BlackLine, which makes accounting automation software for the monthly close, has released a new solution, BlackLine AR Intelligence. Powered by artificial intelligence, the new accounts receivable software uses real-time data and analytics to help controllers understand their customers’ financial behavior, and to use the information to inform strategic decision-making.
“Now more than ever, business resilience and cash management is top of the agenda. BlackLine AR Intelligence provides our customers with a deep understanding of the financial risks and opportunities within their customer bases, unlocking data either previously not available to them or that took days and weeks to generate manually,” said Kevin Kimber, managing director of BlackLine’s global accounts receivables business unit, in a statement.
BlackLine AR Intelligence offers the following:
- Customer behavior insights: Sales and payment performance data, such as invoiced sales by month and cash by month, and the correlation/variance between the two.
- Payment terms versus cash collected: The ability to track and measure payment terms, outstanding balances, cash collected and debt positions across the customer base and see how customers actually pay against those terms.
- Payment forecasting: The ability to forecast weekly collections and measure accuracy by using real-time customer payment behavior data.
- Sales ledger analysis: An analysis of the relationship between volume of customers and value of debt outstanding, e.g., debt by value, count of invoices by value, count of customers by value.
- Bank utilization: The ability to see customer accounts linked by the same bank details or sales ledger accounts linked by payee details to see how customers are paying and for which accounts, leading to a better understanding of overall exposure/risk.
- Days sales outstanding: Automated calculations around the time it takes to collect payment, such as cash collected last month, customers by balance, customers with the most debt and debtor day value by month.
BlackLine AR Intelligence is designed to be used alongside BlackLine Cash Application, and the company plans to release more AR automation solutions in the near future as part of an active strategy to expand in the space.
