Accounting and software provider BlackLine’s latest acquisition — customer onboarding and credit management services provider NetNow — will enable the accounting and financial software provider to offer a “more complete” journey across its invoice-to-cash segment, CFO Patrick Villanova said.
The Woodland Hills, Calif.-based BlackLine announced the acquisition of NetNow in a Sept. 21 press release. NetNow’s services remain live today for customers, but the company is focused on integrating its solutions into a single invoice-to-cash (I2C) platform, BlackLine confirmed to CFO Dive in an email.
The faster its offerings are integrated, “the more value it'll bring to our customers,” Villanova said in an interview. “You want a seamless experience for the end user.”
One team, one set of systems
As CFO, Villanova is not personally responsible for the technical integration of the BlackLine and NetNow platforms, he said. However, the back office integrations — finance, accounting and HR systems, for example — is something he said he is “very close to from a cultural and efficiency standpoint.”
“I want to make sure that personally, their financial systems and their accounting and finance departments are fully integrated into mine, so that we're one team speaking from one voice on one set of systems,” Villanova said.
An 11-year veteran of BlackLine, which provides software for the CFO office, Villanova has served as its CFO since March of 2025, according to his LinkedIn profile. Previously, he served as its chief accounting officer for six years. Before joining BlackLine in 2015 as its vice president and corporate controller, Villanova logged 16 years at Big Four firm PricewaterhouseCoopers in roles including lead audit senior manager.
BlackLine did not disclose the price of the NetNow acquisition and Villanova declined to provide a precise timeline for melding the two into one I2C service. Yet he said an integration process should ideally not take more than a year.
The NetNow acquisition marks the latest growth bid by the software provider, which has taken several steps during the past few years to enhance its artificial intelligence-powered capabilities.
BlackLine in December announced it had acquired WiseLayer, a New York-based provider of AI agents focused on financial judgements, and would be embedding those agents into its BlackLine Verity suite of products to help with decisions such as accrual or payroll accounting, according to a press release at the time.
The business examines several key factors when evaluating a potential acquisition, Villanova said. With NetNow, for example, the company weighed the cost benefits of building out a solution in house: “How long would it take to build this ourselves?” he said. “How many resources would we have to reallocate to it? Because time is everything.”
Villanova, who helped BlackLine’s M&A team with the modeling and the deal structure prior to the NetNow acquisition, also tapped his own team as a de facto “proving ground” for the solution, asking the business’ head of collections for a proof of concept.
“I don't want a technical answer. I don't want a sales answer. Is it easy to use?” he said. “Is there too much clicking? Is it intuitive? Would you buy it? You just ask the very basic questions because that person outside of Black Line is your customer.”
New opportunities
There’s “no such thing as an acquisition that just goes perfectly according to the plan smoothly, there’s always a challenge,” Villanova said. For example, sometimes the technology or product integration is more complicated or it might be harder to train staff, or the business being acquired might be behind from an automation perspective, he said.
“Ultimately, it's my job with the CEO to go out to in the market and talk about these things,” he said of the company’s acquisitions and products. “Are these acquisitions a success? Are they working? Are they selling? And so, obviously, that's a much better conversation when it is a success.”
Blackline will continue to evaluate upcoming M&A opportunities as the office of the CFO industry continues to expand, in part because finance and accounting professionals today are simply dealing with more data and have their fingers in more areas of the business.
“The more impact we have, the more influence we have, the more other departments are coming to us for help and information,” Villanova said. “That just creates even a bigger opportunity for software and technology within our space.”
The company is keeping a close eye on that shift, as well as the continuing evolution of artificial intelligence inside of the financial space, he said. If the rapid pace of change continues, “the software we use today, the AI we use today, will look nothing like it does now three years from now,” Villanova said. “It's something we're keeping our eye on.”
