Many Finance & Accounting (F&A) professionals rely on traditional manual accounting processes to close the books. A reliance on spreadsheets, tribal knowledge and in-person communication is not sustainable and introduces risk in a normal environment.
Changing tax incentives, evolving regulation, and the competitive business environment further adds to the challenges of the finance team.
To complicate matters, F&A teams are now asked to work from home in a bid by governments to contain the COVID-19 outbreak.
These factors increase work and complexity for already busy F&A teams who are in the midst of their month- and quarter-end close.
BlackLine said it created a portal it refers to as a ‘Resource Hub for Closing Virtually’ to help F&A professionals cope with the new challenges caused by COVID-19, as many organizations worldwide now face closing their books with a distributed workforce for the first time.
The portal provides a destination for F&A professionals to find articles, whitepapers, webinars, FAQs and more based on knowledge BlackLine has gained working with thousands of companies globally over many years.
Initial content focuses on overcoming the challenges of closing in a distributed environment with remote employees. The portal also offers insight from 3rd-party industry experts including F&A transformation leaders from leading global accounting and advisory firm EY.
“We’re trying to ease that angst and bring some semblance of normalcy back into what’s undoubtedly a very confusing and chaotic time for many. Our goal with the new resource hub is to provide F&A professionals everywhere the guidance they need, in one place, to make their virtual close collaborative and achievable so they can close with confidence, even under these trying circumstances,” BlackLine CEO Therese Tucker said.
