For a NetSuite or Sage Intacct company that is not yet under SOX, buy Numeric. Once auditors start testing your controls, buy FloQast. If you close on SAP or Oracle across many entities, buy BlackLine, and bring Trintech Cadency into the same bake-off to keep the price honest. The one we would skip is Trintech Adra for mid-market buyers. On the only cross-vendor spend data that publishes averages, Trintech costs more than FloQast at the same company size (that figure does not separate Adra from Cadency), and Trintech has not said which of its new agents run in Adra.
Month-end close software sits on top of your general ledger and runs the checklist, the balance-sheet reconciliations, the flux (period-over-period variance) review and the sign-offs your auditors look at. The AI in these products drafts three kinds of work: flux explanations, reconciliation matches and journal entries. In every product below, a person still signs.
| Numeric | FloQast | BlackLine | Trintech Adra / Cadency | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pick it if | NetSuite, Intacct, Xero or QBO, pre-SOX or early SOX | NetSuite or Intacct mid-market, SOX-bound or pre-IPO | SAP or Oracle, many entities, shared services | SAP shop wanting a second enterprise bid (Cadency) |
| AI the vendor says is available | AI-drafted flux explanations; AI bank statement parsing | Close AI package: agents, AI matching, flux explanations "drafted for review" | Verity Prepare reconciliation agents, GA July 2026 | Flux and Variance Analysis agents (June 2026) plus three more (Sept 2026) |
| Price evidence (checked Nov 12, 2026) | No list price; Vendr median $15,000/yr, 48 purchases | No list price; Vendr median $24,663/yr; SpendHound avg $43,303 SMB, $74,448 enterprise | No list price; SpendHound avg $45,515 SMB, $703,918 enterprise | No list price; SpendHound Trintech avg $71,819 SMB, $271,885 enterprise |
| Implementation figure (and who said it) | "Around two weeks" (Numeric, about itself) | 1.7 months avg (FloQast); 2-8 weeks (CFO Shortlist) | 5 months avg (FloQast, about BlackLine); 5 days for one NetSuite customer (BlackLine case study) | No figure published by Trintech |
| Who should not buy | SOX-bound teams that need a controls module today | Single-entity teams with a few dozen reconciliations | Mid-market NetSuite shops | Mid-market buyers comparing Adra to FloQast on price |
Which Close Software Fits Your ERP and Stage?
Your ERP and your audit status decide this faster than any feature list. Each vendor quotes the metric that flatters it, so every recommendation here assumes one workload: a company with 3 to 10 legal entities, a 6-to-12-person accounting team, a few hundred balance-sheet reconciliations a month, and an external auditor who either already tests SOX controls or will within 18 months.
- NetSuite or Sage Intacct with no SOX testing yet: Numeric. It is the cheapest of the four on the benchmark data, and AI flux drafting is the center of its product. Numeric lists NetSuite, QBO, Xero, Workday and Sage Intacct as supported on its pricing page.
- NetSuite or Sage Intacct with SOX in scope: FloQast. Its Risk & Compliance package sits next to the close product and covers controls, audit readiness and testing, the module a newly public company ends up needing.
- SAP or Oracle with many entities: BlackLine, with Cadency as the competing bid. BlackLine announced SAP-certified integrations with S/4HANA in 2020, and Trintech's Adra and Cadency connectors are SAP-certified for S/4HANA Cloud. If you run Oracle Fusion Applications or the SAP Business AI platform, price your ERP vendor's own close features before you add a third-party layer.
Trintech positions Adra for companies in roughly the $100M to $2B revenue range and Cadency as its enterprise tier. That puts Adra head to head with FloQast. On the averages below, Trintech comes out more expensive, though SpendHound does not say how much of its Trintech figure is Adra and how much is Cadency.
What the AI Actually Does in Each Product
The useful AI in close software drafts flux explanations and reconciliation matches. Journal entry drafting is newer and has less public evidence behind it. Here is what each vendor says is available today, in its own words.
Numeric's Analytics Suite page says "Numeric Intelligence auto-drafts your flux explanations," using source files, prior-period flux and cross-entity reports. Expect the drafts to be only as specific as your transaction memos; a ledger full of blank or default memo lines gives any model little to work with. In September 2026 Numeric also launched a Financial Data Platform that it pitches as a NetSuite replacement, with AI-drafted subledger rules that controllers approve. Accounting Today reports that the close and cash products are still sold on their own, on top of your existing ERP.
FloQast's Close AI package adds "AI agents, AI matching, automated reconciliations, and journal entry posting" to the base close product, and FloQast's site navigation describes AI Variance Analysis as "flux explanations, drafted for review." The base Close Management package includes only an AI assistant. If a FloQast rep demos agents, confirm in writing that the quote includes Close AI.
BlackLine's Verity Prepare reached general availability on July 27, 2026. Its agents read supporting documents, match transactions, flag reconciling items and assemble the reconciliation package for a person to sign. BlackLine says early adopters cut manual preparation time by "up to" 92%. That is the vendor's own number, and "up to" describes its best customer, so it tells you little about the typical one.
Trintech announced Flux and Variance Analysis agents on June 25, 2026 and said they "are available." In September it added Data Access, Accruals Intelligence and Exception Management agents. Neither announcement says whether the agents run in Adra, Cadency or both; Trintech says they ship on a "Trintech AI Platform." Ask that first, because the answer decides whether the AI you were shown is in the product you are pricing.
What Do These Tools Actually Cost?
None of the four publishes a price, so every number below is benchmark data, and some of it comes from competitors. All figures were checked on November 12, 2026.
| Source | Numeric | FloQast | BlackLine | Trintech |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vendr median (page updated Feb 2026) | $15,000/yr, 48 purchases | $24,663/yr, 316 purchases | not checked | not checked |
| SpendHound average, 50-1,000 employees | not listed | $43,303/yr | $45,515/yr | $71,819/yr |
| SpendHound average, 1,000+ employees | not listed | $74,448/yr | $703,918/yr | $271,885/yr |
Read these with three cautions before you take them into a negotiation.
Medians and averages disagree by design. Vendr reports medians; SpendHound reports averages, which a few large contracts pull upward. A FloQast median of about $25K and a mid-market average of $43K can both be correct.
SpendHound's own sample counts do not add up. Its BlackLine page cites 160 customers, but its year-over-year breakdown uses 13 SMB and 68 enterprise customers. A 13-customer SMB figure is a weak basis for a budget line. Its Trintech page also gives one figure for the whole vendor and never names Adra or Cadency, so some Cadency contracts may be lifting the Trintech average.
Much of the BlackLine pricing you will find online is published by a competitor. Numeric's BlackLine review puts BlackLine at "roughly $77,000 per year," citing Vendr, and calls its implementation "long, three to six months" without a source. Numeric sells against BlackLine, so use pages like that as a reason to ask for a quote and nothing more.
Entity count, user count and modules set your number. On FloQast, adding the Close AI and Risk & Compliance packages is what moves a quote from the median toward the average.
How Long Does Implementation Take, and Who Says So?
Plan on weeks for Numeric and FloQast on NetSuite, and months for BlackLine or Cadency on a multi-ERP estate. Almost every published figure comes from an interested party.
- FloQast says on its comparison page that customers go live in 1.7 months on average against 5 months for BlackLine, with no sample size or method given. That is a vendor rating itself and a rival. FloQast's own ERP-migration blog says only "weeks, not months." CFO Shortlist, a third-party review site, lays out a 2-to-8-week plan: GL connection first, then reconciliations, a first live close by week 6, and AI agents switched on last.
- BlackLine publishes a case study of Matrix Medical Network going live in five days on NetSuite, for account reconciliations. That is one customer and one module. The 5-month average is FloQast's claim, and the 3-to-6-month range is Numeric's.
- Numeric calls its own implementation "around two weeks" in the same competitor review.
- Trintech publishes no implementation figure for Adra or Cadency that we could find.
For the workload above, plan on 6 to 10 weeks for Numeric or FloQast, and a full quarter or longer for BlackLine or Cadency across several ERPs. Turn AI matching on after your first clean close in the new tool, never during it.
Will the AI Survive Your Auditors?
Your auditor will treat AI-drafted reconciliations and flux explanations as part of your control environment, so ask each vendor what the log shows: the draft, the inputs, who changed it and who signed. COSO's February 2026 guidance on internal control over generative AI asks companies to inventory and classify AI use cases, run human-in-the-loop quality reviews on a sample of transactions, and keep prompt libraries and model documentation in controlled systems with role-based access.
Here is what each vendor commits to in public.
- BlackLine says every Verity recommendation carries "transparent reasoning, confidence scoring, and a complete audit trail," and that "human judgment remains the final authority" (CPA Practice Advisor). It is the most specific public statement of the four.
- FloQast says its Risk & Compliance module "grabs evidence from every AI action," and its pricing FAQ claims its COSO compliance "ensures your AI usage is always compliant and will pass audit." No vendor can promise what your auditor concludes, so read that line as marketing. FloQast did hire COSO board chair Lucia Wind as SVP of Risk & Audit Advisory in September 2026, which shows where it is spending.
- Trintech says agent outputs are "traceable, reviewable, and supported by documented financial evidence" and stay "subject to existing review and approval controls."
- Numeric describes no audit log or reviewer sign-off for AI drafts on its Analytics Suite page or its pricing page. That gap is the main reason we send SOX-bound teams to FloQast.
Before you sign, ask your external audit senior: "If we let this tool draft reconciliations, what will you need to see?" Then have each vendor show that evidence in a demo tenant.
Who Should Not Buy Any Close Tool Yet
If your close is slow because of a messy chart of accounts or subledgers that do not tie, a close tool will show you the mess faster and will not fix it. You are in that group if the same reconciling items recur every month with the same root cause, if an AP or revenue subledger is tied to the GL by hand, if each entity books intercompany entries differently, or if your chart of accounts has hundreds of near-duplicate accounts. AI flux explanations built on that data will explain the noise.
Fix the subledger first. If AP is the problem, our accounts payable software guide covers that layer. If the ERP itself is the problem, Numeric's ERP-replacement product is the one to test, keeping in mind that it launched in September 2026 and the launch coverage named no customers.
The Decision: What Predicts Regret
Three things predict whether you regret this purchase in two years: whether SOX evidence lives in the same tool, whether the AI you saw in the demo is in the package you bought, and whether you can leave with your workpapers.
This Week:
- Write down your ERP, entity count, monthly reconciliation count and SOX date. That one line picks your shortlist from the table above.
- Ask your audit senior what evidence they need for AI-drafted work.
This Month:
- Get written quotes from two vendors, with the AI package named as a line item.
- Ask Trintech which agents run in Adra and which in Cadency, and ask FloQast which features sit in Close AI and which in Close Management.
- Ask every vendor for a full export of reconciliations, sign-offs and AI drafts in an open format, and test it on a demo tenant.
Before Your Next Close Cycle:
- Run one parallel close in the new tool with AI matching off, then turn it on for a single account group and compare match rates by hand.
The Bottom Line
Vendors sell this generation of close software on automation rates, and your auditor decides how much of that automation counts. Numeric is the best value for a pre-SOX NetSuite company. FloQast is the safer pick once controls are tested. BlackLine still fits the multi-ERP enterprise, and Cadency is the bid that keeps its renewal honest. Adra sits between them, sold by a vendor with a higher SpendHound average than FloQast and no public statement of which AI agents it runs.
Get the auditor's evidence list before you book the vendor demos.
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