Item: BlackLine
Rating: 10
Author: Anitra Myrick

Overall Satisfaction with BlackLine

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Blackline really helped our organization to get visibility on the accuracy and timeliness of our reconciliations. We have over 300 month-end tasks. Prior to Blackline, it was a challenge to ensure and have confidence that all these tasks were being completed accurately. We currently have a remote workforce so it certainly helps with monitoring tasks, even those not related to month-end. You can build anything into Blackline that you need to track on a recurring basis.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Easy tracking and reminders for month-end tasks
Ensures timely and accurate reconciliations
Great reports and dashboards to see if your department is meeting deadlines

Cons

Allow more flexibility in adding task/reconciliation due dates, like 3rd Friday of every month which may not fall on a certain business day of every month. Currently, you can only add by business or calendar day.

Most Important Features

Task Management
Reconciliation Management and Approval
Email reminders about what is coming due or overdue

Return on Investment

We were short-staffed by 3 full-time accounting positions compared to normal staffing levels. Due to the efficiencies from using Blackline we've been operating with 2 fewer senior accounting positions, which is saving us roughly $100k-$120k. We're not sure that we need to fill them now. I think that's a pretty good ROI.

Alternatives Considered

FloQast and Vena

Blackline outperformed both FloQast and Vena in our RFP. The staff felt that Blackline was the most user-friendly. Both FloQast and Vena try to sell you on linking to already saved documents instead of saving documents onto their systems. They're both more of an Excel Add-On. We felt that Blackline allowed more flexibility and I actually like the idea of having support saved in the reconciliation system. Also, you don't necessarily need Excel experience to use it and we have some staff (non-accountants) that we wanted to use the system to track grants, claim submission due dates, etc., not related to month-end close. These staff members easily grasped Blackline but struggled with Vena and FloQast.

Key Insights

Do you think BlackLine delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with BlackLine's feature set?

Yes

Did BlackLine live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of BlackLine go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy BlackLine again?

Yes

Likelihood to Recommend

You can use Blackline to track anything better than what can be tracked through the Outlook products. It allows you to add instructions, purpose, documents, and any other support to tasks or reconciliations. We use it for tracking grant billing and other contracts. It helps us to stay organized with the many different grants and how to bill under each one, which may be different. We didn't have a good depository for these items prior to Blackline and it helps with that, in addition to all the month-end efficiencies you get from using Blackline.

Comments

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Blackline is lifesaver, or company saver! We needed Blackline years ago!