APS vs. BQE CORE

APS Payroll is an easy to use payroll system, and integrates well with some things such as the APS Hire feature, which handles onboarding, and the eSelfServe timeclock feature. It exports well to Quickbooks, but is only ok with NetSuite. (It works but is a completely manual process and takes a lot of setup.) Our tax registration and filing has been fine and we're always apprised of any tax discrepancies such as small Unemployment overages/underages when filed compared to what was withheld.

Incentivized

I would recommend this for our industry: architecture, engineering, or construction. I would recommend this for any larger firm with many employees or high number of projects. I would particularly recommend this for a company with projects that have budget constraints and where time tracking and expense tracking is very important. I would not recommend this complicated software for a small firm with a small amount of income or number of projects.

• It's fast and intuitive. Our previous contractors were ADP and Paychex and neither were intuitive. Our payroll runs have less errors now than with previous vendors. Payroll prep time is down from 5 hours with ADP to 2 hours with APS for the HR Manager.
• The limiters are great. I'm always afraid of that error that no one caught. Let's assume that you add a $200 limiter to overtime. Any time that a staff member is about to receive more than $200 in overtime for that pay period, a red flag goes up for the HR manager to double check.
• We have 3 programs in public schools that block certain ports. APS has a 2nd feature using GPS so that staff can only check in for their shift while they are in the designated GPS range. Great for someone who has to report to a remote location. Just add the GPS coordinates and they can't check until they get to the project.

• 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

• Reporting - We have six different business units and the reporting is separate for all three. Most reporting I do requires information from all business units so am running six reports and then copying and pasting to get the report I need.
• Multi-state taxes - We have a number of employees who live in New York and work in New Jersey. APS OnLine is designed to accommodate one state withholding so ability to have "worked in" state and "lived in" state taxes withheld went away. This was a shortfall.
• The Carrier connection setup took much longer than expected. After a year, we are still having some issues with some items transferring over to the GL.
• The CA overtime calculation does not calculate after 8 hours per day, only on the 40 per week so we override each week.
• Reporting - when running Benefit reports, it recognizes employees who formerly carried the plan but may have dropped it. To get around this, we have to delete off the employee's record so the history is not readily available.

Incentivized

• Customizable Reporting
• Linking Project to Payment all together
• Assigning contacts to particular roles - such as Invoicing, Contracts, etc.
• Accounting Functionality - they are basically a project management accounting software, so in my opinion, they could learn some things from other accounting software such as QuickBooks etc.

Incentivized

I have been using the system for over a year now and feel more comfortable with the functionality of it. I have just recently implemented the benefit administration portion.

Incentivized

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

The APS Payroll software is very easy to use, and it is easy to train new employees on it. The APS Payroll support team is very helpful and response time is quick. It is easy to enter/change employee information, adjust salaries and benefits, etc. New features have also been added that makes it even better, such as being able to set up your own income/deduction items.

Incentivized

The foundation is awesome, like I have said before, however the house being built on it, the educational resources being provided to us (more of sales pitches that don't work), and flexible workflow opportunities, is making us look elsewhere for how much we will be spending on per user. It's crazy to think how flexible they are not when it comes to user settings. Lack of integration with other sources is awful.

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I haven't had any outages

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

Very quick

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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.

I had to learn APS on my own, and the support team held my hand. They are still there when I have an occasional question. Anytime I need support, I can call my rep or send an email and help is on the way, without failure. The support team is awesome

Incentivized

As a new employee and CORE user, I talk to support on a weekly basis. I have never had to wait for more than 3 min to get connect with a support rep, and all my questions have been answered. The support representatives are polite and eager to help no matter how simple your question is.

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Even if it wasn't in-person on location, we felt like we had our trainer in the room with us.

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We had great webinars.

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

It would have been helpful to understand the phases of the implementation up front so I could have prepared differently for enrollments, billing, and transfer of information to payroll. At the end of the day, I'm happy with the selection and the system and anticipate I will like it better as we go along. We have done a number of other system implementations in the past few years, and this has been pretty painless, however, I've had a few surprises.

Incentivized

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

Incentivized

We had used ADP for years and had always struggled with their customer service. With over 20 locations (20+ W2s, quarterly filings, etc) we had a lot of questions. We would have to call and sit on hold for long periods of time to talk to someone who couldn't always answer our questions. Then we would get different answers from different people or have to re-explain our issue. It was a major time suck for my employees and they dreaded having to call all of the time. For us - the final straws for us to switch providers were: +Numerous year end filings with incorrect names and addresses (they couldn't keep our 20+ locations separate even though our paperwork was completed correctly) +Incorrect SUI rates for several locations that resulted in tens of thousands of dollars in overpayments which was a lot of money for small hotels. We had sent in numerous requests for them to fix this but it never happened +Lack of care - even though we were having all of these issues, nobody would work with us to get them all resolved and make sure to remedy the situation. We had to seek out a manager to get them resolved but even after this, we still had more issues. Overall - DON'T stick with ADP or even think about switching to them. They might be able to slash prices but their poor customer service and lack of care will cost you in the end. It's not worth it. APS does everything ADP had the capability of but we don't have the errors or headaches we did before. I am really looking forward to this year end!

Incentivized

Deltek Vision is far more advanced, more encompassing and offers more flexibility with what you want to do. However, it's also quite difficult to use, whereas BQE CORE is intuitive and user friendly. The trade off is worth it in some arenas but overall it's not suited for a larger fast paced company. Great for smaller companies.

Incentivized

I've never had a problem with the system nor in finding the right information.

Incentivized

This software works on a small and large scale.

• We were able to transition quickly and continue to successfully hire and onboard new hires for several Clubs that opened within weeks of moving to APS.
• We do struggle a bit with the ease of reporting simply because our locations are all under separate EIN and that can make it difficult to easily combine data queried under custom reports, so the volume of reporting that I might wish to be able to push through weekly in order to help address 'real time' trends is not always available.
• The lack of effective dating for position and wage changes does mean that HR and available APS data is not 'real time' accurate and that HR does need to return to the system to update changes well after-the-fact, which is not ideal.

Incentivized

• Quick setup of new tasks under a parent project, with immediate hourly billing to it.
• Monitoring of details of non-chargeable efforts in appropriate detail
• Validation of hourly cost, billing cost, benefit cost, profitability by person and role
• Company tracking of write-off's included in corporate and project reporting, no data is "lost"
• Can track excessive work time as +PTO in lieu of pay for use as future vacation