Like many higher education institutions, Gonzaga University’s reliance on manual processes, paper documentation, and spreadsheets undermined the financial close. Labor-intensive manual effort slowed period-end processes, jeopardized accuracy, and drained staff morale. Little time was left for value-adding strategic work.

Manual activities in areas such as account reconciliations didn’t provide the visibility and controls that Gonzaga financial leadership wanted. Similar challenges existed in downstream consolidation and reporting, such as generating financial statements and recording top-side adjustments. Ultimately, these obstacles posed risks to the timeliness and accuracy needed for sound financial governance and planning.

Gonzaga embraced accounting modernization in 2017 by choosing BlackLine as its partner to automate and streamline critical accounting processes outside its Ellucian Banner ERP. BlackLine’s partnership with Ellucian has proven vital in providing Gonzaga with interoperable solutions that have transformed accounting and finance.

Building on initial success, Gonzaga next adopted BlackLine Financial Reporting Analytics to automate consolidation and reporting that had required extensive manual work in spreadsheets, and email circulation to management. Ability to quickly deploy the solution without IT assistance helped the accounting team quickly reap rewards in its next phase of modernization.

Dramatically increased efficiency. In multiple areas, automation through BlackLine has eliminated many hours of manual work and duplicate tasks each month. Overtime hours and costs have been reduced substantially while leadership has more timely and actionable financial information.

Improved visibility, accuracy, and controls. Gonzaga has new data and process transparency to pinpoint bottlenecks and optimize the close and staff workloads. Financial accuracy has improved while Gonzaga is mitigating risk with strong controls across accounting and finance.

Enhanced staff morale and capacity. Morale across the small accounting team has risen with the shift from repetitive work in spreadsheets. Staff members have newfound time and enthusiasm to take on more valuable analytic work as a strategic partner in Gonzaga's success.