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Variance Analysis

Variance Analysis

Variance analysis is a critical part of the risk management process.

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Easy Budget Variance Analysis

Your budget at the beginning of the year is a form of communication to others in the organization. It tells key decision makers where the company is going and how it intends to get there. As the fiscal year continues however, actual expenses most likely will not align with what was budgeted. This is where identifying these variances early will allow you to adjust the budget to accommodate and give you knowledge to avoid budgeting variances like this in the future.

The real value to investigating unfavorable variances is identifying the causes of budget variances. The issue is this kind of research takes many labor hours and resources to effectively pull off.

BlackLine proactively monitors and flags accounts that vary outside an expected range, giving you advance notice so that you’re never caught off guard. BlackLine’s variance analysis product replaces a manual, spreadsheet- dependent process with business logic. Client-defined rules precisely identifies unexpected fluctuations across target entities and account groups, types, or ranges.

Flux analysis also replaces the spreadsheet flux analysis that is manually completed by many companies as part of their risk identification and mitigation process. With increasing regulatory requirements around internal controls, it is more important than ever for companies to truly understand the difference between balances on their balance sheets and P&L statements.

Using Variance Analysis is straightforward. Accounts that need monitoring are identified with user-defined parameters, such as account ranges and types, entity filters, balance and percentage thresholds, and comparison periods. Whenever new balances are imported into BlackLine, the rules engine is executed, creating variance analysis templates for the accounts that deviate from defined parameters. Automated workflow ensures that variance analyses are assigned to the people most familiar with the accounts, so an explanation can be given for each material variance.

Streamline your efforts to track and analyze account variation and budgets.

Against actuals for both P&L and balance sheet accounts.

Key Features And Benefits

  • Rules-driven engine automatically creates variance analysis for all accounts that fall outside predetermined thresholds.
  • More than 15 different types of period comparisons to select from. This includes quarter-over-quarter, year- over-year, current year-to-year end, and budget-to-actual options.
  • Variances created by examining balances and/or comparative percentage deltas
  • All types of accounts including both balance sheet and profit-and-loss (P&L) accounts can be monitored.
  • Foreign Exchange differentials can be automatically calculated and included in the variance explanations.
  • Built-in workflow automatically assigns variance analyses to people most familiar with accounts.
  • Links to underlying reconciliations simplifies research process.
  • Rules-driven approach ensures that all material variances are analyzed before the numbers reach financial statements.
  • Currency fluctuations automatically accounted for and documented.
  • Workflow replaces phone calls and post-it notes and saves substantial time.
  • Roll-up reporting gives flexible, real-time visibility into balance fluctuations.

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