New Accounts Receivable Intelligence Solution From BlackLine Enhances Strategic And Operational Decision-Making For Global Businesses

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Apr 01, 2021, 09:00 ET

BlackLine AR Intelligence optimizes working capital by boosting payment predictabilityand improving collections forecasting

LOS ANGELES and LONDON, April 1, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Accounting automation software leader BlackLine, Inc. (Nasdaq: BL) has unveiled BlackLine AR Intelligence, the latest offering in its portfolio of accounts receivable (AR) automation solutions designed to complement and enhance its broader financial operations management platform. BlackLine AR Intelligence enables customers to manage financial risks and opportunities by providing access to real-time, actionable data to help them understand their customers' financial behaviors and use the information to impact strategic and operational decision-making.

BlackLine AR Intelligence's Payment Forecast feature forecasts weekly customer cash collections and measures accuracy by using real-time customer payment behavior.

BlackLine AR Intelligence's Cash Collected to Terms feature provides 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.

Managing debtors and the overall assessment of customer payment behaviors has never been as critical as it is in today's economic climate. Businesses need to make decisions based on accurate, real-time intelligence. BlackLine AR Intelligence takes the strategic value of BlackLine's AI-powered Cash Application solution to the next level by harnessing real-time data and combining it with powerful analytics to improve critical decision-making across the enterprise.

"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. "BlackLine AR Intelligence delivers real-time credit, debt and sales insights that benefit not only the Accounts Receivable, Credit Management and Order-to-Cash departments, but other senior stakeholders such as the CFO, Office of the Controller, Treasury and even the CRO/Sales team, enabling companies to reduce risk, improve forecasting, optimize working capital and grow revenues by analyzing precise customer payment and credit behaviors."

More than $187 billion of payments were applied through BlackLine Cash Application in 2020. By adding BlackLine AR Intelligence, customers gain critical business insights to manage risk, cash flow and collections, as well as real-time analysis and reports. Pre-configured, interactive dashboards display key information such as:

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 v. Cash Collected: 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: Ability to forecast weekly collections and measure accuracy by using real-time customer payment behavior.
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: 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 (DSO): 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 a natural complement to our Cash Application solution, delivering on our vision to be the most indispensable platform for the controller," added Mr. Kimber. "Coupled with the ability to link everything back to our market-leading financial close platform for currency adjustments, intercompany cash, bad debt reserves and suspense accounts, we are redefining the way AR work gets done and unlocking new strategic value for our customers."

Here's what customers are saying about their experience using BlackLine AR Intelligence:

"A strategic review and a dynamic approach to collections. Have not seen any other solution to get to this level of data."
"Enhances operational performance to see problems which would normally be overlooked because we don't have the data."
"Very powerful and easy to use; of great value to us, particularly from a management perspective."
"Love the fact that we evaluate what is happening across our customer base in depth and quickly."
"The real power is having all of the data at my fingertips rather than spending hours creating reports."

Following the Oct. 2^nd, 2020 announcement of its acquisition of Rimilia, BlackLine is actively expanding its capabilities in the AR automation space. BlackLine AR Intelligence is designed to be used alongside BlackLine Cash Application and is one of several AR automation offerings to come. To learn more, register for the upcoming Modern Accounting Summits and attend a series of sessions dedicated to AR automation, Cash Application and AR Intelligence.

About BlackLine
Companies come to BlackLine (Nasdaq: BL) because their traditional manual accounting processes are not sustainable. BlackLine's cloud-based solutions and market-leading customer service help companies move to modern accounting by unifying their data and processes, automating repetitive work, and driving accountability through visibility. BlackLine provides solutions to manage and automate financial close, accounts receivable and intercompany accounting processes, helping large enterprises and midsize companies across all industries do accounting work better, faster and with more control.

More than 3,400 customers trust BlackLine to help them close faster with complete and accurate results. The company is the pioneer of the cloud financial close market and recognized as the leader by customers at leading end-user review sites including Gartner Peer Insights, G2 and TrustRadius. Based in Los Angeles, BlackLine also has regional headquarters in London, Singapore and Sydney. For more information, please visit blackline.com.

BlackLine Forward-looking Statements
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Any forward-looking statements contained in this press release are based upon BlackLine's current plans, estimates and expectations and are not a representation that such plans, estimates, or expectations will be achieved. Forward-looking statements are based on information available at the time those statements are made and/or management's good faith beliefs and assumptions as of that time with respect to future events and are subject to risks and uncertainties. If any of these risks or uncertainties materialize or if any assumptions prove incorrect, actual performance or results may differ materially from those expressed in or suggested by the forward-looking statements. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, risks related to the Company's ability to execute on its strategies, attract new customers, enter new geographies and develop, release and sell new features and solutions; and other risks and uncertainties described in the other filings we make with the Securities and Exchange Commission from time to time, including the risks described under the heading "Risk Factors" in our Annual Report on Form 10-K. Additional information will also be set forth in our Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q.

Forward-looking statements should not be read as a guarantee of future performance or results, and you should not place undue reliance on such statements. Except as required by law, we do not undertake any obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future developments or otherwise.

SOURCE BlackLine