Aptean Industrial Manufacturing ERP Traverse Edition vs. BQE CORE

I honestly think that it's extremely outdated and don't understand why anyone would still use it. Especially in a non-profit setting. In our field we have to be able to track revenue and expenses by funds, and with the way those funding streams tend to cross an agency or company's fiscal year, the fact that it is virtually impossible to pull the information in that manner restricts a finance department more than anything.

Incentivized

BQE CORE is well suited for someone that wants to overpay to keep track of time, invoicing, and standard financial metrics. BQE CORE has the opportunity to be a really robust operating system for an architectural practice that wants to understand how projects are going, how they can improve as a studio, and move forward in providing great impact to their clients, all the while, spending less time in a boring software that no architect wants to use. BQE CORE can feel like a necessary thing for a studio to be managing growth well. But it also can be a lot of fun, intuitive, and exciting for an architect that just wants to be an architect. It can be a learning tool. However, it's too clunky, it isn't flexible, only reactive, and backwards looking for KPIs. To integrate with interesting equations of how a firm can look at project success, turn it into a dashboard for the entire studio, that would be fun. The banking cloud feed is one of the worst I have experienced. The lack of reporting customization is awful. And the amount of redundant information that has to be put into a project that you actually want to have phases in, track your allocations, and manage it, is entirely too cumbersome. BQE Core has an AWESOME foundation. But to build the proverbial house, we gotta care about the craft.

Incentivized

• No confusing reporting.
• Easy to follow interface.
• Simplified experience.

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

• Not user-friendly or intuitive in the least. Even with the instruction manual, it's like part of it is missing or you are expected to know certain items before even looking.
• Reporting is very basic and impossible to customize on the user's end. You must have tech support build them for you. Also, no cross fiscal year reporting.
• Can't cut only one check if you have other invoices already entered in the batch.
• The chart of account codes are not independent. You must build your whole GL for each fund source or program, which leaves you with an unwieldy chart of accounts.

Incentivized

• Startup training is available (& you need it so that you get off to a great start)
• A report that shows the key setups for a project that can be glanced over quickly to assure it is correct
• A way to set a new start date for the dashboards and data set, or a way to default old bad data to a default so reports run without bad data showing up.

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

Navigating CORE is a breeze as the tool is visually organized well. Improvements need to be made to filtering. A more intuitive approach would help with generating reports and utilizing the resource allocation and forecasting tabs. Filtering by resource groups on these tabs are broken which is a huge inconvenience. Overall, though, the tool is easy to use as a whole, and the support team is very responsive and always available to help when you have a question.

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.

I have never needed to contact support for this product. Although it is suggested I skip this question if I have no applicable experience with it, I don't have the option to skip it. So I will instead attempt to get 50 words in this box as explanation for that.

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

If you've used CYMA, you'll be familiar with the way OSAS builds the GL, however CYMA is light years ahead of OSAS. If you've used anything like Abila MIP, you'll understand the comparison when I say "Abila is like using power tools to build your bookcase, CYMA is like using a hand saw and hammer, and OSAS is using a chisel to carve one out of wood." They all will get the job done and at the end of the day, you have a book case. But depending on which tools you use will either be ready for a library or a couple of small tomes. I didn't select OSAS, and never would it have been given consideration to be used as my accounting software

Incentivized

I am a user and was not involved in the decision making. Tool was already in place when I joined. But comparing to other tools I have used in the past, BQE is by far the easiest to use. You do not need any training to start using this tool immediately

Incentivized

This software works on a small and large scale.

• We have to do so much tracking of expenses by hand, that using OSAS doesn't save us any money in that respect.
• I believe my predecessor used OSAS for over 15 years so she obviously felt comfortable with it. I can make do with it and at least track my bottom line.
• No real reporting other than basic balance sheets.

Incentivized

• BQE Core has allowed our growing business to manage time tracking in an effective and efficient manner. We could not have effectively kept running our operation without it.
• BQE Core provides all of the reports we need to do our monthly management reporting. This allows us to quickly spot problems such as capacity overloads, receivables problems, budget overruns, or timekeeping issues.
• BQE Core has supported our business objective of generating more profit from projects that we undertake by allowing us to quickly and effectively monitor budget burn rates before it becomes an issue.

Incentivized