BQE CORE vs. Emburse Chrome River

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 Chrome River
Score 7.5 out of 10
N/A
Chrome River EXPENSE is expense management software, from Chrome River Technologies in Los Angeles, California.N/A
Pricing
BQE COREEmburse Chrome River
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
BQE COREEmburse Chrome River
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsWe offer three cost-effective, subscription-based pricing models: A transaction-based model, priced according to expense report volume A submitter-based model, priced according to an average number of monthly submitters An enterprise-level model that includes unlimited expense reports. Pricing for this model is based on total employee headcount Feel free to contact us to discuss the best one for your organization.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
BQE COREEmburse Chrome River
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
BQE COREEmburse Chrome River
Project Management
Comparison of Project Management features of Product A and Product B
BQE CORE
8.1
55 Ratings
8% above category average
Emburse Chrome River
-
Ratings
Task Management8.537 Ratings00 Ratings
Resource Management9.138 Ratings00 Ratings
Gantt Charts6.716 Ratings00 Ratings
Scheduling8.226 Ratings00 Ratings
Workflow Automation7.627 Ratings00 Ratings
Team Collaboration8.031 Ratings00 Ratings
Support for Agile Methodology8.712 Ratings00 Ratings
Support for Waterfall Methodology8.312 Ratings00 Ratings
Document Management7.230 Ratings00 Ratings
Email integration7.225 Ratings00 Ratings
Mobile Access8.532 Ratings00 Ratings
Timesheet Tracking9.355 Ratings00 Ratings
Change request and Case Management8.521 Ratings00 Ratings
Budget and Expense Management7.343 Ratings00 Ratings
Professional Services Automation
Comparison of Professional Services Automation features of Product A and Product B
BQE CORE
8.4
38 Ratings
13% above category average
Emburse Chrome River
-
Ratings
Quotes/estimates7.820 Ratings00 Ratings
Invoicing8.833 Ratings00 Ratings
Project & financial reporting8.737 Ratings00 Ratings
Integration with accounting software8.424 Ratings00 Ratings
Expense Management
Comparison of Expense Management features of Product A and Product B
BQE CORE
-
Ratings
Emburse Chrome River
8.8
3 Ratings
9% above category average
Employee Expense Reporting00 Ratings8.73 Ratings
Corporate Card Reconciliation00 Ratings9.03 Ratings
Payment Management
Comparison of Payment Management features of Product A and Product B
BQE CORE
-
Ratings
Emburse Chrome River
8.0
3 Ratings
0% below category average
Customizable Approval Policies00 Ratings8.33 Ratings
Financial Document Management00 Ratings5.01 Ratings
Payment Status Tracking00 Ratings9.03 Ratings
Payment Audit Trail00 Ratings9.02 Ratings
Duplicate Bill Detection00 Ratings8.33 Ratings
Advanced OCR00 Ratings8.52 Ratings
Electronic Funds Transfer00 Ratings8.01 Ratings
Best Alternatives
BQE COREEmburse Chrome River
Small Businesses
FunctionFox
FunctionFox
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 7.9 out of 10
Enterprises
Quickbase
Quickbase
Score 9.2 out of 10
Webexpenses
Webexpenses
Score 8.5 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
BQE COREEmburse Chrome River
Likelihood to Recommend
8.6
(148 ratings)
7.5
(123 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
7.2
(8 ratings)
9.3
(18 ratings)
Usability
8.1
(100 ratings)
8.9
(107 ratings)
Availability
8.2
(1 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Performance
7.3
(1 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
8.0
(90 ratings)
9.0
(113 ratings)
Online Training
6.4
(1 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Implementation Rating
2.9
(6 ratings)
9.1
(7 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
Ease of integration
4.5
(1 ratings)
6.0
(1 ratings)
Product Scalability
8.2
(1 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
8.2
(1 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
8.2
(1 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
BQE COREEmburse Chrome River
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
The Emburse Chrome River is well suited for tracking expenses and reimbursement. The compliance part of the software makes the task very easy to ensure all the reports that are being used within the company are updated and easy to verify. The Automating invoice processing makes some redundant task easy to execute.
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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
  • [Emburse] Chrome River listens to its customer's needs and does its best to match current products to those needs, or collaborate internally to determine if an enhancement can be made available that will not only benefit that customer, but will be a good use case for all Chrome River customers.
  • The [Emburse] Chrome River customer service team is great. Unlike most companies, you can speak to a liver person!
  • [Emburse] Chrome River's training offerings are relevant and pertinent to the day to day operations of the software.
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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
  • Would be great to have pre-saved templates available to apply to line items at the expense report header level rather than having to go into each line.
  • Would be nice to have a mass upload functionality for things like cost codes, allocations, and credit card users.
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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
Chrome River is easy to use. We needed little training for our users and instead pointed them to Chrome River's Help Guides which are clearly written and easy to understand. With tools SNAP and the ability to email receipts means we can be completely remote when submitting reports.
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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
I would rate Chrome River Expense a 10 because, as I mentioned before, it is very simple and easy to use. This is important from an administrative point-of-view as well as for the field employee. Being a general contractor, it makes it all the better for our employees to use a program that is easy to understand and requires little time and effort. It has made tracking expenses very simple and has been well received by the entire company.
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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
The software is always running effectively. I use many Cloud based systems and never had issues with Chrome River
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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
System runs normal pretty much all the time. Does not slow any other systems down.
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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
This has been easy for me because we have a rep that contacts the supporters for this product to correct any issues we may have with the software or changes needed to help out employees use Chrome River easier. This from my understanding has been a hit or miss kind of interaction with our rep and Chrome River.
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Online Training
BQE Software Inc.
Make sure you have someone training you that fits your style of learning.
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Emburse
The software is very user friendly, so the online training was easy to pickup for everyone.
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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
Before implementation begins, make sure you have a plan on how you would like your workflow and platform setup for a system like Chrome River. It will speed the process and eliminate the need to make changes when you go live.
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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
It's the [industry-leading] software for Enterprise level organizations with [large-scale] teams and financial responsibilities. The software has the most robust set of tools and pays for itself with the amount of time it saves. Many newer alternatives have sprouted up but I don't know that we would ever trust another software to do our Expense Tracking and Management.
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Scalability
BQE Software Inc.
This software works on a small and large scale.
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Emburse
It's very easy software to design to your needs.
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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
  • We have seen a return on approver time of nearly 60% meaning our approvers have tripled their output.
  • We have had feedback from our users that time spent creating expenses has gone from an average of 2 hours to perhaps 20 minutes, tops.
  • We have seen in our dashboards that the Emburse Certify Suite of tools has returned an average savings of over $500K a year.
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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

Emburse Chrome River Screenshots

Screenshot of A consistent experience across any screen size or operating systemScreenshot of Simple, customizable tiles for expense entryScreenshot of Approve expenses directly from your inbox with a single click