Guide to Executing a Remote Audit

Due to the impact of the current COVID-19 outbreak to businesses worldwide, many auditors will be conducting their review of company financials from a remote location. This can create challenges in obtaining the necessary information and supporting documentation that auditors may require for their sign off.

Keep in mind that audits are also intended to review your system for internal controls. This includes understanding and articulating your Risk and Control Matrix to the various auditors.

Finance automation can help overcome these challenges. Understand how you can provide auditors with the needed visibility and information they need through multiple areas of functionality and tools.

Midsize F&A teams face a unique set of challenges. They’ve outgrown the often informal systems and processes typical of smaller business but lack the resources of larger enterprises.

To reach their full potential, midsize companies must be able to grow their top line while retaining operational agility and keeping administrative overhead in check.

Fortunately, modern close automation technology allows organizations to effectively scale, become more productive, and strengthen controls. And modern accounting is now readily achievable.

Join industry expert Ventana Research and BlackLine customer ARRIVE Hotels & Restaurants as they explore the value of close automation, especially for evolving and growing midsize organizations.

This webinar will cover:

-The benefits of investing in close automation software, including improved efficiency and real-time data for faster business decisions
-How midsize organizations can establish an achievable modern accounting roadmap
-A Q&A session with ARRIVE discussing the importance of financial close technology wherever teams may travel

Stressful deadlines, stretched resources, and limited budgets.

The close must go on, but manual accounting processes are not sustainable.

Champions of controllership find ways to innovate, automate, and scale accounting processes amidst continued disruption and despite a host of challenges. They have a vision for the future, believe in using technology to bring about change, and activate teams to modernize accounting.

Join this webcast to hear from BlackLine’s Champions of Controllership on how companies are advancing with technology.

You will learn why traditional close processes continue to challenge accounting teams; leading practices for optimizing and automating despite disruption; and how technology improves accuracy, saves time, and benefits everyone.

Are you ready to start your journey and accelerate your path to modern accounting?

If you still close with lots spreadsheets, lots of emails, and lots of paper-based processes all done manually, then this webinar will give you guidance on how to map your journey to automation and modern accounting practices.  

During this session, you will discover how to create a faster and more efficient virtual close cycle, automate traditionally manual accounting functions, and improve the accuracy and timeliness of compliance reporting.

What keeps C-suite executives and finance professionals awake at night?

Is it the thought of new regulations, the looming year-end audit, or something even more fundamental—like are the numbers right?

Accurate and timely data—data we can trust—is critical to the success of an organization.

But when Accounting is bogged down by risky, manual processes, ensuring trusted financials becomes even more difficult.

BlackLine’s finance controls and automation platform is designed to free up Accounting’s time by streamlining the most time-consuming activities. Whether you’re an accountant analyzing an exception or a controller reviewing a reconciliation, with BlackLine, you have time to complete it—with confidence.

Join this webinar to see a high-level demonstration of the BlackLine platform and learn: why digital transformation can help Accounting become a strategic partner to the business, how BlackLine can automate the manual activities consuming accountants today, and from a business leader’s perspective, how BlackLine can provide visibility to your operations.

Manual processes have traditionally been one of the biggest challenges for accounting teams. These challenges are being magnified as teams shift to a distributed workforce.

Accountants must adopt new ways to effectively collaborate so they can close on time with confidence. The good news is that a modernized close can be implemented quicker than ever before, even in these uncertain times.

This presentation will cover why manual accounting processes are not sustainable, the real costs of accounting including risk, time, and employee morale, and how to rapidly adopt modern accounting with an expertly curated playbook for close automation essentials.

Members of BlackLine's Strategic Innovation team will walk you through how to begin this journey by effectively managing change within your organization.

Be further introduced to modern accounting through the Accounting Innovation Framework, and walk through how to categorize your accounting processes so you can begin to optimize your account reconciliations.

With employees that are new to a remote working environment, many can be experiencing an increase in the time to complete their deliverables. They are relying on a virtual communication structure, have limited access to essential documentation, and are asked to reprioritise activities and responsibilities to complete tasks with a decentralized team.

Learn about global settings which enable employees to focus on risk, timeliness, and importance based on the company’s needs and requirements to close faster.

Due to the impact of the current COVID-19 outbreak to businesses worldwide, many auditors will be conducting their review of company financials from a remote location. This can create challenges in obtaining the necessary information and supporting documentation that auditors may require for their sign off.

Keep in mind that audits are also intended to review your system for internal controls. This includes understanding and articulating your Risk and Control Matrix to the various auditors.

Finance automation can help overcome these challenges. Understand how you can provide auditors with the needed visibility and information they need through multiple areas of functionality and tools.

The UK is quickly closing in on six months of social distancing and with it six months of working from home. Most corporates do not expect employees to return to an office until 2021 at the earliest, while others have already signalled their intent to make it a more permanent fixture. The accounting and finance function were quite adept at transitioning to remote working, though challenges remain to make it viable for the long term.

Control of spend and financial review are centralised into the F&A department but as the office becomes more decentralised how will the department adapt to the new, possibly permanent, working environment?

We discussed what the finance function can do to ensure business continuity into the long term as the function moves virtually.

-What does the remote finance function look like
-Technology’s role in enabling remote finance
-Flexibility in a changing function
-Forecasting for an uncertain future

Midsize F&A teams face a unique set of challenges. They’ve outgrown the often informal systems and processes typical of smaller business but lack the resources of larger enterprises.

To reach their full potential, midsize companies must be able to grow their top line while retaining operational agility and keeping administrative overhead in check.

Fortunately, modern close automation technology allows organizations to effectively scale, become more productive, and strengthen controls. And modern accounting is now readily achievable.

Join industry expert Ventana Research and BlackLine customer ARRIVE Hotels & Restaurants as they explore the value of close automation, especially for evolving and growing midsize organizations.

This webinar will cover:

-The benefits of investing in close automation software, including improved efficiency and real-time data for faster business decisions
-How midsize organizations can establish an achievable modern accounting roadmap
-A Q&A session with ARRIVE discussing the importance of financial close technology wherever teams may travel

Despite recent trends toward digital transformation and a new wave of ERP technology, many accounting teams still rely on traditional, manual processes to close the books. In other words, the close is chaos with a deadline. But it doesn’t have to be. This webinar series will explore aspects of the Financial Close that are most ripe for transformation and share best practices for accounting teams. Experts from SAP and BlackLine will introduce the SAP solutions by BlackLine and highlight four common use cases for the complementary solutions: balance sheet substantiation, journal entry management, reconciling transactions, and intercompany accounting.

When organizations expand their global footprint, a high volume of transactions, numerous regulatory and tax requirements, multiple currencies, and disparate systems create challenges with compliance and control. Reactive processes that are dependent on spreadsheets, email, or other workarounds expose organizations to financial, legal, and reputation risk. In this episode, we’ll cover:

-The definition of intercompany accounting
-Challenges and use cases for a unified intercompany solution
-Impactful applications and outcomes for organizations using SAP Intercompany Financial Hub by BlackLine

Be further introduced to modern accounting through the Accounting Innovation Framework, and walk through how to categorize your accounting processes so you can begin to optimize your account reconciliations.

The ramifications of the current crisis will long outlast it, including how companies will close the books and where accounting staff who perform these tasks will be located. Zach Deming and Molly Boyle of BlackLine will explore how to redesign your accounting operating model so that it can securely function from anywhere, from period-end to audit.

After this webinar, you will be able to:

-Determine how to achieve a virtual close using five keys.
-Apply three methods that will empower your remote accounting team to operate virtually.
-Recognize ways to mitigate work-from-home (WFH) cybersecurity risks.
-Explain how to conduct a virtual audit.

When organizations expand their global footprint, a high volume of transactions, numerous regulatory and tax requirements, multiple currencies, and disparate systems create challenges with compliance and control. Reactive processes that are dependent on spreadsheets, email, or other workarounds expose organizations to financial, legal, and reputation risk. In this episode, we’ll cover

-The definition of intercompany accounting
-Challenges and use cases for a unified intercompany solution
-Impactful applications and outcomes for organizations using SAP Intercompany Financial Hub by BlackLine

With employees that are new to a remote working environment, many can be experiencing an increase in the time to complete their deliverables. They are relying on a virtual communication structure, have limited access to essential documentation, and are asked to reprioritise activities and responsibilities to complete tasks with a decentralized team.

Learn about global settings which enable employees to focus on risk, timeliness, and importance based on the company’s needs and requirements to close faster.

Manual processes have traditionally been one of the biggest challenges for accounting teams. These challenges are being magnified as teams shift to a distributed workforce.

Accountants must adopt new ways to effectively collaborate so they can close on time with confidence. The good news is that a modernized close can be implemented quicker than ever before, even in these uncertain times.

This presentation will cover why manual accounting processes are not sustainable, the real costs of accounting including risk, time, and employee morale, and how to rapidly adopt modern accounting with an expertly curated playbook for close automation essentials.

Although company management and auditors may not see eye to eye on everything, they can agree that teams must find new ways to effectively work together during the COVID-19 crisis.

Moving to a remote audit can present seemingly unsurmountable challenges, such as tracking PBC requests and status or providing and obtaining supporting documentation. But remote work doesn’t have to hinder your productivity.

Organizations that enable a technology-driven close and audit processes gain more streamlined collaboration, even with a distributed and virtual workforce.

Join industry experts to hear best practices for transforming the financial close and audit processes with technology, including how to:

•Increase transparency and improve client-auditor relationships
•Streamline key audit processes, including PBC management
•Adapt to a remote audit with added visibility