BlackLine System Admin Best Practices
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August 30th Meeting slides discussing BlackLine best practices for administration roles. Annual meeting held by Aviva Spectrum, an LA based company.
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BlackLine System Admin Best Practices
- 1. #ITB16 1 Best Practices for Administration Roles Amit Dewan, CPA, CISA Aviva Spectrum Vanessa English, Sr. Product Training Consultant BlackLine
- 2. HOUSE KEEPING ITEMS 1) Take Notes 2) Q&A 3) Parking Lot 3
- 3. 3 Agenda & Outcomes Best practice items for roles in: 1. Local Admin 2. Business Admin 3. System Admin Action items to leverage or create your own “cheat sheet” when back to “work”.
- 4. 4 Polling Question • What is your PRIMARY BlackLine User ROLE? A. Local Admin B. Business Admin C. System admin D. Process Owner &/or Preparer/Approver/Reviewer E. IT &/or Audit user
- 5. 5
- 6. 6 List of 5… 1. Diligently enforce Due Date compliance 2. Enforce Account Grouping integrity 3. Develop a consistent new User onboarding process 4. Encourage BlackLine Team usage 5. Encourage Account Rules based assignments For Local Administrators…
- 7. 7 Diligently enforce Due Date compliance Ensuring Due Date compliance is the first steps toward a robust, quality account reconciliation (and month-end close) program. Develop a culture that Due Date compliance is an integral part of each User’s responsibilities. o Due Date compliance is a “Must Have”, not a “Nice to Have”. PTO should not be an excuse to missed Due Dates. For Local Administrators…
- 8. 8 Enforce Account Grouping integrity Groups should occur because an Accounting process impacts multiple GL strings and/or one Supporting document package supports multiple balances. Get Preparers and Approvers away from the notion that “less clicks = more efficient reconciliation process”. Develop and publish expectations for Grouping requirements. For Local Administrators…
- 9. 9 Develop a consistent new User onboarding process Consistency is a primary building block of quality. o Introductory emails alert new Users to documents, training and FAQ answers that facilitate a smooth transition to BlackLine success. Leverage BlackLine U. Create a Peer-to-Peer checklist for teams to convey shared knowledge to new team members. For Local Administrators…
- 10. 10 Template – Onboarding (Sample) • Add Users either via import, or directly in the application • Give Users instructions on how to access your organization’s BlackLine instance(s) • To get new users ramped up on using BlackLine, have them take ‘Account Reconciliations: Global Navigation’ and download the ‘Global Navigation Job Aid’ in BLU
- 11. 11 Polling Question What resource do you use to find BlackLine answers to your questions? A. My friends/co-workers/other users B. BlackLine Resources (BL U/Detailed Help/Community) C. YouTube/videos online (free) D. LinkedIn User Groups E. My Boss/Manager
- 12. 12 Encourage BlackLine Team usage BlackLine Teams bolster Due Date Certification compliance and foster team knowledge sharing. Teams are crucial to Managers to help manage every changing priorities! For Local Administrators…
- 13. 13 Encourage Account Rules based assignments Assignments, risk ratings, Template choices can be automated! For Local Administrators…
- 14. 14 Regular Responsibilities of A Local Admin You can create a Task List in BlackLine to monitor these For Local Administrators…
- 15. 15 List of 5… 1. Lead a Quarterly Quality Assurance Program 2. Publish Monthly Trend Reports 3. Publish Timely Certification Attestation Status Updates 4. Publish a Quarterly newsletter 5. Lead Quarterly Accounting principles reviews For Business Administrators…
- 16. 16 Lead a Quarterly Quality Assurance Program Suggested topics to review: Reconciliation done on time? o Set operational due dates separate from SOX due dates. Are all required Supporting documents attached (at the correct spot)? Are BlackLine functions leveraged? o Correct template choice? o Purpose & Procedures populated with meaningful information? Are required adjustments (R items) correctly identified and managed? Are related Accounting principals correct? For Business Admin…
- 17. 17 Publish Monthly Trend Reports Distribute a rolling 12 month Trend Report to Management to publicize the work effort and results going on within the BlackLine processes. Key metrics to report on include: o # of reconciliations and licenses used o % of reconciliations certified on time. o # of R items (+ ABS) and # of R items > 90 days (+ ABS) o # of T items > 90 days o # of Account groups o % of reconciliations with empty Purpose & Procedures boxes For Business Admin…
- 18. 18 Publish Timely Certification Attestation Status Updates Develop a standard template to report Certification progress to Management. Report Certification progress during consistent times. Use Key accounts to highlight reconciliations with more risk and Manager focus than the rest of the population. For Business Admin…
- 19. 19 Publish a Quarterly newsletter Develop a newsletter as a method to cure program execution gaps and highlight new aspects of the BlackLine platform that will help Users to more with less effort but higher quality. Suggested topics include: o What’s new? o FAQ o Who to contact? o QA and/or Certification progress reports o Tips and Tricks o Best Practices For Business Admin…
- 20. 20 Lead Quarterly Accounting principles reviews Develop Accounting reviews based on information contained in BlackLine. Alternate reviews throughout the quarter to balance work loads. Suggested Review topics include: o Abnormal balances (credit balance in Asset account & vice-versa). o Misc. Receivable/Accruals L items > 120 days. o R Items > 90 days. o Stale balances (GL balance has changed in 6 months). For Business Admin…
- 21. 21 List of 5… 1. Lead ongoing data feed automation 2. Promote Auto-certification rule usage 3. Encourage custom account reconciliation certification frequencies 4. Develop a consistent new user onboarding process 5. Routinely check for BlackLine updates For System Administrators…
- 22. 22 Lead ongoing data feed automation Account balance import scheduling: o Each day: 2 months (current reconciliation period + current accounting period) via an automated feed. o Work with Management to schedule the automation upgrade project for 2017 (if still importing balances manually). See where Items imported into a reconciliation template can be automated. See if there are opportunities to add automated sub-ledger balances into BlackLine. For System Admin…
- 23. 23 Promote Auto-certification rule usage Develop a semi-annual auto-certification review process. Be sure Auto-certification process metrics are included in the Trend reports distributed monthly. For System Admin…
- 24. 24 Encourage custom account reconciliation certification frequencies Develop an annual auto-certification review process. Ensure that each manual reconciliation frequency makes sense for the GL account type and the business performing the certifications! For System Admin…
- 25. 25 Develop a consistent new user onboarding process Coordinate with the Local Administrator on the new User onboarding process that begins with the System Administrator creating the User profile. The process should be easy to perform but impactful for all new Users. For System Admin…
- 26. 26 Routinely check for BlackLine updates Check Trust.BlackLine.Com for new system information. Check the Community for new User information. Understand how the BlackLine Customer Service Department can help you help your Users. For System Admin…
- 27. 27 New Feature: Manual Import Files Import Status now hosts text files of manual uploads For System Admin…
- 28. 28 New Feature: Reporting Reporting will be so much better ..its a snap! For now it is in SandBox
- 29. #ITB16 29 Next Steps… • Embrace your role as a leader representing these topics to your organization • Meet with your Management to discuss their thoughts on some of these topics • Join “Free” user networks like……
- 30. 30 Community & Sharing BlackLine Best Practices & Tactics https://www.linkedin.com/groups/7039150
- 31. 31 ROI Analysis – FREE! Process review Product ROI Assessment Info@AvivaSpectrum.com
- 32. #ITB16 32 Questions? Let’s Connect: Vanessa English, Blackline Sonia Luna, Aviva Spectrum
Editor's Notes
- Welcome all who love, live and breathe BLACKLINE, We are you hosts today, my name is Amit Dewan and my co-host from BlackLine is Vanessa English, a Blackline Sr. Training consultant and what I call a GURU of System admin and other GREAT functions of Blackline.
- Amit (Lead)
- Amit (Lead): We want to give you a list of topics that when your Boss asked you what you learned at this meeting, you can go through this list and determine if any of these opportunities make sense for you.
- Amit (Lead) – before we get going on these best practices we wanted you to get to know what your role is?
- Amit (LEAD) BlackLine is a great tool. That said, I’ve seen the most success when Administrators lead positive change within BlackLine processes. I encourage each of you to use that tool to create positive change in your organizations. I’ll talk about Local Admin & Business Admin best practices, and then I’m going to turn it over to Vanessa to discuss System admin items that are very strategic! Vanessa (Comment): Will comment on continuing to discuss with leadership on working on BlackLine, and this allows folks to become a strong voice within the organization.
- Amit (Lead) I’ve ranked them in priority with the top item being my highest recommended focus. Feel free to start with any item but keep all in consideration moving forward. Let’s dive into each Item. NOTE: Item 1: remember that mgmt. agreed to due dates and that you may be put in a position to be the “local hall monitor”! NOTE: item 2: You want to make sure that if you have a group, there is NOT a bunch of separate support for those accounts. Remember it’s the preparers job to make it easier for the Reviewer to approve their work. So as a “general rule of thumb, if you NOTE there are several supporting items to “A” reconciliation item, really challenge, your preparer about “grouping”. NOTE: Item 3: Make sure that the new employee knows where their resources are for a QUALITY account reconciliation. So yes, some of the “consistency” is getting HR policies Outlook email set up: Script is the best practices. 1) Local ADMIN is copied 2) Recommended Courses 3) Attachments and/or PnPs NOTE: Item 4: Teams allow your organization to be more flexible when there are PTOs etc. NOTE: Item 5: In BL you can program BL when a new Rec comes thru that it can automatically assign someone that reconciliation. One of the criteria could be New Account is created, Business Unit, Account type (Asset/Liability) so Cash with a Legal entity gets assigned to a particular user. Automation – Materiality – Key Account
- Amit (LEAD) Getting recs done is the first priority that BlackLine supports. Encourage a culture of accountability. For those administrators with reconciliations to certify, lead by example and be sure yours are done on time. Quality reports folder contains a sub folder called “Certification Log reports” thus allowing a mechanism to start the discussion with team members that may need help in developing an automated routine and meet those deadlines. Keep drilling into your users that deadlines are important Amit to ask a question to Vanessa” “Alerts help remind Users in various roles of what is coming due (warning alerts), already past due (delinquent alerts), of an outstanding item requiring action (pending alerts), or the status of an item (status alerts). Business or System Administrators are able to manage alerts. Local Administrators only have access to the Alert Status page” – What’s the best practice for Local Admins to “inform” Bus/System admins on changing /editing “alerts”? Vanessa (Comment): She will comment on keep communications open. Local admins are in the front lines of these alerts.
- Amit (Lead) Relating reconciliation supporting documents to Account groupings sets the Preparers up for efficiency + the approval and audit processes are much more streamlined. Ask your Manager and/or Business Administrator for their opinion for grouping requests that aren’t straight forward. Local Admin will usually conduct the grouping of accounts, and a quick set of Advanced Best Practices are: Never “group” cash accounts: because each bank account statement is different and you’d be comingling cash (this is a basic anti-fraud control) Don’t let asset accounts be grouped into liability accounts (basics of accounting and reconciliation processes) Oh – one more thing – once you create a group there is no automated way to delete it you will have to do it manually so thing before you create a thousand groups! Vanessa (Comment) Grouping supports logical approvals and efficient audits.
- Amit (LEAD): The Local administrator should be the day-to-day contact with most Users. Ensure every Users knows your role, how you can help them with their responsibilities and how they can contact you.
- Vanessa (Lead) - Add Users either via import, or directly in the application - Give Users instructions on how to access your organization’s BlackLine instance(s) - Access to BlackLine U, the Community and Product Documentation is through Production instances only - To get new users ramped up on using BlackLine, have them take ‘Account Reconciliations: Global Navigation’ and download the ‘Global Navigation Job Aid’ in BLU - Use Sandbox for User Acceptance Testing and for Users to "play" with BlackLine without affecting the data in your Production instance. - Submit a ticket to BlackLine Support to request your Sandbox instance to be refreshed with the data in your Production instance
- Amit (LEAD): this allows you to Segway to checklist tool, based upon the answers (such as team/folks at work and leveraging the template would allow them to remember of other resources).
- Amit (LEAD): Advertise Teams and their successful impact. Be sure to review Team rosters quarterly to see if Users need to be added or removed from Teams. “For those that are not that familiar with the various “hyperlinks” within BL, I’m sharing in this picture in yellow…. the “toggle” in order to switch which between your own individual assignments compared to the “Team assignments”
- Amit (LEAD): Last, but not least, here is a picture of where you can …. Let the System to your work for you. You can still be the hero! Work with your System Administrator to make this happen. Amit to Ask Vanessa this “Question from the group here” What’s a good example, that accounting teams have used in the past that have leveraged account rules based assignments? Vanessa (comment):
- Amit (LEAD):
- Amit (LEAD): Now when you think of the Bus admin roles what may be important to state here is how it is different from the other admin roles. Simply put- if you have local admin and system admin roles then you can do all that is required by blackline and bus admin role becomes redundant. So why have a Bus admin role- perhaps you need segregation of roles at the geolocation or the warehouse/subsidiary level and keep the system admin role only at the corp level. Remember the Local admin is the only admin role that can initiate the delete request so you certainly need that role. IN that scenario there are certain best practice items that you may want to perform as a business admin: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5
- Amit (LEAD): This is my #1 recommendation of all 15 recommendations. A strong QA program has a direct positive impact on the reconciliation process, associated Accounting processes and finally all audit efforts.
- Amit (LEAD): Be the spokesperson for the program! Publicize the quality improvements! Set the standard for other processes to follow your approach!
- Amit (LEAD): Let Management know before you leave on the Due Date where the Certification process is and then again right away in the morning the day after a due date! Or better yet have a scheduled report set up to run.
- Amit (LEAD): Give the Reconcilers more information so they can build in their own quality improvements!
- Amit (LEAD): You can lead a program that will have a direct positive impact on Accounting processes. Follow through with reviews quarter over quarter and follow-up items each quarter. Don’t let Reconcilers forget about needed improvements or changes! We are now going to turn it over to Vanessa to talk about the system admin role related best practices as well as share any new features that have been recently released by BlackLine.
- Vanessa (LEAD): Managing the system is just about as important as the last section where we were focusing on managing people and procedures.
- Vanessa (LEAD): Have the systems do the work. Don’t accept manual work-arounds as permanent fixes. 2 months of automated feeds will allow an accrual and the accrual reversal to be reconciled. All of these process enhancements have a direct month-over-month impact on process efficiency. The System Administrator is in a great position to lead many of these system import processes enhancements. Vanessa to ask Amit : “When have you seen best practices to automate the importing process using BlackLine” Amit (ANSWER) During Implementation we’re consulting with our clients on the best scenarios of when to automate certain functions within BlackLIne, above and beyond the upload process of the Trial Balance including… Subledger balances Currency Rates Forecasted balances (to leverage the variance module) Transactions for Data Sources for Matching
- Vanessa (LEAD): Our list of auto-certification rules keeps growing. Also, now those rules can be applied to more specific groups and accounts than ever before. Keep considering new rule usage as there continue to be new opportunities for great efficiency. Amit (comment) It’s the ultimate best practice to review the “rules” to see if it “makes sense” for example, “No G/L Balance – ZBA or no movement”, you may want to review the year’s total activity to see if its logical not to have a movement in G/L Balances Classic examples, of also when to review regardless of a semi-annual process would be “Sale” or “Purchase” of an entity!
- Vanessa (LEAD): As BlackLine and the Users realize process quality improvements, look to pivot to efficiencies available based on customer certification frequencies. Not all reconciliations contain the same month-over-month risk. Use custom frequencies for certain GL account types to properly weight the risks with the associated reconciliation frequency. Like- If you have an entity that is a lower dollar threshold (below materiality), you still may want to have a quarterly reconciliation process for that low risk & low dollar threshold account balance.
- Vanessa (LEAD): We shared already a checklist on best practices for onboarding a new user, the same goes for System Admin roles too! Your role is the first step in the User provisioning process. Even before the Local Administrator onboarding process starts, the system admin needs to have an established a new user onboarding process. Be sure that first step begins a holistic process that culminates with each User knowing the Why? How? When? And Where? Of BlackLine.
- Vanessa (LEAD): Keep an eye out for information on new releases! Here are a few examples……[read slide] Amit (Comment): “Are there any questions now?” If not we’ll move on to discuss BlackLine new features/Updates and where to check to review those updates.
- Vanessa (Lead)
- Vanessa (Lead)
- Amit (LEAD): For existing BlackLine customers, I’d encourage you to engage with your Customer Success Managers on these topics and other topics as needed. Also…[read slide]
- Amit (lead): We have a new matching module best practice guide covering Match Set best practices for you to start on your road to continuous accounting.
- Amit (LEAD): During the various meetings we have had with BlackLIne users, one thing that constantly keep coming back is…well we have all the Products ..BUT we are using only Accounts/Rec and Tasks…well what about matching, journals, variance…. Now to make s business case to start utilizing these products what you may want to do is calculate a ROI… You can reach us to help you with a Free of cost ROI computation to assess if its event reasonable for you to engage the other unused BL products given your current and projected needs, set up etc…
- Amit (LEAD): If there are any other questions, please use feel free to email us here at Aviva Spectrum. On behalf of Aviva Spectrum we want to thank you for joining us. Thank you! Vanessa any other final thoughts? Vanessa (Comment)