Case Study: The Hershey Company achieves streamlined account reconciliations and automated journal entries with BlackLine

Confectionery Giant The Hershey Company Kisses Its Dated Account Reconciliations Processes Goodbye

The Hershey Company, a global confectionery leader with roughly 18,000 employees and 80+ brands, faced a growing finance challenge as it scaled: thousands of general ledgers and 4,104 active account reconciliations prepared and approved in inconsistent formats across spreadsheets, paper, and email. With 121 preparers and 77 approvers using disparate processes and no central repository, finance leaders lacked the visibility and control needed for a global balance sheet and an SAP S/4HANA rollout.

Hershey adopted a phased implementation of five BlackLine cloud products integrated with its SAP central finance deployment—starting with Account Reconciliations and Task Management and adding Consolidation Integrity Manager and Journal Entry—standardizing templates, centralizing reconciliations, and automating journal processes. The result was greater consistency and oversight, a single repository for reconciliations, reduced process risk, and faster, more reliable journal entry and close activities, with continued rollouts planned.

Hershey

John Zimmerman

Director of Financial Data Systems