BambooHR® vs. BQE CORE

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
BambooHR®
Score 8.3 out of 10
N/A
BambooHR is an cloud-based human resources solution that provides onboarding, payroll, and benefits management. It also offers automated time-off management and employee self-service.
$10
per month per user
BQE CORE
Score 8.8 out of 10
Small Businesses (1-50 employees)
BQE CORE is a business management solution built specifically for professional service firms. BQE CORE is a combination of a billing assistant, project management, and accounting solution. CORE is designed to do the hard work of delivering actionable insights directly to the user's dashboards or inbox. BQE CORE replaces the products Engineeroffice, Archioffice, and BillQuick; the functionality of these applications is now found in BQE CORE.N/A
Pricing
BambooHR®BQE CORE
Editions & Modules
Core
$10
per month per user
Pro
Contact Sales
per month
Elite
Contact Sales
per month
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
BambooHR®BQE CORE
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesYes
Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
BambooHR®BQE CORE
Considered Both Products
BambooHR®

No answer on this topic

BQE CORE
Chose BQE CORE
our team uses both the platforms and does not tie very well. bamboo does have a more pleasant to the eye interface comparatively. it is also a bit easier to navigate and not have to click too many times to reach any particular information on bamboo. BQE CORE does do visuals of …
Features
BambooHR®BQE CORE
Human Resource Management
Comparison of Human Resource Management features of Product A and Product B
BambooHR®
7.9
257 Ratings
3% below category average
BQE CORE
-
Ratings
Employee demographic data8.3229 Ratings00 Ratings
Employment history8.1234 Ratings00 Ratings
Job profiles and administration8.0230 Ratings00 Ratings
Workflow for transfers, promotions, pay raises, etc.7.7216 Ratings00 Ratings
Organizational charting7.6236 Ratings00 Ratings
Organization and location management8.1227 Ratings00 Ratings
Compliance data (COBRA, OSHA, etc.)7.3132 Ratings00 Ratings
Payroll Management
Comparison of Payroll Management features of Product A and Product B
BambooHR®
7.7
173 Ratings
5% below category average
BQE CORE
-
Ratings
Pay calculation8.3126 Ratings00 Ratings
Support for external payroll vendors6.993 Ratings00 Ratings
Off-cycle/On-Demand payment7.594 Ratings00 Ratings
Benefit plan administration7.1132 Ratings00 Ratings
Direct deposit files8.4129 Ratings00 Ratings
Salary revision and increment management8.0141 Ratings00 Ratings
Reimbursement management7.583 Ratings00 Ratings
Leave and Attendance Management
Comparison of Leave and Attendance Management features of Product A and Product B
BambooHR®
8.7
222 Ratings
6% above category average
BQE CORE
-
Ratings
Approval workflow8.5216 Ratings00 Ratings
Balance details8.3207 Ratings00 Ratings
Annual carry-forward and encashment9.2129 Ratings00 Ratings
Employee Self Service
Comparison of Employee Self Service features of Product A and Product B
BambooHR®
8.5
250 Ratings
4% above category average
BQE CORE
-
Ratings
View and generate pay and benefit information8.6168 Ratings00 Ratings
Update personal information8.9245 Ratings00 Ratings
View company policy documentation8.3218 Ratings00 Ratings
Employee recognition7.9157 Ratings00 Ratings
View job history8.8235 Ratings00 Ratings
Asset Management
Comparison of Asset Management features of Product A and Product B
BambooHR®
9.0
74 Ratings
11% above category average
BQE CORE
-
Ratings
Tracking of all physical assets9.074 Ratings00 Ratings
HR Reporting
Comparison of HR Reporting features of Product A and Product B
BambooHR®
7.1
210 Ratings
6% below category average
BQE CORE
-
Ratings
Report builder7.3203 Ratings00 Ratings
Pre-built reports7.4201 Ratings00 Ratings
Ability to combine HR data with external data6.7145 Ratings00 Ratings
Onboarding
Comparison of Onboarding features of Product A and Product B
BambooHR®
8.1
214 Ratings
2% above category average
BQE CORE
-
Ratings
New hire portal8.4204 Ratings00 Ratings
Manager tracking tools7.8190 Ratings00 Ratings
Performance and Goals
Comparison of Performance and Goals features of Product A and Product B
BambooHR®
7.9
143 Ratings
2% below category average
BQE CORE
-
Ratings
Corporate goal setting7.1104 Ratings00 Ratings
Individual goal setting7.9137 Ratings00 Ratings
Line-of sight-visibility9.169 Ratings00 Ratings
Performance tracking7.5131 Ratings00 Ratings
Performance Management
Comparison of Performance Management features of Product A and Product B
BambooHR®
7.8
161 Ratings
1% below category average
BQE CORE
-
Ratings
Performance plans7.3146 Ratings00 Ratings
Performance improvement plans7.2123 Ratings00 Ratings
Review status tracking8.697 Ratings00 Ratings
Review reminders8.1101 Ratings00 Ratings
Multiple review frequency7.8140 Ratings00 Ratings
Succession Planning
Comparison of Succession Planning features of Product A and Product B
BambooHR®
9.0
81 Ratings
14% above category average
BQE CORE
-
Ratings
Create succession plans/pools8.846 Ratings00 Ratings
Candidate ranking9.067 Ratings00 Ratings
Candidate search8.968 Ratings00 Ratings
Candidate development9.259 Ratings00 Ratings
Recruiting / ATS
Comparison of Recruiting / ATS features of Product A and Product B
BambooHR®
8.0
182 Ratings
3% above category average
BQE CORE
-
Ratings
Job Requisition Management7.8138 Ratings00 Ratings
Company Website Posting7.7149 Ratings00 Ratings
Publish to Social Media9.291 Ratings00 Ratings
Job Search Site Posting7.5145 Ratings00 Ratings
Duplicate Candidate Prevention7.588 Ratings00 Ratings
Applicant Tracking8.1165 Ratings00 Ratings
Notifications and Alerts8.1173 Ratings00 Ratings
Project Management
Comparison of Project Management features of Product A and Product B
BambooHR®
-
Ratings
BQE CORE
8.0
74 Ratings
3% above category average
Task Management00 Ratings9.256 Ratings
Resource Management00 Ratings8.955 Ratings
Gantt Charts00 Ratings9.128 Ratings
Scheduling00 Ratings8.936 Ratings
Workflow Automation00 Ratings7.939 Ratings
Team Collaboration00 Ratings6.646 Ratings
Support for Agile Methodology00 Ratings7.521 Ratings
Support for Waterfall Methodology00 Ratings4.818 Ratings
Document Management00 Ratings8.639 Ratings
Email integration00 Ratings6.233 Ratings
Mobile Access00 Ratings7.745 Ratings
Timesheet Tracking00 Ratings9.674 Ratings
Change request and Case Management00 Ratings8.232 Ratings
Budget and Expense Management00 Ratings8.858 Ratings
Professional Services Automation
Comparison of Professional Services Automation features of Product A and Product B
BambooHR®
-
Ratings
BQE CORE
8.5
56 Ratings
9% above category average
Quotes/estimates00 Ratings8.229 Ratings
Invoicing00 Ratings8.849 Ratings
Project & financial reporting00 Ratings8.854 Ratings
Integration with accounting software00 Ratings8.235 Ratings
Best Alternatives
BambooHR®BQE CORE
Small Businesses
Dayforce Powerpay
Dayforce Powerpay
Score 9.3 out of 10
Stackby
Stackby
Score 8.9 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Paypro Workforce Management
Paypro Workforce Management
Score 9.1 out of 10
InEight
InEight
Score 8.3 out of 10
Enterprises
PeopleStrong
PeopleStrong
Score 10.0 out of 10
InEight
InEight
Score 8.3 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
BambooHR®BQE CORE
Likelihood to Recommend
8.2
(245 ratings)
9.2
(167 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.9
(17 ratings)
7.0
(8 ratings)
Usability
8.6
(173 ratings)
9.3
(117 ratings)
Availability
9.3
(5 ratings)
8.2
(1 ratings)
Performance
8.7
(5 ratings)
7.3
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
8.0
(137 ratings)
7.4
(90 ratings)
Online Training
9.2
(4 ratings)
6.4
(1 ratings)
Implementation Rating
8.6
(6 ratings)
2.3
(6 ratings)
Configurability
8.7
(4 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
8.4
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
9.6
(2 ratings)
4.5
(1 ratings)
Product Scalability
8.9
(5 ratings)
8.2
(1 ratings)
Professional Services
9.2
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
8.9
(4 ratings)
8.2
(1 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
9.1
(4 ratings)
8.2
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
BambooHR®BQE CORE
Likelihood to Recommend
BambooHR
Performance management - the prompt questions are really helpful in distilling thoughts! Though it would still be great to have an optional box for additional feedback that might not be directly related to the prompt questions. The clean interface and user friendliness is a definite plus! But some specific features, eg. on TOIL application - it would be helpful to ensure it is intuitive to use, rather than confusing with the input process.
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BQE Software Inc.
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.
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Pros
BambooHR
  • Recruiting- communications are easy for both the internal team and candidates
  • Onboarding- the onboarding tasks are great. I love being able to attach documents as well as delay sending out tasks
  • Communication- the employee community is a great tool to keep our communications clean and organized. I love that we now have insight as to who has viewed the comms
Read full review
BQE Software Inc.
  • 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.
Read full review
Cons
BambooHR
  • The biggest issue is on performance assessments. We are not able to customize the reminder dates so the automated reminder dates shown to people and on the email reminders is often misaligned with our actual internal deadlines. This causes a lot of confusion each review cycle.
  • Also on performance management, there is no way to push feedback to a supervisor for their direct report. The only way is if the manager requests the feedback from you. This limits the opportunity for people to give real time feedback throughout the half.
  • I wish we had a way to track notes from employee 1:1s in BambooHR® so when we do our performance reviews we can track. That may be a module we didn't purchase but it would facilitate more continuous and comprehensive evaluation of people at review time.
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BQE Software Inc.
  • 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.
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Likelihood to Renew
BambooHR
There's nothing wrong with this platform. I would recommend it to any business starting with more than 10 employees. I will continue to use the program for as long as I need to, hoping they continue being tremendous and finding other ways to incorporate more technology.
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BQE Software Inc.
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.
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Usability
BambooHR
Just because there's a little complex with everything that's rolling out and so I have had to walk some people through functionality because there's just so much to click at this point. Another thing is the review process doesn't allow for ratings with a number scale, and I know we're kind of getting away from that as an industry, but with our previous system we have been rating people for their merit percent increase on their wages at the end of the year and it doesn't have the functionality to do that.
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BQE Software Inc.
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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Reliability and Availability
BambooHR
Yes, there is a huge team in the back of the online platform or it looks like it because I have never been left without an answer when I have a question or waiting from a response on my chat .... There must be a huge team, this is so great and I always seem to have someone that is very knowledgeable too. So many times in the past I had to leave with customer service that would connect you with someone else because of the expertise, here everyone seems to be some kind of an expert in the HR function.
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BQE Software Inc.
I can only remember a couple of times in 4 years that Core has been unavailable.
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Performance
BambooHR
I love BambooHR. Reports are easy to run and download and it usually covers any types of requests I get from the management team. You get excel or .csv downloads/reports and it is fast and simple, not too crowded so it is easy to read through. We don't integrate the tool yet but again, soon we will. we just did not had the time to utilize it yet but that's the plan.
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BQE Software Inc.
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.
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Support Rating
BambooHR
I use the chat feature most often and the wait times can be long, but often I do get right in. When they promise to follow up, they always do. It seems the "support hero's" are very well training and knowledgeable. There are lots of resources in the form of print or video, too.
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BQE Software Inc.
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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In-Person Training
BambooHR
I didn't have in-person training besides teaching my managers how to use the program. However, I couldn't omit this question (maybe a system glitch).
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BQE Software Inc.
No answers on this topic
Online Training
BambooHR
Overall this training was great and our implementation specialist was wonderful and very helpful. We felt really prepared once our training was completed, But we could get additional help immediately even when we were live. The continuation Support heros after implementation are wonderful and you can always get a LIVE person each time you call into their office.
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BQE Software Inc.
Make sure you have someone training you that fits your style of learning.
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Implementation Rating
BambooHR
We implemented bambooHR in Fall, 2023 then implemented Payroll 1/1/24. A vital piece of information was not known or missed in that we are exempt from State Unemployment Tax and have a Reimbursement Set-up, so bambooHR did not send Payroll Reports to the State. Those reports need to be sent regardless if we are exempt or not.
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BQE Software Inc.
It does take some time to understand the options and to find the best invoice template.
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Alternatives Considered
BambooHR
Lattice is much more oriented towards performance management. It includes many more advanced performance management features from building actual assessments to also performance development planning. BambooHR® for us was a place to centralize our data and build from within as well as connect to external integrations. PerformYard is what we used prior to BambooHR® for onboarding workflows and performance reviews, but BambooHR® is far superior.
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BQE Software Inc.
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.
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Contract Terms and Pricing Model
BambooHR
Since my organization has dropped with employees, I always find ways to reduce costs. I thought there would be a cheaper option, but I was glad that my package included a lot for the price, and downgrading would cost more. The rep could have let me downgraded and taken me to a higher package. I am thankful that didn't happen.
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BQE Software Inc.
No answers on this topic
Scalability
BambooHR
There is so much you can do with this platform, it is incredible and so welcoming. We don't utilize it 100% yet just because we are growing and the HR team has not been able to concentrate on other areas offered to us but but we will soon. Which is also why we got the product, specifically because what BambooHR can do to help us meet our growing business needs.
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BQE Software Inc.
This software works on a small and large scale.
Read full review
Professional Services
BambooHR
VERY professional!
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BQE Software Inc.
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
BambooHR
  • Time Savings: Automating onboarding, payroll, and employee record management has cut HR admin time by up to 30%, allowing teams to focus on strategic initiatives instead of paperwork.
  • Improved Onboarding: Streamlined workflows have cut onboarding time by nearly 50%, ensuring new hires are productive faster, reducing turnover risk in the critical first months.
  • - Enhanced Informational Clarity: Centralized employee data means fewer errors and faster access to essential information, reducing compliance risks and increasing accuracy in reporting.
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BQE Software Inc.
  • 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
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ScreenShots

BambooHR® Screenshots

Screenshot of the Job Info tabScreenshot of Onboarding TasksScreenshot of a New Hire PacketScreenshot of an Employee Performance ReportScreenshot of Employee Satisfaction (eNPS®)Screenshot of Open Enrollment

BQE CORE Screenshots

Screenshot of Core powered by BQE SoftwareScreenshot of BQE CORE Project Dashboard ViewScreenshot of BQE CORE 360* Firm Performance ViewScreenshot of BQE CORE Reporting & AnalyticsScreenshot of BQE CORE Project Time EntryScreenshot of BQE CORE Project Expense Tracking