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.
Apply customer payments to invoices automatically.
Transform your order-to-cash cycle and speed up your cash application process by instantly matching and accurately applying customer payments to customer invoices in your ERP.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Automate invoice processing to reduce manual invoicing costs, maintain compliance with e-invoicing regulations, and increase efficiency across your invoice-to-pay process.
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 4,000 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.
Catch up on the latest finance transformation guidance.
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.
At BlackLine, we live by these tenets and always put people first. We are committed to fostering an environment where differences are valued and practices are equitable.
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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.
In addition to accolades for the quality, performance and benefits of our software, BlackLine has been the recipient of many industry awards recognizing the fast growth of the company, outstanding achievements of members of the management team and exceptional customer service.
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Guiding Customers to Long-Term Success
BlackLine’s Solution Providers are experienced business software resellers who know and understand the finance and accounting function and the associated challenges that organizations face. They ensure our customers’ success with BlackLine from the initial solution validation process through deployments and long-term customer care and long-term success.
Integrate Your Finance Tech Stack
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 partners with top global Business Process Outsourcers and equips them with solutions to better serve their clients and achieve market-leading automation, efficiencies, and risk control. By outsourcing, businesses can achieve stronger compliance, gain a deeper level of industry knowledge, and grow without unnecessary costs.
Bad debt refers to loans or credit sales that the business determines can no longer be collected. To account properly for bad debt, the business must record it as an expense.
Almost all businesses make a percentage of sales on credit, which means that the customer does not pay the full amount at the point of the transaction. Many businesses also extend loans to their customers.
Loans and credit build trust and goodwill with customers and help the business expand its customer base.
All credit sales and loans come with a risk, which the business accepts. Businesses have policies and procedures for evaluating customers’ creditworthiness and for setting the terms under which credit will be extended.
However, even with the best policies and guidelines in place, some customers still default. Businesses accept this risk and account for it according to the Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP).
Bad debt is considered an expense which offsets assets in business’s accounts receivable, also known as the net realizable value of the accounts receivable.
The expense is recorded according to the matching principle so that accounts receivable assets are not overstated.
Accounts receivable record purchases and transactions that have not yet been paid for by the customer. They are considered an asset because they are a financial resource that can be converted to cash in the near future, once the customer has paid.
Accounts receivable are typically collected in two months or less. For this reason, they are considered a “short-term asset” which refers to any financial resource that can be converted to cash in one year or less.
Bad debt offsets this asset because it is an accounts receivable that will not be collected. According to the matching principle, expenses must be matched to related revenues in the same accounting period.
Because a business does not typically know that an account receivable will not be collected until sometime later, it will instead estimate how much bad debt will occur.
The business can estimate bad debt in one of two ways:
Bad debt can be recorded according to the direct write-off method. In this method, accounts are written off as a loss once they are determined to be uncollectible. Because this method does not adhere to the matching principle, it is a less acceptable accounting method.
To remain consistent with the matching principle, businesses will write-off bad debt according to the allowance method. According to this method, the business will set aside a reserve for expected bad debts, or so-called doubtful accounts. This reserve, or allowance, is also referred to as a contra asset account because it “nets” or balances against the accounts receivable assets listed in the balance sheet.
The allowance is calculated based on an estimate of how many accounts receivable might not be collectible. The estimate is calculated as a percentage of sales multiplied by a historical average of accounts receivable that have gone uncollected.
Although it is based on an estimate, this method allows a business to align bad debt to the reporting period in which the sale occurs. This is in accordance with the matching principle, and therefore, it is considered a more accurate form of accounting bad debt expenses.
If bad debt is later collected, it is recorded as a bad debt recovery.
A business must account for bad debt expenses because all credit sales and loans come with a risk. It is not accurate for the business to only record accounts receivable as a short-term asset because not all of these outstanding debts will be paid.
To overlook this will artificially inflate the value of the business’s assets in the balance sheet.
According to the allowance method, bad debt expenses will be journaled as a debit in the bad debt expense account and as a credit allowance in the doubtful accounts.
A business may calculate its estimate for bad debt allowance in one of two ways. According to the sales method, the business will take a percentage that reflects its historical experience with bad debt and multiply this by its totals sales or accounts receivable.
According to the aging method, the business will group accounts receivable by age. Different percentages are applied to each grouping based on the expectation that accounts receivable become less collectible as they get older.
If a business using the sales method has $100,000 in net sales for the accounting period, and it has determined that about 3% of sales typically go uncollected, it would calculate its debt allowance for the period as $100,000 X .03 = $3,000.
If a business using the aging method has $50,000 of accounts receivable less than a month old, and $10,000 that are over one month old, it would calculate the allowance in aggregate.
If it has determined that 1% of accounts receivable under one month old and 5% of those over one month old go uncollected, it will calculate the allowance as [$50,000 X .01 = $500] + {$10,000 X .05 = $500] = $1000.