Case Study: Drexel University achieves 24% more reconciliations and improved audit readiness with BlackLine

Bringing Modern Finance & Financial Agility to Higher Education Institutions

Drexel University, a large private research institution, faced a cumbersome month-end close: roughly 145,000 transactions flow through about 400 balance-sheet accounts each month, and manual processes across multiple sites created backlogs, misfiled documents and error risk that slowed reconciliations and account analysis.

By implementing BlackLine’s Task Management and Account Reconciliation (with Transaction Matching and ERP integration), Drexel centralized workflows, auto-certified inactive accounts and reduced manual handoffs. The result: completion rates rose from 74% (June 2019) to 92% (February 2020)—about 24% more reconciliations—improving efficiency, reducing errors and strengthening the university’s audit readiness.

Drexel University

Sherri Welch

Associate Comptroller of General Accounting