Accelo vs. BQE Core

Accelo is a system that can do it all. It's extremely sophisticated. Depending on the sophistication of your organization, or specifically the abilities of the people you put in charge of the implementation, it can almost be too sophisticated. It all just depends on your situation. The more you use it, the more data you give it, the more you'll be able to see and do. It's incredibly powerful. But it's definitely not a tool that would be appropriate for smaller boutique type organizations that have only basic needs.

Incentivized

BQE Core is a really great product for time management, billing, Accounts receivable, Accounts payable, vendor billing, and project management for architectural practices. It is also very strong in supporting collaboration and management reporting as well as integration with other software that you may already be using such as Quickbooks. BQE Core is lacking in the allocation and forecasting area, especially when trying to see the big picture for capacity across the company.

Incentivized

• Timing Client Work: You are able to better manage your time on your clients.
• Housing Client Info in one Area: You can view all you need for any given client in one area.

Incentivized

• Invoice Collections within Billing is a great tool because of the ability to take notes and track contact.
• Invoices are professional looking and easy for our clients to understand the overall progress within each phase of their project.
• Dashboards are the best tool EVER!
• The Contact List feature within Clients setup is the perfect way to track multiple project managers within a large company that also has multiple contracts with us.

Incentivized

• Accelo is excellent on the adaptation to its deep functionalities.
• Managing multiple project is very challenging.
• Not easy to collect multiple reports across platforms.

Incentivized

• Simplification of structure and features (customization); sometimes it's too much of a good thing.
• The mobile app could be more closely aligned with the web platform (not all items, features are available, and not as easy to navigate and view data).
• Dashboard widgets could be more interactive. Ex: Aged Receivables should allow bringing up a summary window of past-due project billings and invoices as opposed to simply showing days aged that it already shows on the side and with matching color.

Incentivized

Looking forward to seeing more refinement of features provided and upcoming features promised :)

We have been using Core for a few years now, and honestly started to look at other software systems to see what was out there. What we chose was a nightmare for migration so we never left Core. Now we have added invoicing and payments from Core instead of double entry with QBO. Still only a few cycles in but looks like it will be up to speed soon and working smoothly.

Incentivized

If I were being asked why i give it a 10/10 rating, I suppose it would come down to one, and really honestly just the one single item: usability. I live a busy life, you know? When I need to get in to log my time I can do that extremely expediently. I like the program that I'm using if that makes sense.

Incentivized

I can only remember a couple of times in 4 years that Core has been unavailable.

This is one area that does need some improvement. It can be slow at time, so we had our IT look at it from our side and we had no issues, so it has to be some slowness on their side.

From the beginning the Accelo team has been very invested in ensuring our success and overall happiness with the platform. The initial implementation specialists and trainers did a fairly good job of learning our company and needs, and tried to tailor the trainings accordingly. However, once we made the formal switch to the platform, meaning we no longer were using our legacy systems, we found that we had a lot of questions....and a lot of ideas and recommendations. The support team is extremely responsive and seemingly happy to receive our continual feedback. And if we encounter an issue that seems to be a system issue, they work diligently to fix it (we've actually had an engineer join a call with us to learn of the issue - and subsequently fix it)

Incentivized

The software makes my process of submitting documents and expense reports easier! The way it tracks hours is great and reliable. The interface is easy to use and the graphic is very intuitive. The customer service is also great and it helped me a lot when I needed. Very satisfied

Incentivized

Make sure you have someone training you that fits your style of learning.

It does take some time to understand the options and to find the best invoice template.

Incentivized

Accelo doesn't really exceed any competitors in any one area of their product, but in 2015 when we made the move this was the best option that included all the tools we wanted. However, user adoption was low in some areas due to the UI, so we scaled back Accelo and added other tools.

Incentivized

Wind2 and MYOB where both DOS based operating systems so BillQuick is a god send compared to them. While BillQuick and Ajera are both Windows based, when we purchased BillQuick, it was mainly because for the size of the company we were (12 people), it was a much better option than Ajera, which is great for a larger firm. As we have grown, BillQuick has done a great job at growing with us. The only issue we are having is that we opened an office in another state and we have not been able to get those staff members to access the data base yet. But we are working on it

Incentivized

This software works on a small and large scale.

• It substantially reduced the number of systems we use to run our business.
• It reduced the need to train our staff on a variety of platforms.
• It gave us the ability to have a client-facing portal that directly integrates with our backend systems.

Incentivized

• Quick ability to create new projects with similar structure using cloning option
• Ability to move time directly from timesheet module to billing
• Billing Review feature could use some improvement - ie doc review billing
• Shorthand module is helpful for defaulting common memo lingo

Incentivized