Finance leaders know that a stable, scalable and efficient financial close process is critical to long-term success. Yet, many organizations continue to struggle with slow, manual workflows that delay financial reporting, create unnecessary risk, and hinder strategic decision-making.
But what if you could measure and benchmark your financial operations to assess your “future-readiness?”
The latest industry benchmark guide from BlackLine explores seven key metrics that define a modern, resilient financial close process. Here are the critical areas that could be standing in the way of your finance transformation.
1. Hours Spent Cleaning and Downloading Data
Industry Benchmark: 2-8 Hours Setup
Data preparation is often one of the biggest hidden inefficiencies in financial operations. Manually downloading, importing and structuring data for reconciliation and reporting eats up valuable time and introduces unnecessary risk.
Future-Ready Solution: Organizations leveraging automation solutions can integrate data directly, reducing setup time to as little as two hours. This ensures real-time visibility and reduces the burden on accounting teams.
2. Percentage of Transactions Automatically Reconciled
Industry Benchmark: 99% Auto-Reconciled
Manually matching transactions is not just time-consuming—it’s also a morale killer for finance teams. A low percentage of automation in reconciliation means that skilled professionals are stuck on repetitive tasks instead of focusing on exceptions and anomalies.
Future-Ready Solution: With automated transaction matching, companies can achieve reconciliation accuracy rates of 99%, freeing up teams to focus on strategic financial analysis.
3. Percentage of Manual Journal Entries Per Month
Industry Benchmark: 10% or Fewer
Scalability will be a challenge if your organization is still processing a high volume of manual journal entries. Manual processing increases errors, compliance risks, and inefficiencies.
Future-Ready Solution: Automating journal entry creation and validation allows leading organizations to reduce manual journal entries to 10% or less.
4. Percentage of Low-Value Journal Entries
Industry Benchmark: Less than 5%
Low-value journal entries (such as transactions below a certain threshold) can consume significant resources without providing much benefit. Understanding their impact allows organizations to optimize processing efforts.
Future-Ready Solution: Using AI-powered analysis, finance leaders can set materiality thresholds and identify unnecessary journal entries, allowing teams to focus on higher-value activities.
5. Percentage of Automated Recurring Journal Entries
Industry Benchmark: 35% Automation
Recurring journal entries—such as accruals and amortization—are predictable and should not require extensive manual intervention. Yet, many organizations still rely on outdated processes that require accountants to manually re-enter the same data every month.
Future-Ready Solution: Automating recurring journal entries eliminates redundant work and increases accuracy, leading to greater efficiency in month-end close.
6. Hours Spent Responding to Audit Requests
Industry Benchmark: Less than 2 Hours
Audit season shouldn’t bring financial close operations to a halt. But for many teams, responding to audit requests is an inefficient, time-consuming process that involves tracking down documents across multiple systems.
Future-Ready Solution: Centralizing audit documentation in an automated financial operations platform allows for self-service auditing, cutting response times to under two hours.
7. Number of Solutions Needed to Execute Financial Close
The more fragmented your financial close process, the harder it is to maintain consistency and accuracy. Relying on multiple disconnected tools increases operational risk and reduces efficiency.
Industry benchmark: Leading organizations aim for a unified financial close platform rather than relying on multiple disconnected systems.
Future-Ready Solution: A unified platform consolidates financial close processes, reducing complexity and improving transparency.
Is Your Finance Team Future-Ready?
By benchmarking your financial operations against these seven key metrics, you can identify opportunities for improvement and take steps toward a more agile and resilient finance function.
Want to see how your organization stacks up? Download the full eBook to learn how BlackLine customers have achieved best-in-class financial close automation and efficiency.
