BQE CORE vs. Emburse SpringAhead

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
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
Emburse SpringAhead
Score 9.9 out of 10
N/A
SpringAhead is an expense reporting, billing, and time tracking platform that was owned and supported by Certify Travel and Expense created from the 2017 merger of Certify, Nexonia, and other companies, and now from Emburse, the company formed from the merger of Certify and Chrome River Technologies in March 2019.N/A
Pricing
BQE COREEmburse SpringAhead
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
BQE COREEmburse SpringAhead
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
BQE COREEmburse SpringAhead
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
BQE COREEmburse SpringAhead
Project Management
Comparison of Project Management features of Product A and Product B
BQE CORE
8.1
49 Ratings
7% above category average
Emburse SpringAhead
-
Ratings
Task Management8.831 Ratings00 Ratings
Resource Management9.232 Ratings00 Ratings
Gantt Charts6.613 Ratings00 Ratings
Scheduling8.321 Ratings00 Ratings
Workflow Automation7.722 Ratings00 Ratings
Team Collaboration8.026 Ratings00 Ratings
Support for Agile Methodology9.310 Ratings00 Ratings
Support for Waterfall Methodology6.610 Ratings00 Ratings
Document Management6.824 Ratings00 Ratings
Email integration7.021 Ratings00 Ratings
Mobile Access9.027 Ratings00 Ratings
Timesheet Tracking9.449 Ratings00 Ratings
Change request and Case Management8.717 Ratings00 Ratings
Budget and Expense Management7.537 Ratings00 Ratings
Professional Services Automation
Comparison of Professional Services Automation features of Product A and Product B
BQE CORE
8.4
34 Ratings
12% above category average
Emburse SpringAhead
-
Ratings
Quotes/estimates7.817 Ratings00 Ratings
Invoicing8.829 Ratings00 Ratings
Project & financial reporting8.733 Ratings00 Ratings
Integration with accounting software8.420 Ratings00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
BQE COREEmburse SpringAhead
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FunctionFox
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Score 8.3 out of 10
Dext Prepare (with Receipt Bank)
Dext Prepare (with Receipt Bank)
Score 9.1 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
SAP Ruum
SAP Ruum
Score 9.0 out of 10
Darwinbox
Darwinbox
Score 8.0 out of 10
Enterprises
Quickbase
Quickbase
Score 9.2 out of 10
Webexpenses
Webexpenses
Score 8.4 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
BQE COREEmburse SpringAhead
Likelihood to Recommend
8.7
(142 ratings)
6.5
(3 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
7.2
(8 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
8.2
(100 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Availability
8.2
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
7.3
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
8.0
(89 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Online Training
6.4
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
3.0
(6 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
4.5
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
8.2
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
8.2
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
8.2
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
BQE COREEmburse SpringAhead
Likelihood to Recommend
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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Emburse
It's definitely well suited for all organizations with knowledge workers who use computers to do their work and are able to log in and enter their time on a regular basis. I've always had access to it as part of my job and love using SpringAhead. It may be less appropriate in a role where the worker does not have regular access to a computer to enter their hours digitally.
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Pros
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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Emburse
  • Allows for tracking of time very easily. Users can add all their project's time in one place instead of drilling into each project.
  • Managers can approve their team's time all in one place. We do not need to drill down to find the info and approve. Users who don't report to the manager but are part of the project can still be approved by the project manager.
  • Reports are easy to read when looking at historical information. Reports can be run with multiple parameters that the user needs.
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Cons
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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Emburse
  • Automated reminders to employees would be great
  • A more modern and up-to-date user interface
  • The approvals system for projects vs. users could use some work
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Likelihood to Renew
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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Emburse
No answers on this topic
Usability
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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Emburse
No answers on this topic
Reliability and Availability
BQE Software Inc.
I can only remember a couple of times in 4 years that Core has been unavailable.
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Emburse
No answers on this topic
Performance
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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Emburse
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
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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Emburse
No answers on this topic
Online Training
BQE Software Inc.
Make sure you have someone training you that fits your style of learning.
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Emburse
No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
BQE Software Inc.
It does take some time to understand the options and to find the best invoice template.
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Emburse
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
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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Emburse
We selected SpringAhead because of price and usability. This tool is easy to set up and configure. It is a cloud application allowing access from anywhere. There were no training requirements. When you have a small use case this tool is the way to go. We moved off SpringAhead to get more functionality and it has required a lot more training and effort to maintain and utilize
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Scalability
BQE Software Inc.
This software works on a small and large scale.
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Emburse
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
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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Emburse
  • Positive - tracking return on project investments
  • Positive - being able to plan on future projects
  • Positive - being able to manage costs and attendance
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ScreenShots

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