Increased visibility and control. Using BlackLine, Travelex now has greater visibility into the company’s processes and the status of tasks.  

External auditors have access to BlackLine, so they too have real-time visibility wherever and whenever they need it. Previously, all reconciliations were saved on local networks across the globe, and now they’re in one centralised platform.

Auditors can be confident that all reconciliations have gone through the full review cycle. They can see who prepared the reconciliation, who approved and reviewed a specific reconciliation, so they know who to ask when they have a question, saving both parties time.

Standardised processes that free up valuable time. According to Suckling, thanks to BlackLine and the significant reduction in manual, spreadsheet-based processes, some tasks have become a 20-minute job rather than a three-day job.

What’s more, having one central command centre for executing and tracking all tasks means that Travelex can easily standardise processes, helping reduce variability between business units.

“Using BlackLine, we are able to standardise processes and run training sessions on what a cash, bank, or accruals reconciliation should look like. This standardisation has saved time by providing guidance for what is required from a reconciliation,’’ says Heather.

Greater visibility into tasks requires greater accountability, and this brings additional benefits. “BlackLine has forced teams to put more effort into their reconciliations, and with this new control aspect from BlackLine, we’ve noticed an increased level of reconciliation substantiation,” Heather adds.

Achieved a seamless virtual close. The COVID-19 pandemic has challenged finance and accounting teams across the world to quickly adapt to closing the books with a distributed workforce.

BlackLine’s cloud-based technology enables finance and accounting teams to seamlessly adapt to changing circumstances, enabling collaboration, visibility, and control. BlackLine is helping companies like Travelex close with confidence during this crisis and beyond.

‘’Because BlackLine is cloud based, we’ve been able to leverage the platform from wherever our teams are working,” Suckling explains.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, every worker at Travelex was able to complete all of their work from home without visiting the office, because everything they needed is accessible in BlackLine’s centralised platform. Despite shifting to a virtual close, Travelex reported that no time was lost, and the finance team did not experience additional pressure while closing with a distributed workforce.

Reduced errors. Having real-time, automated software enables the leadership team to access the status of reconciliations from each business unit in Travelex, with all information accessible per user level.

“All levels of users have access to relevant dashboards for their functions, accessible in real time from anywhere. Tasks are set for each user, so everyone knows what is expected from them. From a leadership perspective this is extremely useful, as we have a single unified platform guiding us throughout the month on what should be done and by whom,” says Heather.

Teams can now measure timeliness with reconciliations, see why reconciliations were not prepared, and whether they required an adjustment. This allows Travelex to report on elements that were not possible to measure before. In turn, this helps improve the overall close process and ultimately reduce error and risk.