A Critical Control Account reconciliations are a critical control for compliance and for accurate financial reporting. For many companies, the financial close process is an ongoing attempt to organize and track thousands of spreadsheets across many locations. Reconciling accounts is a manual, labor-intensive process and opportunities for mistakes abound. Moreover, managing and auditing a process that is primarily paper-driven can be stressful and time consuming.
Replaces Spreadsheet Processes BlackLine’s innovative account reconciliation module minimizes the use of cumbersome excel spreadsheets, replacing them with a centralized process that saves companies many hours each month. Built-in workflow virtually guarantees that the account reconciliation process will run smoothly, and where possible, automatically. Not only does BlackLine track the ownership and status of each reconciliation, across many periods, it also provides predictive, intuitive forms for the completion of the reconciliation, helping with quality control issues. Supporting documents are attached and controlled so that documents are not lost or written over.
Instant Visibility–Mitigate Risk BlackLine’s centralized application gives instant visibility into status and progress. Dashboards allow supervisors to quickly survey the status of the account reconciliation process and generated reports offer a level of detail previously unheard of in the manual process. Dashboards also easily update management as to where aging items or delinquent reconciliations are causing the company risk. Email alerts can proactively notify users of issues that should be dealt with.
Easier Audits BlackLine also offers specially designated auditor roles for both internal and external audit that allows auditors instantaneous access to only those reconciliations which are completed. BlackLine eliminates the need to keep paper binders. Our clients report that audits are substantially easier and cheaper when using BlackLine.
Automation reduces labor (and costs) Some reconciliations are low risk, but still need to be completed in order to satisfy audit requirements. BlackLine can create, populate, and complete, from start-to-finish, certain types of low-risk reconciliations. BlackLine pioneered the Auto-Certification process which allows companies to substantially reduce the amount of manual labor required for low-risk accounts. The reconciliations created and certified by BlackLine’s Auto-Certification process have been accepted by all auditing firms across hundreds of BlackLine clients.
Seamless Integration BlackLine’s account reconciliation module seamlessly interfaces with all available ERP and GL systems as well as many subledgers in order to automatically retrieve data. Preparers do not need to manually import and verify balances and activity, and can instead trust that the software will handle it. If a balance changes on a certified reconciliation, the system proactively notifies users that the reconciliation is no longer complete and needs their attention. This single feature has helped clients avoid material weaknesses.
