust BlackLine to help them modernize their financial close, accounts receivable, and intercompany accounting processes.
Join an exclusive community of peers, partners, and BlackLine experts.
BlackLine users around the world gain access to a digital hub of insight, information, and engagement that enables the exchange of ideas and leading practices for peak F&A performance.
Guided, connected, and committed to your success.
BlackLine Services combine leading practices and expert guidance with best-in-class technology to help your F&A organization seamlessly implement sound processes and solutions, identify new opportunities for accounting optimization, and expand into areas you never imagined you would have the time to tackle.
Build a foundation for world-class accounting.
Whether planning your first implementation or expanding your BlackLine platform, leverage expert guidance to help you build and execute your vision, drive unified, automated, and continuous accounting processes, and enable Finance and Accounting to deliver strategic business value.
Accelerate adoption and drive productivity and performance.
One of the critical success drivers for any software technology is effective user training and adoption. Whether you are deploying for the first time or creating a sustainable education program for maximum value creation, explore how you can take the next steps to upskill your users.
Your success is our success.
From onboarding to financial operations excellence, our customer success management team helps you unlock measurable value. Through workshops, webinars, digital success options, tips and tricks, and more, you will develop leading-practice processes and strategies to propel your organization forward.
Go beyond with end-to-end transformation.
Powerful technology is only part of the story. Successful transformation requires expert guidance from a trusted partner. Explore offerings that unlock new transformation opportunities and make transformation a reality.
World-class support so you can focus on what matters most.
BlackLine provides global product support across geographies, languages, and time zones, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. We are here for you with industry-leading support whenever and wherever you need it.
Connect with peers across Finance & Accounting.
Whether new to BlackLine or a longtime customer, we curate events to guide you along every step of your modern accounting journey.
Hear from F&A thought leaders and customers like you.
Explore our schedule of upcoming webinars to find inspiration, including industry experts, strategic alliance partners, and boundary-pushing customers. And, earn CPE credits while you're at it.
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Check out our most recent webinars dedicated to modern accounting. If you recently attended webinar you loved, find it here and share the link with your colleagues.
Dive into digital finance transformation.
Explore the future of accounting over a cup of coffee with our curated collection of white papers and ebooks written to help you consider how you will transform your people, process, and technology.
Stay on top of the latest accounting trends.
BlackLine Magazine provides daily updates on everything from companies that have transformed F&A to new regulations that are coming to disrupt your day, week, and month. Check back often for the latest commentary and guidance.
Brush up on key accounting terms.
Whether you're new to F&A or an experienced professional, sometimes you need a refresher on common finance and accounting terms and their definitions. BlackLine's glossary provides descriptions for industry words and phrases, answers to frequently asked questions, and links to additional resources.
Integrate your accounting operations with open APIs.
Our API-first development strategy gives you the keys to integrate your finance tech stack - from one ERP to one hundred - and create seamless data flows in and out of BlackLine.
Since our founding in 2001, BlackLine has become a leading provider of cloud software that automates and controls critical accounting processes.
Companies come to BlackLine because their traditional manual accounting processes are not sustainable. We help them move to modern accounting by unifying their data and processes, automating repetitive work, and driving accountability through visibility.
BlackLine's leadership team is built on experience and expertise. Every executive is committed to ensuring transformational success for every customer.
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BlackLine is a high-growth, SaaS business that is transforming and modernizing the way finance and accounting departments operate. Our cloud software automates critical finance and accounting processes. We empower companies of all sizes across all industries to improve the integrity of their financial reporting, achieve efficiencies and enhance real-time visibility into their operations.
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Our global network includes leading consulting and technology organizations that enable us to deliver exceptional solutions to our shared clients. Get acquainted with our partner ecosystem.
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BlackLine and our ecosystem of software and cloud partners work together to transform our joint customers’ finance and accounting processes. Together, we provide innovative solutions that help F&A teams achieve shorter close cycles and better controls, enabling them to drive better decision-making across the company.
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BlackLine is an SAP platinum partner and a part of your SAP financial mission control center. Our solutions complement SAP software as part of an end-to-end offering for Finance and Accounting. BlackLine solutions address the traditional manual processes that are performed by accountants outside the ERP, often in spreadsheets.
Accounts receivable management is the process by which a business oversees and administers the collection of outstanding payments from its customers. How this is done can have a significant impact on the business.
Accounts receivable (AR) refers to the sale of products or services for which payment has not yet been received from the customer. The customer did not pay for the good or service at the time of the transaction. Instead, credit was extended to the customer and the business expects to receive payment(s) for the transaction at some point in the future.
AR is an important part of the accounting process in any operation. They represent convertible assets owed to the company. That is, they reference a financial resource that can be converted to cash in the near future, once the customer has paid.
Similarly, they are the basis for measuring the business’s ability to convert sales into cash. When payments are not collected for accounts receivable, this is an indicator that the business is not performing as well as it should. Therefore, how accounts receivable is managed is an important function because this affects the revenue stream coming into the business.
Several components make up the process of AR.
The first step in recording accounts receivable is the invoice.
This is a document produced by the business to record the details of a transaction.
The information contained in the invoice is essential to both the business and the customer and contains all the vital information related to the transaction.
As it relates to accounts receivable, an invoice will also contain important details about the terms of payment for the transaction.
A well-prepared invoice, with important information that is documented and conveyed clearly and concisely, is an essential building block of effective AR management.
A poorly composed invoicing process, on the other hand, will undermine the organization's ability to effectively manage accounts receivable because it does not clearly and proactively communicate payment information to the customer.
Another basic element of AR is credit. Businesses that have accounts receivable, which is most, do so because they have extended credit to their customers.
Limited business models operate on a cash-only basis.
Extending credit to customers is good practice for most businesses. It expands the pool of potential customers who can purchase goods or services, and it gives them greater payment options.
Credit also builds trust and goodwill between the business and its customers, which contributes to customer loyalty and retention.
All credit comes with some degree of risk, so an important part of AR management is having a well-developed set of credit policies in place.
Credit policies include such important guidelines as the criteria used for evaluating customers' credit worthiness, limits on how much credit may be extended, and the terms for repayment of credit.
A good set of credit policies will help the business extend constructive and reliable credit to its customers while minimizing the risk of default.
Payments for AR must eventually be collected, and an important element of effective management is a well-run collections process.
This includes issuing dunning letters, which are collection notices sent to customers explaining that a payment they owe is overdue.
AR management must also include a process for working with collections agencies for those instances when accounts are determined to be uncollectible.
Cash application is the process of matching incoming payments to outstanding invoices and to the proper account where they can be entered in the general ledger.
It’s an essential way for businesses to track cash flow and capital so that funds can be utilized efficiently, accurately, and quickly.
Incoming cash can’t be utilized by the company until it has been properly assigned, so effective and timely cash application is an essential element of any accounts receivable management.
Good AR management also involves metrics. It is important to measure the various inputs and outputs of accounts receivable to support actions and to evaluate their effectiveness.
Many different metrics are used.
The receivables-to-sales ratio measures accounts receivable in proportion to its sales for a given period of time. A high number shows that a greater number of sales are generating accounts receivable, as opposed to cash. This reveals a higher level of risk in the customer base and is not always a good sign for the business.
The receivables turnover ratio is the inverse of the receivables-to-sales ratio. It measures sales as a proportion of accounts receivable. In contrast, a higher number reveals a better success rate in collecting payments, which is a positive sign for the business.
Finally, days-sales-outstanding is calculated as the average number of accounts receivables divided by sales and then multiplied by 365. This ratio shows how long it takes a company to convert its receivables into cash.
The processes and metrics mentioned above contribute to the overall management of accounts receivable. Relying on traditional, manual-entry applications can be detailed, time-consuming, and labor-intensive.
However, accounting automation helps businesses streamline these processes by minimizing or even eliminating the tedious, manual-entry steps that are involved.
In this way, modern, digital accounting help businesses enhance and improve their management of accounts receivable.
For example, electronic invoice presentment and payment, or EIPP, is the electronic delivery of receipts and receipt of payment.
It can greatly streamline the invoicing and payment process for businesses and consumers, and it can improve AR management by digitizing the corresponding records and journal entries.
Maintaining customer master data, and storing it in a centralized data-based system, is another example of how modern accounting can improve accounts receivable management.
Maintaining this data can cut down on redundancies and manual entry in the keeping of records pertaining to accounts receivable. Storing it centrally can raise efficiency and reduce the processing time of tracking accounts receivable and collections of payments.
AR management is important because it impacts many different aspects of the business and its overall health.
For example, properly evaluating credit worthiness of customers and maintaining sound policies for extending credit can significantly impact the level of risk that the business exposes itself to as well as its ability to convert sales to cash.
The efficiency of a business's cash application can determine how well and how quickly it can assign cash to the proper transactions and put that revenue back to work for the business
AR management faces many challenges that can slow and undermine its effectiveness. Poor communications between the business and customers can impact the business's ability to follow through on payments due.
Not having well-defined policies and practices in place, especially as they concern credit and collections, can hinder the business's ability to collect payment and sour relationships with customers.
Finally, legacy applications used in accounts receivable management are often time-consuming and labor-intensive. They do not provide the business with the latest features in data-based management or offer them the fastest and most efficient means of processing information.
Schedule a demo with us and we'll show you exactly how accounts receivable automation software can help you optimize accounts receivable performance.
Take your accounts receivable management processes to create team capacity by removing manual processes, and gain critical decision intelligence to drive value.