Unlocking Tools to Combat Tariffs
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Key Takeaways
⇨ Companies must proactively adapt their financial processes, including receivables management, to navigate the economic volatility caused by new tariffs, rather than adopting a passive 'wait and see' approach.
⇨ Real-time visibility and intelligence in accounts receivable are crucial for identifying trends and managing customer behaviors, enabling CFOs to model the financial impact of tariffs accurately.
⇨ Leveraging automation and compliance-focused solutions, like those offered by BlackLine, allows companies to enhance operational efficiency, reduce errors, and ensure timely financial closes amidst shifting external conditions.
The litany of new tariffs shaking up the world economy have caused significant financial strain for companies. This compels them to reassess their supply chains, pricing models, and customer contracts.
Many organizations initially adopt a “wait and see” strategy, hoping that trade relations will normalize. Yet historical data indicates that such inaction is a costly choice. Leading organizations are instead proactively shoring up sensitive financial processes, such as receivables management, to adapt and lead through economic volatility and uncertainty.
Errors in this area can lead to fines, delays, and even seized shipments, underscoring that invoicing is a compliance gateway, not merely a back-office function. Inaccuracies can result in significant financial and reputational damage.
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Visibility is Critical for Overcoming Tariffs
Without insight into key financial workflows like Accounts Receivable (AR), companies risk unexpected exposure. Yet all too often, finance teams rely on static, aggregated reporting, limiting their ability to act at a regional level.
This is why many companies turn to partners like BlackLine – CFOs need support in navigating these complex challenges. They need offerings that go beyond basic automation, focusing on digital finance transformation to ensure financial accuracy, efficiency, and intelligence. These include:
- Enhanced Real-Time AR Intelligence: Unlike solutions that primarily automate collections tasks, BlackLine delivers intelligent insights across the entire invoice-to-cash lifecycle. It provides a contextual understanding of customer risk, payment behavior, and forecasting. This enables teams to quickly identify trends and take action. This allows CFOs to proactively model the impact of tariffs on gross margins and cash conversion cycles, rather than assuming payment cycles and customer behaviors will remain stable. Leading CFOs are increasingly layering regional and customer-level intelligence into their credit and collections strategies, focusing on real-time payment information to understand customer behaviors in a rapidly changing environment.
- Automated Cash Application: BlackLine leverages AI and intelligent automation to instantly and accurately apply customer payments to invoices, which can reduce up to 99% of unapplied cash.
- Compliant Invoicing and Payments: BlackLine simplifies the payment cycle by enabling easy invoicing, reducing errors, and seamlessly integrating with tax authority systems. It helps ensure compliance with government and regional eInvoicing mandates, thereby minimizing the risk of fines or penalties associated with incorrect tariff codes and duties.
- Faster, More Accurate Financial Closes: With real-time automation and controls, companies can close their books quickly and confidently, even as external conditions shift due to tariffs or other disruptions.
- Greater Efficiency and Cost Control: By automating routine accounting work, BlackLine enables companies to reallocate resources to more strategic areas without increasing overhead, which is crucial when margins are shrinking due to tariffs.
What This Means for SAPinsiders
The key to winning is being proactive. Companies cannot risk waiting around to see what is coming to take decisive action. By this time, they are already behind. Leading companies find partners like BlackLine to help them with planning, adapting, and acting rather than merely reacting. This helps businesses stay grounded, agile, and future-ready in an evolving global economy.
Rely on tools you can use. A company’s solutions to tariffs are only effective if they can be deployed seamlessly throughout the entire enterprise. BlackLine empowers businesses to remain compliant and adaptable, whether managing tariff impacts, inflation, or currency fluctuations. It integrates seamlessly across global, multi-ERP environments, connecting receivables, cash, and reporting across multiple legal entities without the need for bolt-ons or workarounds.
Speed is more critical than ever. With tariffs coming and going at high speeds, companies need agility to respond. Automation is critical to unlocking that agility. Through BlackLine, companies can model scenarios, then respond quickly and with confidence, knowing they have the right solutions as well as the ability to put it into practice.
