FXpress, the Bala Cynwyd, Pa.-based provider of risk management and accounting software that was acquired by Reval over the summer, upgraded the intercompany loan module of its Web-based solution, FIRST, to give companies more flexibility and control in tracking their loans. The module tracks external loans as well as those transacted between different units of the same company.

Perhaps most importantly, unlike FIRST's legacy loan module or competitors' products, the new module provides reporting and general ledger posting from dual views, letting each subsidiary see both its borrowing activity and its lending activity, as well as its net position.

"In the past, we would only track one side of the transaction. Everything was tracked from the borrower's perspective and that's how everything would flow through to company reports and the general ledger," says Stephanie Swanton, product manager at Reval. "Now all your subsidiaries can get their view." That not only provides greater visibility for everyone, but allows subsidiaries to be more self-sufficient, Swanton says, by letting them analyze the bank fees for their external debt or check interest calculations on floating-rate debt. When Wm. Wrigley Jr. Co., the Chicago-based candy company, selected the FIRST loan module in early 2009 to replace the manual processes it had used for managing its loan portfolio, the dual posting to the general ledger was one of the features it liked. FIRST's Web-based system lets Wrigley's treasury and affiliates worldwide pull balance confirmations and get accurate loan calculations while saving time and money. The new module was also designed to provide more flexibility. With FIRST's legacy loan module, as well as many competitors' products, "you could set your initial terms and conditions and chug along," Swanton says. "But if you made a mistake along the way–say you didn't track a payment from three months ago–users were forced to rebuild that loan from the beginning."