Case Study: Timken achieves a virtual close and streamlined audits with BlackLine

Timken’s Accounting Automation Enables a Virtual Close and Streamlined Audits

The Timken Company, a 125‑year‑old industrial manufacturer with 18,000 employees in 42 countries and $3.8B in 2019 sales, grew through frequent acquisitions and runs a global SAP ERP instance supporting roughly 50 company codes. Rapid expansion and fragmented, paper‑based account reconciliation processes left accounting and audit teams with limited visibility, inconsistent standards, and heavy manual effort.

Timken implemented BlackLine in the cloud alongside SAP in a phased rollout to standardize balance‑sheet and system‑to‑system reconciliations and task management across new and existing units. The solution enabled a virtual close, gave auditors self‑service access, reduced travel and prep costs, and increased automation—supporting about 9,100 reconciliations with ~50% auto‑certification and ~3,100 system reconciliations with an ~85–90% auto‑certification rate—saving time and improving control.

Timken

Dan Welcheck

Junior Principal, Global Finance Systems Group