BlackLine has updated its flagship cloud accounting platform to include features such as data visualization, enhanced automation for transaction reconciliation, expanded application program interfaces and software integration. The updates coincide with a new partnership with KPMG, which combines BlackLine’s cloud platform with KPMG’s finance process.
The software upgrades
The new data visualization capabilities are aimed at helping accounting teams identify and uncover business insights. New charts show the quality, timeliness and accuracy of accounting results, uncover potential risks in data, and measure team effectiveness.
The new BlackLine Transaction Matching feature helps organizations embed more automation within manual processes to help accounting teams focus on exceptions and anomalies. The latest enhancements use business rules to help automate matches and resolve unmatched transactions.
New public APIs broaden opportunities for integration with other business processes and systems. BlackLine's Smart Close integration allows customers to track SAP Smart Close tasks and run reports directly within BlackLine.
KPMG partnership
New API capabilities facilitate the new partnership with KPMG. BlackLine will use the Big Four firm’s finance process to help users improve staff efficiency, shift the focus from transactional to analytical, and align finance strategies with those of the business.
As digital transformation becomes more of a priority, KPMG and BlackLine can “support an automation of finance roadmap that will ultimately achieve a move of finance professionals out of transaction processing and into more valuable operational and strategic decision support,” according to Ralph Canter, KPMG’s managing director of Advisory.
“We’ve completed many successful projects with KPMG over the years where their in-depth knowledge and hands-on advisory services have helped us meet the requirements of global customers,” added BlackLine CEO Therese Tucker in a statement. “KPMG has been a terrific partner in that they have been very vocal about the potential they see for BlackLine, as well as the direction they think we should take to get there. They see the broader vision of what BlackLine can do to transform finance and accounting organizations.”
