The new package will help customers prepare for audits with confidence in uncertain times.
LOS ANGELES – May 1, 2020 – With continued macroeconomic uncertainty from the coronavirus pandemic and auditors restricted from traveling, many Finance & Accounting (F&A) teams face the prospect of preparing for audits from home for the first time. As a trusted advisor to F&A professionals around the world, BlackLine has unveiled a remote audit solution and services package that can be quickly deployed to help customers prepare for remote audits, ensuring accuracy and integrity in the numbers, as well as security around internal financial controls. The company is offering BlackLine Remote Audit on a complimentary basis to a limited number of qualified customers that sign on by June 1st.
The process of auditing a company’s financials to ensure that all information is accurate and complete, that the company’s controls are adequate and effective, and that the company is adhering to policies, procedures and regulations has long been an onsite task. In today’s current state, most organizations and auditors will have to perform these processes from a remote location, creating challenges in obtaining the necessary information and supporting documentation that auditors may require for sign-off.
BlackLine Remote Audit is a repeatable, packaged process complete with all the knowledge and leading practices needed around conducting an audit remotely including templated PBC (Prepared By Client) lists; close, certification and IT checklists; task tracking; ready-to-go report templates; audit notes for internal and external auditors; pre-configured status dashboards; approval flows; policies and procedures; and more. By applying a combination of native cloud technology with a simplified, pre-designed services package including live virtual implementation, training and support time with BlackLine experts, BlackLine Remote Audit enables F&A teams to be ready for their next audit in as little as a few days.
“Hundreds of leading companies have been using BlackLine for years to manage the audit process, and many have given their auditors direct access to the system all along,” Marc Huffman, BlackLine’s president and chief operating officer, said. “We’ve now packaged this functionality with a guided process, best practices that we’ve acquired working with market-leading companies for nearly 20 years, and a services offering to boost customer confidence in the accuracy and integrity of the numbers they’re providing the auditors, and if necessary, enabling them to ensure a successful audit process from home.”
With unprecedented uncertainty facing many organizations today, it’s more challenging than ever for F&A to deliver an accurate picture of a company’s financial health. With F&A now also tasked with adjusting to a distributed workforce, BlackLine Remote Audit can help by guiding teams to achieve a collaborative and successful audit from wherever they’re working, without sacrificing productivity. With BlackLine providing a single, unified platform for all accounting close information, customers and their auditors (both internal and external) are able to perform all audit work remotely—dramatically reducing the manual effort involved in preparation time and chasing down details.
Here’s what BlackLine users are saying about managing their audit process with BlackLine:
- “The audit process for many of our SOX controls has become hands-free. As long as the attached documentation and the information that we provide matches, auditors can complete a monthly audit without even having to contact us.” – Shannon Randolph, Staff Accountant, Scotts Miracle-Gro
- “I knew we hit a home run when we had two external auditors in my office asking for access to BlackLine.” – John Zimmerman, Director, Financial Data Systems, The Hershey Company
- “With BlackLine, we can now demonstrate financial compliance more effectively, and develop a more efficient way for financial analysts and auditors to prepare, approve and monitor account reconciliations, and review attached documentation.” – Laurel Johns, Manager, Finance Consolidation and Controls, Scotts Miracle-Gro
Customers can reach out to [email protected] to learn how they can add BlackLine Remote Audit to their existing BlackLine application. In addition, earlier this month, BlackLine launched a ‘Resource Hub for Closing Virtually’, providing F&A professionals worldwide with insight and leading practices to help guide them as they close their books remotely.
