Bento for Business vs. BQE CORE

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Bento for Business
Score 10.0 out of 10
Small Businesses (1-50 employees)
Bento for Business provides employee expense cards with spend controls that allow business owners to control where, when and how much employees can spend. This solution includes a dashboard that pivots data by employee, card, category, date and tag.
$0
2 People or Cards (1 must be business owner)
BQE CORE
Score 8.5 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
Bento for BusinessBQE CORE
Editions & Modules
Free
$0
2 People or Cards (1 must be business owner)
Team
$29/month
Up to 10 People or Cards
Professional
$69/month
Up to 20 People or Cards
Enterprise
$149/month
More than 20 People or Cards
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Bento for BusinessBQE CORE
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Features
Bento for BusinessBQE CORE
Project Management
Comparison of Project Management features of Product A and Product B
Bento for Business
-
Ratings
BQE CORE
8.1
55 Ratings
8% above category average
Task Management00 Ratings8.537 Ratings
Resource Management00 Ratings9.138 Ratings
Gantt Charts00 Ratings6.716 Ratings
Scheduling00 Ratings8.226 Ratings
Workflow Automation00 Ratings7.627 Ratings
Team Collaboration00 Ratings8.031 Ratings
Support for Agile Methodology00 Ratings8.712 Ratings
Support for Waterfall Methodology00 Ratings8.312 Ratings
Document Management00 Ratings7.230 Ratings
Email integration00 Ratings7.225 Ratings
Mobile Access00 Ratings8.532 Ratings
Timesheet Tracking00 Ratings9.355 Ratings
Change request and Case Management00 Ratings8.521 Ratings
Budget and Expense Management00 Ratings7.343 Ratings
Professional Services Automation
Comparison of Professional Services Automation features of Product A and Product B
Bento for Business
-
Ratings
BQE CORE
8.4
38 Ratings
13% above category average
Quotes/estimates00 Ratings7.820 Ratings
Invoicing00 Ratings8.833 Ratings
Project & financial reporting00 Ratings8.737 Ratings
Integration with accounting software00 Ratings8.424 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Bento for BusinessBQE CORE
Small Businesses
Dext Prepare (with Receipt Bank)
Dext Prepare (with Receipt Bank)
Score 9.1 out of 10
Stackby
Stackby
Score 9.8 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Darwinbox
Darwinbox
Score 7.9 out of 10
Quickbase
Quickbase
Score 9.2 out of 10
Enterprises
Webexpenses
Webexpenses
Score 8.5 out of 10
Quickbase
Quickbase
Score 9.2 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Bento for BusinessBQE CORE
Likelihood to Recommend
10.0
(4 ratings)
8.6
(148 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
7.2
(8 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
8.1
(100 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
8.2
(1 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
7.3
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(90 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
6.4
(1 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
2.9
(6 ratings)
Ease of integration
-
(0 ratings)
4.5
(1 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
8.2
(1 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
-
(0 ratings)
8.2
(1 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
-
(0 ratings)
8.2
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
Bento for BusinessBQE CORE
Likelihood to Recommend
Bento for Business
Our organization runs a lot of short-term or one-off programs where the program staff need to buy supplies -- Bento is perfect for these scenarios. The staff who make the purchases are not staff who would typically have a company card, so we wanted a solution other than giving them a credit card. Bento was perfect because it makes the purchasing & bookkeeping processes for these programs easy and efficient for both the staff and the finance team
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BQE Software Inc.
BQE CORE is well suited for a firm trying to get a better understanding of their project performance as a whole as well as better manage time and project resources. It is not the greatest for client management through a project or through invoicing, but it is do-able within the system.
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Pros
Bento for Business
  • Track expenses by employee
  • Restrict purchases based on amount and category
  • Import transactions directly into QuickBooks
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.
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Cons
Bento for Business
  • easier way for employees to access their statements without setting them up as admins
  • monthly statements generated by card
  • monthly fee needs to be added to one of the card statements
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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
Bento for Business
No answers on this topic
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
Bento for Business
No answers on this topic
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
Bento for Business
No answers on this topic
BQE Software Inc.
I can only remember a couple of times in 4 years that Core has been unavailable.
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Performance
Bento for Business
No answers on this topic
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
Bento for Business
No answers on this topic
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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Online Training
Bento for Business
No answers on this topic
BQE Software Inc.
Make sure you have someone training you that fits your style of learning.
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Implementation Rating
Bento for Business
No answers on this topic
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
Bento for Business
If you are looking for prepaid business care or a business expense card, I highly do not recommend using Bento for Business. Do yourself and your business a favor and use a more customer service orientated services such as Pex, Wex, or Expensify. Bento for Business is bad business. Just don't do it.
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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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Scalability
Bento for Business
No answers on this topic
BQE Software Inc.
This software works on a small and large scale.
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Return on Investment
Bento for Business
  • Saving time by eliminating reimbursements
  • Allowing many staff to have a card to make purchases without worrying about financial control/risk of too many people having a company card
  • Efficiently synchs with Quickbooks
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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
Read full review
ScreenShots

Bento for Business Screenshots

Screenshot of Create Employee cards or Utility cards with spend limits (e.g. $500/month)Screenshot of Dashboard provides a snapshot of spending activity across all cards.Screenshot of See transactions in real-time.  Add tags, notes and upload receipts.

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