With a new foreign exchange exposure management solution from FiREapps, Google Inc.'s Treasurer Brent Callinicos thinks he may have found a "nice piece of the financial risk management puzzle" that he has been seeking for years: A tool with which weary treasurers can project and update their potential FX and hedging exposure six months, even 18 months in the future. He is still testing FiREapps 4.0, which won't be officially released until September. But he concedes that FiREapps is offering a function he hasn't seen in other systems. "This seems to be addressing the biggest pain a treasurer faces, which is trying to figure out what you actually have to do," he says.

FiREapps 4.0 builds on the solid base of its existing software-as-a-service (SaaS) model and extends those capabilities with a new module called ForecastFX. FiREapps 4.0 is available as a suite or as two specific modules: the TransactionFX module, which addresses the balance sheet exposure management; and the ForecastFX module.

"FiREapps 4.0 lets international corporations of all sizes replace a manual, artistic approach to FX exposure management with one that is scientific and disciplined," says FiREapps CEO Wolfgang Koester. The new module provides a workbench for analyzing FX exposure impacts on forecasted revenues and expenses helping finance executives make more informed cash flow hedging decisions. "For the first time, companies can insulate themselves from FX uncertainty above and below the line," Koester says, adding that 4.0 also helps CFOs provide guidance to the investment community.