Session Topics & Modern Accounting Award Submissions Now Open

BeyondTheBlack—the award-winning conference dedicated to Modern Accounting—will be live and in person in San Diego, September 11-13, 2023. Join us to explore how integrating, orchestrating, and automating end-to-end accounting processes can fundamentally shift accounting from a cost center to a strategic value driver.  

Don’t miss this opportunity to connect with F&A experts, fellow customers, partners, and BlackLine leaders.  

Submission Deadline

April 10, 2023

Click on 'Submit Now' to create an account to enter your submission. 

For questions, please contact: customerconnect@blackline.com 

Why Should I Speak at BeyondTheBlack?

We can’t put on this amazing event without you. Support your fellow BlackLine users by sharing your expertise and real-world experiences. 

If you’re selected as a speaker, BlackLine will provide you: 

• Complimentary registration to BeyondTheBlack 2023 
• 2 complimentary hotel nights at the Manchester Grand Hyatt San Diego during the week of the conference (taxes and fees not included)
• The opportunity to showcase your organization’s successes and achievements 
• A chance to stand out as a leader in the F&A world

General Topics of Interest

If you’d like to be a speaker, please think about topics that are relevant to your fellow F&A professionals and other BlackLine users. Topics can be relatable to any level or user role, including but not limited to beginner/intermediate/advanced users, system admins, preparers/approvers/reviewers, and internal/external auditors.  

Here are some ideas to get your creative juices flowing:  

• How has your organization transformed your Accounting and Finance department(s)? 
• Innovative or out-of-the-box uses of BlackLine
• Exciting statistics and results and how you were able to achieve them 
• Change management or training stories
• Your unique experiences and stories that will be valuable to your peers and BlackLine users

Why Submit for a Modern Accounting Award?

If your company has achieved transformational outcomes by going beyond traditional manual accounting processes to embrace modern accounting, we encourage you to submit a nomination!

Modern Accounting Award Categories for 2023:

• The Accelerator—for the company that has automated routine accounting work to save time and refocus finance professionals on strategic business initiatives, revolutionizing finance and accounting use cases with process design and automation. 
• The Capitalizer—for the company that consistently unlocks working capital, achieving operational excellence by unifying data and processes with the deployment of BlackLine's accounts receivable automation solutions. 
• The Closer—for the company that has embraced continuous accounting, distributing close tasks across the period to reduce month-end workloads, speeding up the close process and supporting the business in real time. 
• The Modernizer—for the company that has embraced modern accounting, moving from traditional, manual, and chaotic processes towards a proactive, predictable, and fast finance and accounting function. 
• The Pioneer—for the company that is a modern accounting trailblazer, taking on new challenges to continually eliminate manual processes and elevate innovation through the creative use of technology solutions, advanced functionality, and new capabilities and features. 
• The Transformer—for the company that has transformed finance and accounting operations with a bold vision across people, process, and technology. 
• The Unifier—for the company that has overcome the challenges inherent in a complex finance technology landscape by unifying data, processes, and visibility to deliver accurate results faster. 

Sample Submission:

When we first launched Matching, our match rate was around 70% but today we are at 99% through refining our pass rules, utilizing reason codes and automated journal entries effectively and efficiently. That improvement has not been a linear path – each time we thought we had found THE solution, there was a new business process or product release that introduced new possible solutions. We excitedly adopted features like data source grouping, dashboards, and creating AJD’s from partial matches. Our Global Admin role continues to evolve, not only managing regular tasks but also educating users, building a BlackLine Ambassador program at XYZ company, and learning new ways to incorporate features. There are still things we would like to see, across all modules and reporting, that would provide a more cohesive workflow throughout the platform. We are Trail Blazers because we were one of the first customers to embrace modern accounting and BlackLine functionality with Accounts, Matching, and Oracle Web Services, and not just embrace the possibilities but also challenge them. We see potential and ask the questions of how to make it happen, whether that means utilizing another tool or testing and retesting and retesting more in Sandbox. Over the last 3 years, we have partnered with BlackLine and have been told several times that we are the first to utilize functionality or to take it a step further by combining that functionality with another feature. Other times we have provided a different perspective on how the tool could be leveraged to create a more seamless and efficient workflow. These efforts have enabled us to understand BlackLine better, which allows us to push even farther, as well as streamline processes and save over 400 hours across our organization every month. But we are not done – we are still challenging the status quo and testing features, clearing the way for future process enhancement, and paving the trail for continued BlackLine growth and optimization.

Items Needed to Submit

If you'd like to submit your idea(s) to be considered as a speaker or nominate your company for a Modern Accounting Award at BeyondTheBlack 2023, please include the following:

For Session Submissions:

• Title and description of your presentation or idea and specific expected learning outcomes for attendees 
• BlackLine products to be discussed, if applicable 
• What experience level is your session geared towards?
• What BlackLine role is this session geared towards?

For Modern Accounting Awards Submissions:

• Title and description of your story—why are you nominating your company for a Modern Accounting Award?