Atlantic Union Bank (formerly Union Bank & Trust) faced the challenge of centralizing all its reconcilements. Prior to deploying BlackLine, the bank’s reconcilements were tracked using Excel spreadsheets that were printed and put in binders before being transported to the different relevant departments in order to be checked for errors and approved. The binders were then stored offsite and took up significant storage space. The process was labor intensive and inefficient. The company wanted to remove the reconcilement information from Excel and centralize the process in one system.

Atlantic Atlantic Union Bank considered one other solution in addition to BlackLine. While performing its due diligence on which solution would best suit their needs, the company found BlackLine to be the superior choice for three reasons:

Better functionality. Based on its use case, the bank needed software with matching capabilities and found BlackLine’s functionality to be much more robust than the other solution.

Future enhancements. Atlantic Union Bank saw how it could utilize additional products offered by BlackLine such as Task Management, Journals, and Variance Analysis.

Customer service. Although the bank had a preexisting relationship with the competing vendor, BlackLine differentiated itself with reference customers reporting excellent customer service.

Increased departmental productivity. By centralizing the reconciliation process in BlackLine, Atlantic Union Bank reduced the number of hours needed to accomplish the tasks required, allowing accounting personnel to shift their efforts to additional value-add activities. Account review was done in BlackLine instead of through labor-intensive manual processes.

Easier audit process. Prior to implementing BlackLine, auditors would need to go through multiple binders of printed Excel spreadsheets to review the bank’s accounts. With BlackLine, the auditors have access to the bank’s accounts through the software, making their review process easier and eliminating the need to physically deliver binders to the auditor’s offices.

Reduced storage and material costs. Atlantic Union Bank did away with the cumbersome and labor-intensive manual process of printing account reconcilements and distributing them to the relevant departments, loading the accounts into BlackLine. As a result, Atlantic Union Bank no longer needed to rent storage space for the binders or purchase office supplies to construct the binder.