SUSPENSE & CLEARING ACCOUNTS

Simplify your suspense and clearing account processes.

Your suspense and clearing accounts may net to zero, but how much time is your team spending to get there and are you confident in the process?

Besides the time savings from eliminating the manual piece, we feel that there will be better information on the account reconciliations because we now know exactly what is making up the balance. We don’t have a whole bunch of entries in there that net to zero anymore, so we know which ones we have to focus on.

BlackLine Customer - opentext

Common Suspense & Clearing Accounts

Payroll Clearing

Benefits Clearing

Cash Clearing

Unapplied Cash

T&E Clearing

Construction in Progress (CIP)

challenges

Why Manual Suspense & Clearing Account Processes Are Unsustainable

Manual Processes

Are you performing the following suspense and clearing account process activities manually?


Aggregating previous period reconciliation with open items and current period transactions

Comparing and matching transactions

Identifying open items and substantiating clearing balance

Assigning individual transactions to a specific category

Creating and posting related adjusting journal entries

Risks & Challenges

Manual suspense and clearing account processes have downstream effects that carry risk and pose additional challenges:


Limited timeframe to investigate differences results in late entries or fire drills

A lack of visibility and inconsistent processes slow down operational decision-making

Delays in process hinder accuracy and timeliness of financial reporting

Lack of scalability impedes ability to adapt to growth and change

WHY BLACKLINE

What BlackLine Brings to Suspense & Clearing Processes

Clearing account reconciliations can be complicated. BlackLine’s unified financial close platform streamlines suspense and clearing processes, resulting in capacity to investigate and determine the root cause of unexpected balances, differences, and open items. Our integrated solutions enable your team to:

Import detailed transactional data from your general ledger into BlackLine

Enhance or transform data automatically to arrive at your desired format for comparison and analysis

Compare and match clearing and suspense transactions in real-time to help proactively identify exceptions

Automate the posting of related adjusting journal entries for routine offsetting transactions, reconciling items uncovered through the matching process, or for transactions routinely recorded to the incorrect account

Link adjustments to the face of the related reconciliation

Analyze detailed transactions and provide timely insights with increased visibility and additional capacity

Want to see step-by-step suspense and clearing account process examples from your BlackLine peers?

Gain leading-practice automation and optimization strategies in our complimentary virtual Optimization Academy.