SUSPENSE & CLEARING ACCOUNTS
Simplify your suspense and clearing account processes.
Your suspense and clearing accounts may net to zero, but how much time is your team spending to get there and are you confident in the process?
Besides the time savings from eliminating the manual piece, we feel that there will be better information on the account reconciliations because we now know exactly what is making up the balance. We don’t have a whole bunch of entries in there that net to zero anymore, so we know which ones we have to focus on.
Common Suspense & Clearing Accounts
Payroll Clearing
Benefits Clearing
Cash Clearing
Unapplied Cash
T&E Clearing
Construction in Progress (CIP)
challenges
Why Manual Suspense & Clearing Account Processes Are Unsustainable
Manual Processes
Are you performing the following suspense and clearing account process activities manually?
Aggregating previous period reconciliation with open items and current period transactions
Comparing and matching transactions
Identifying open items and substantiating clearing balance
Assigning individual transactions to a specific category
Creating and posting related adjusting journal entries
Risks & Challenges
Manual suspense and clearing account processes have downstream effects that carry risk and pose additional challenges:
Limited timeframe to investigate differences results in late entries or fire drills
A lack of visibility and inconsistent processes slow down operational decision-making
Delays in process hinder accuracy and timeliness of financial reporting
Lack of scalability impedes ability to adapt to growth and change
WHY BLACKLINE
What BlackLine Brings to Suspense & Clearing Processes
Clearing account reconciliations can be complicated. BlackLine’s unified financial close platform streamlines suspense and clearing processes, resulting in capacity to investigate and determine the root cause of unexpected balances, differences, and open items. Our integrated solutions enable your team to:
Import detailed transactional data from your general ledger into BlackLine
Enhance or transform data automatically to arrive at your desired format for comparison and analysis
Compare and match clearing and suspense transactions in real-time to help proactively identify exceptions
Automate the posting of related adjusting journal entries for routine offsetting transactions, reconciling items uncovered through the matching process, or for transactions routinely recorded to the incorrect account
Link adjustments to the face of the related reconciliation
Analyze detailed transactions and provide timely insights with increased visibility and additional capacity
Want to see step-by-step suspense and clearing account process examples from your BlackLine peers?
Gain leading-practice automation and optimization strategies in our complimentary virtual Optimization Academy.
Optimize More Processes
Suspense & Clearing processes are part of the BlackLine Nine. With our framework, you can apply proven strategies to optimize key processes.
Accruals
Supercharge your accrual processes by leveraging end-to-end process automation.
Amortization
Save time and increase accuracy by automating and optimizing your amortization processes.
Calculations
Optimize capacity, control, and value by automating your calculation processes.
Rollforwards
Save time, reduce errors, and enhance reporting quality by streamlining and optimizing your end-to-end rollforward process.
Subledgers
Harness the power of your subledger data without having to load it yourself.
