What is the purpose of record-to-report?

The record-to-report (R2R) process is a key finance function that ensures accurate financial data is recorded, processed, and reported for decision-making and compliance. Its main purposes include ensuring financial accuracy and integrity, supporting compliance and regulatory requirements, enabling strategic decision-making, optimizing financial close, consolidation, and reporting efficiency, and supporting business performance and forecasting. Ultimately, R2R ensures that financial data flows seamlessly from transaction recording to financial reporting, enabling businesses to maintain compliance, improve efficiency, and make informed decisions.

What are the benefits of AI-driven financial reconciliations and overall AI-driven record-to-report processes?

Automation and AI are transforming the record-to-report process by improving efficiency, accuracy, and insights.Automation reduces manual tasks like data entry, reconciliation, and report generation, speeding up the R2R cycle and minimizing human error. Automated workflows also enable continuous monitoring, identifying discrepancies in real-time and facilitating faster issue resolution.AI enhances data analysis by spotting trends, variances, and anomalies that would be difficult for humans to detect. AI-driven insights help finance teams make data-driven decisions faster, while machine learning models can improve forecasting accuracy and automate routine decision-making processes.Together, these technologies streamline the R2R process, reduce the risk of errors, ensure compliance, and provide faster, more accurate financial reporting.

How does BlackLine automate the record-to-report process?

BlackLine's future-ready platform offers a comprehensive suite of applications that automate, streamline, and enhance control over critical record-to-report activities, improving accuracy and efficiency through its cloud-based solutions. Here’s how BlackLine addresses some of these challenges:1. Unified Data Integration: Integrates with various ERP systems to provide a single source of truth for financial data across the R2R process.2. Automated Account Reconciliation: Automates account reconciliations, reducing manual intervention and providing real-time visibility into account status.3. Journal Entry Automation: Automates the creation, posting, and approval of journal entries for improved accuracy and compliance.4. Intelligent Workflow Management: Automates scheduling, tracking, and reporting of financial close activities, ensuring full visibility.5. Intercompany Financial Management: Automates intercompany processes from contract creation to elimination, ensuring alignment for accurate consolidated statements.6. Consolidation: Automates the aggregation of financial data from subsidiaries, ensuring accurate and timely consolidation of financial statements.7. Automated Financial Reporting: Automates the generation of balance sheets, income statements, and cash flow statements, ensuring standardized, audit-compliant reporting.8. Detailed Financial Analysis: Centralizes data for real-time access and drill-down capabilities to enable detailed analysis of variances and trends.9. Compliance and Audit-Ready: Automates compliance checks and provides audit trails for every transaction, simplifying audit processes.10. AI and Analytics: Uses AI-driven insights to identify trends and anomalies, helping finance teams make data-driven decisions and optimize forecasting.These capabilities work together to streamline the record-to-report process, enhancing efficiency, accuracy, and compliance. By automating key tasks and centralizing data, BlackLine enables real-time collaboration, faster financial close, and deeper insights, ultimately supporting more informed decision-making and strategic planning.

How does automation improve compliance in the record-to-report cycle?

Automation enhances compliance in the record-to-report cycle by increasing accuracy, standardization, and control over financial processes by reducing human error, enforcing standardized processes, enhancing audit readiness, improving internal controls and segregation of duties, ensuring timeliness and completeness, enabling real-time monitoring, and supporting regulatory agility.

Does BlackLine integrate with existing ERP systems and other third-party systems?

Yes, BlackLine seamlessly integrates with existing ERP systems and other third-party financial systems to automate and optimize financial close, reconciliation, and accounting processes. BlackLine is ERP agnostic and is partnered with many ERPs like SAP and Oracle, to name a few. BlackLine can integrate with virtually any ERP system and integrate with multi-vendor, multi-instance environments.

Unify record-to-report activities to drive your business forward

Deliver accurate, efficient, and intelligent financial operations with comprehensive record-to-report solutions. Unify processes within a single platform and integrate applications for finance and accounting teams.

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Struggling to overcome challenges in your record-to-report process?

Traditional record-to-report (R2R) processes are slow, error-prone, and compliance-heavy due to inefficiencies in people, process, technology, and data. BlackLine streamlines and automates R2R activities while reducing risk and unlocking critical insights.

Manual reconciliation inefficiencies

Delayed financial reporting and inaccuracies

Lack of real-time visibility into financial data

Compliance risks and audit challenges

Automate and streamline reconciliations and journal entry management

Unify close and accelerate reporting

Gain rapid and detailed insights for smarter decisions

Strengthen controls and auditability across your process

70%

reduction in close times

50%

of manual effort eliminated

$2.77

returned for every $1 invested

BlackLine Solutions Across Record-to-Report

Financial Close

Automate closing activities from reconciliations to journal entries to drive accuracy and accelerate financial insights.

Explore Financial Close

Intercompany

Overcome reactive, disconnected intercompany processes and prevent compliance from becoming a major resource drain.

Explore Intercompany

Consolidation

Automate multi-entity consolidation, including aggregation, ownership interest calculations, and intercompany eliminations to deliver fast and accurate financials.

Explore Consolidation

Reporting & Analysis

Generate accurate and timely financial statements with advanced AI-powered analysis to unlock powerful, actionable business intelligence.

Explore Reporting & Analysis

Best practices for an optimized record-to-report process

Unify Data

Integrate seamlessly across systems of record, including ERPs and treasury management systems, with two-way interoperability for pulling and pushing data, such as by automating journal postings back to an ERP.

Automate Key R2R Tasks

Automate critical R2R activities, like reconciliations, journal entries, consolidation, intercompany, financial statement generation, and analysis to speed up processes and reduce the likelihood of errors.

Enable Real-Time Collaboration

Provides various collaboration options to support different work styles, such as centralizing tasks in one location and enabling notifications through the software, email, or chat.

Ensure Compliance and Control

Embed control frameworks that integrates control frameworks across workflows to ensure accuracy and completeness, including a comprehensive audit trail, certifications, and responsible AI practices.

Leverage Intelligent Automation and AI

Use AI and intelligent automation to enhance decision-making, reduce manual effort, and provide insights for continuous improvement, streamlining financial close and reporting processes.

Manual vs. automated
record-to-report

Manual record-to-report activities can be risky, inefficient, and lack the insights you need to move your organization forward.

Feature

Manual
Record-to-Report

Automated Record-to-Report
(BlackLine)

Processing Time

Weeks

Days or real-time

Error Rate

High
(Manual entry errors)

Low
(AI validation)

Financial Visibility

Limited, delayed, and low level of confidence in accuracy

Real-time insights, trusted data foundation

Audit Readiness

Requires extensive manual tracking

AI-driven compliance checks

Scalability

Complex and time-consuming

Scalable across multiple ERP environments, easily handles growth

Additional resources

Frequently asked questions

See how BlackLine delivers end-to-end record-to-report automation for the Office of the CFO.

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