BlackLine Unveils New Solutions & Innovations at BeyondTheBlack 2020

BeyondTheBlack was completely virtual this year—and with almost 18,000 registrants, it was our biggest user conference yet. We announced new products and innovations to our cloud platform during the event, designed to further enable Finance and Accounting to transform and modernize their operations.

Here are the highlights of BlackLine’s enhanced platform functionality and new offerings.

BlackLine is launching BlackLine Cash Application. Using AI and machine learning, BlackLine Cash Application enables organizations to manage cash flow and cash collection in real time, simplifying the order-to-cash process by automating both the collection and allocation of customer cash.

The launch marks BlackLine’s entrance into the accounts receivable automation market following the acquisition of Rimilia, a leader in the category.

BlackLine Account Analysis is a new solution that helps organizations proactively manage risk by automatically analyzing transactions in complex, high-volume accounts. Exceptions, such as aged items, are surfaced with clear action plans so they can be investigated, explained, and resolved by Accounting team members who can add notes, comments, and documentation in a fully auditable workflow.

Today, so much of this work is done in spreadsheets as part of a traditional reconciliation process that often leads to errors. Account Analysis enhances BlackLine’s complete end-to-end reconciliation automation suite by enabling an even deeper level of detail, categorization, and resolution of exceptions and errant transactions.  (General availability 2021)

BlackLine is upgrading its user interface (UI) across the entire platform to create a more intuitive and streamlined user experience. The new UI is based on a library of elements that are deployed across the application, giving visual cues for the most important and commonly used items on any given page while assuring ease of use for all users.

BlackLine has also completely redesigned the Unmatched Transaction interface to simplify the process of manually matching transactions, speeding up decision-making and saving time.

With the goal of enabling customers to connect to any source system, BlackLine has launched an API portal empowering developers to integrate data, workflows, and communication between BlackLine and other data sources.

Using modern APIs, BlackLine is laying the foundation to further optimize and automate end-to-end accounting and financial use cases, further increasing efficiency and control. In addition to new APIs, BlackLine is also enhancing its ERP connectors for Sage Intacct, Microsoft Dynamics GP, Oracle NetSuite, and Oracle E-Business Suite.

BlackLine is enhancing its already extensive integration with SAP technology by adding connectivity with new SAP data sources and improved visibility for journal entry processing.

BlackLine’s connectors for SAP systems can now extract inventory and other materials-related data from SAP systems automatically, and provide a real-time, clickable link between SAP systems and BlackLine-originated journal entries. These enhancements continue to reduce manual effort and increase confidence in data completeness and integrity.

“The global pandemic is bringing to the forefront what we’ve seen for years: traditional manual accounting processes are not sustainable. As a result, businesses are placing renewed focus on risk management, control environments, and cash flow optimization,” says Marc Huffman, BlackLine’s president, COO, and incoming CEO.

“With our newest platform release and solution offerings, our customers have the opportunity to emerge from the pandemic stronger than ever with modernized F&A processes, improved working capital, greater data integrity and analysis, enhanced visibility and control, and reduced risk.”

Unless otherwise noted, the above features and updates are currently available.

Learn more about BlackLine Cash Application and how you can automatically match customer payments to invoices and reduce unapplied cash by up to 99%.