Overview
Blackline IT is a managed service provider that has built its growth strategy around strong financial discipline and operational efficiency. The company manages client billing across multiple payment methods and holds cash flow as a core measure of business health.
Industry: MSP
Company Size: 11-50 Employees
Challenge
Three Payment Channels, One Growing Bottleneck
Blackline IT accepted payments three ways: check, credit card, and ACH. In theory, more options meant more flexibility. In practice, it meant more complexity. Each channel created its own reconciliation demands, and together they formed a choke point that slowed cash coming into the business. As the company grew, that friction became harder to absorb.
Fragmented payment channels slowed collections and strained reconciliation
Running three separate payment streams, check, credit card, and ACH, created significant back-office burden. Each method followed its own timeline and process, making it difficult to get a clean, consolidated view of incoming cash. The accounting team had to reconcile across all three, a task that introduced errors, consumed time, and added friction to a process that should have been routine. There was no single place to see the full picture. The more the business grew, the more the fragmentation hurt.
A slow DSO kept working capital tied up
With payments spread across multiple channels and no streamlined collection process, Blackline IT’s days sales outstanding hovered between 30 and 35 days for years. That meant cash the business had already earned was sitting idle, tied up in the collection cycle. For a company that viewed capital as the engine of growth, that delay had real consequences. Every day outstanding was a day the business couldn’t deploy that money toward hiring, acquisitions, or operations. The status quo wasn’t just inefficient. It was a ceiling.
Solution
One Platform That Centralized Payments and Unlocked Cash Flow
When Blackline IT adopted Alternative Payments, all three payment channels came together in a single platform. Clients got a simpler, more intuitive way to pay. The accounting team got a cleaner reconciliation process. And the business got faster access to cash it had already earned.
Consolidating three payment streams into one client-friendly platform
Alternative Payments replaced the fragmented three-channel system with a single, unified interface. Clients found it significantly easier to pay by credit card or ACH, which reduced the volume of checks coming in and simplified what had been a complicated reconciliation process for the accounting team. Fewer payment channels meant fewer handoffs, fewer errors, and less time spent chasing down transactions. The whole billing operation became more manageable.
Faster collections and a DSO that changed what the business could do
The impact on collections was immediate and measurable. Blackline IT’s DSO dropped from a long-standing average of 30 to 35 days down to approximately 10 days, a result that Accountants and financial advisors called exceptional. That improvement wasn’t just a number. It translated directly into a larger pool of working capital available at any given time. With that capital freed up, Blackline IT was able to fund a business acquisition and expand payroll, growth moves that would have been harder to execute under the old system.
"Through Alternative Payments, that was able to be centralized into one platform that enabled the client to have a simpler interface in order to pay their bill from us, as well as reduce the amount of checks that we were receiving because it was so much easier to pay by credit card or pay via ACH."
Results
From a 35-Day DSO to 10 and the Growth That Followed
Alternative Payments helped Blackline IT solve a problem hiding in plain sight. By consolidating three payment channels into one platform, the company eliminated reconciliation friction, accelerated collections, and converted a slow cash cycle into a competitive advantage. The results were best-in-class by any financial benchmark.
- Consolidated three payment channels (check, credit card, ACH) into one platform
- DSO reduced from 30–35 days to approximately 10 days
- Freed working capital used to fund a business acquisition and expand payroll
- Reduced reconciliation friction for the accounting team
"I would recommend to another MSP owner, that they would look at Alternative Payments as a way of not only creating a better experience for their clients, but also as a way of changing the cash flow dynamic within their business."
