Use Case Spotlight

BlackLine for
Order-To-Cash
Modernize Manual Cash Flow & Revenue-Related
Accounting Processes

Are you struggling to connect your accounting team to business operations?

Did you know that, on average, 47% of credit sales are paid late and companies write off
1.5% of their receivables as bad debt?1

Manual processes and controls around revenue-related activities have long been a
challenge for accounting teams across all industries.

Validating the completeness and accuracy of sales, contra-sales, and related balance sheet
impacts is of paramount importance, but often requires significant manual effort from
your accounting team. As revenues grow, you are forced to devote additional resources to
processes like cash application, returns, and other detailed reconciliations—or expose your
organization to risk.

And because sales, working capital, and operating cash flow are critical to running your
business—covering day-to-day costs, satisfying debt obligations, and paying vendors and
employees—effectively managing the back-office processes surrounding cash is top of
mind for you.

1
Payment Practices Barometer - The Americas 2016, Atradius, 2016
Order-To-Cash: Transactional Bottlenecks Hinder Analysis
Order-to-cash (O2C) is a cross-functional process that can involve many departments,
from sales and accounting to inventory and logistics. An effective O2C process involves
efficient order management, invoice automation, credit management and collections, DSO
optimization, and accurate cash application and reporting.

It’s difficult to optimize these processes if you’re not measuring KPIs and if Accounting doesn’t have direct and regular
communication with the front office.

Unlike many accounting tasks that are centered around the month-end close, the business is generating thousands of
transactions on a daily basis. These transactions often come from multiple sources and require validation before they
can be finalized within the general ledger.

Accounting needs to analyze the financial statement impacts from gross revenue and related net downs—e.g.
discounts, gift cards, returns, credit card fees, and cash over/shorts—to ensure completeness and accuracy.

Regardless of industry or organizational structure, having a solid O2C process is critical for both sustaining the
business and producing sound financial statements.

Time & Effort Aren’t the Only Challenges You Face

With data coming in from numerous disparate sources, the O2C process consists of multiple
detailed matching or reconciliation exercises. These are often completed in spreadsheets.

Accounting resources spend more time manually matching open receivables to payments and deductions, rather than
analyzing the AR aging or developing strategies to reduce days sales outstanding.

Yet time and effort aren’t the only challenges presented by this process. Other common issues include:

• Difficulty identifying and addressing human errors • Write-offs due to unidentified cash over/short

• Missing or duplicate transactions leading to improper sales • Disparate systems for supporting documents
or inventory records
• Painful external audits
• Incorrect data from point of sale or order management
• Limited ability to develop accounting talent
systems, leading to underpayment from payment providers

• Trouble adapting accounting resources

• Lack of visibility into variances
when revenues increase or decrease

(holiday season, etc.)

In addition to increasing financial statement risk, these challenges also result in operational
ineffectiveness. When issues are not addressed in a timely manner, inaccurate information
can drive uninformed business decisions, missed opportunities, or even undetected fraud.

What if you had more time to focus on analyzing

DSO and improving working capital?

How Technology Helps

Despite the numerous systems and vendors involved in a typical O2C process, there is often
a technology whitespace when it comes to reconciling data between these systems.

Using a leading accounting automation platform, organizations have alleviated the manual
effort, reduced the risk of human error, and better aligned accounting processes to the pace
of the business.

Solutions like BlackLine offer business-defined rules, handle complex matching scenarios
(one-to-many, many-to-many), and allow millions of transactions to be reconciled in minutes.

Successful applications of BlackLine’s Transaction Matching solution for the order-to-cash

process include:

Suspense account and accounts

Sales to payment provider settlements
receivable clearing

Accounts receivable to payments reconciliation Bank to GL

POS to bank Bad debt reserve calculation

Gift card processes

Credit card to bank and/or GL
(issuance, redemption, etc.)

Daily cash receipt reconciliation Proactively identifying polling issues

Impactful Results for Accounting Teams Dealing with O2C Bottlenecks
Automating large volumes of manual work and centralizing financial data enables accounting
teams to:

99.7%
Focus on analyzing exceptions (missing
transactions, errors, in-transit items)

Actively track KPIs, such as net days in accounts

process automation
receivable, working capital, cash collection
as a percentage of net revenue, days sales

99%
outstanding (DSO), and others

Break down silos by providing timely, meaningful

insights to the front office and management
of transactions
Shift focus to activities that require more matched automatically
judgment and analysis

Eliminate bottlenecks during peak close time

Absorb additional month-end tasks and partner

85%
with the business reduced time spent
on reconciliations

BlackLine Transaction Matching

BlackLine’s Transaction Matching solution automates the
3-4
most complex and manual processes plaguing accounting hours now takes
and finance teams.
30 minutes
The use cases are nearly endless. BlackLine’s integrated

40
platform imports transactional data from any source and
applies intelligent, business defined logic to automatically
match millions of records in minutes.

For any unreconciled transactions, suggested matches and

hours per
exceptions are identified for accounting to review. month saved