Digital Financial Reporting

Blackline provides an excellent book, Modernizing Accounting for Dummies, from which every accountant would very likely derive some sort of benefit. The book points out the benefits of modernizing accounting and strategies for getting there.  Of course readers need to be very careful.  That book was written by Blackline and of course they want you to buy their products to modernize your accounting.

As long as you are a conscious, competent buyer you can avoid the snake oil salesmen that provide no real value that are trying to separate you from your hard earned money.

Here is a list of the major pitfalls to avoid as you consider how you will modernize your accounting: 

• Nonstandard (i.e. proprietary): Avoid any solution that does not employ standard approaches and uses proprietary approaches to lock you into their specific solution. The leverage offered by standard approaches are superior.
• Closed source (i.e. not open source): Where open source solutions exist use open source.  Sometimes that is not possible, but often it is possible.  The leverage offered by open source software tends to offer superior results.
• Technically oriented solutions (i.e. unnecessary complexity): If you remember the good ole days before USB and how complex it was to connect a printer to your computer you will understand this.  Modern accounting solutions are not technical things that the information technology department needs to do for you.  Modern accounting solutions will be well-thought-out and the technical aspects will be buried and hidden from the business users that make use of the technology to solve problems.
• Unproven (i.e. untested, not proven to work effectively): Never let a software vendor walk you through their demonstration; rather, you tell them exactly what you want to see demonstrated.  Why? When a software vendor controls a demonstration they will not be showing you the rough areas of their software.
• Unimaginative (i.e. not very innovative): Modern accounting will be transformational.  Changing one or two things with a fundamentally flawed process is not "modernizing accounting".  Consider changing the process entirely. Creating a proper foundation will let you innovate for the next 50 years. An improper foundation will likely be a dead end.

One issue that I have with Blackline is that they say to use standards but in their book they never mention one standard.  That is a bit odd to me. Be careful out there!