BQE CORE vs. Coda

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
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
Coda
Score 8.9 out of 10
N/A
Coda is a unified workspace platform that transforms documents into interactive applications by combining documentation, spreadsheet functionality, relational databases, and AI-powered automation—enabling teams to consolidate multiple tools and automate complex workflows without writing code. The platform operates as a block-based document system where every page can contain interactive tables, buttons that trigger automations, live formulas, and conditional logic, all rendering from a shared…
$0
Pricing
BQE CORECoda
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Free
$0.00
Pro
$12
per month per Doc Maker
Team
$36
per month per Doc Maker
Enterprise
Custom
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
BQE CORECoda
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsDiscount available for annual billing.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
BQE CORECoda
Considered Both Products
BQE CORE
Chose BQE CORE
Toms Planner gant charts are very easy to navigate and edit.
Chose BQE CORE
I previously used Gusto for both benefits / employee details and also time tracking. It was really nice to have everything in one place, and Gusto felt very simple. However, it did not have as many broken down categories for time allotment. Harvest felt similar to Gusto, and it …
Chose BQE CORE
It helps and have a great impact on It employees like me to track and submit my timesheet to my managers and higher officials and make a note that I have spend my working house valuable and resourceful and the managers can take a look at what have I done in my working hours
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 …
Chose BQE CORE
BQE CORE combined numerous products for us. It allows everything to be in one place which cuts down on the back and forth, as well as user error.
Chose BQE CORE
It was an admin desiring to switch. However CORE is easy to manage and calculate timesheet automatic with timer future. In addition I believe the admin stag like the billing aimless function and multiple additional future that monograph does not have. Without mentioning that …
Chose BQE CORE
BQE has more visual tools for determining billable hours and for tracking hours against a project. BQE has a better system for involving employee and simpler methods of tracking expenses.
Chose BQE CORE
Monograph did not allow exporting/importing of data nor did they offer integration with Quickbooks Desktop
Chose BQE CORE
Again, since I'm only an employee, I had no part in choosing BQE for my organization. But it is the best timesheet tracking system that I've used, and I've used 3 other ones in the past. BQE is the simplest to use, yet equally as powerful as the others. When editing my …
Chose BQE CORE
It’s the best program I have used to date! It was selected for me through my company.
Chose BQE CORE
They aren't used for the same thing so not able to compare.
Chose BQE CORE
Not used any other software than accounting. This is much easier for my staff to use because it's not a straight up accounting software.
Chose BQE CORE
I didn't take part in selecting BQE CORE; however, our CEO chose it because of its ability to help with invoicing and incorporating other software into the program such as Gantt charts. I like BQE CORE better than BillQuick because it is more user friendly and also displays the …
Chose BQE CORE
BQE CORE has a much more streamlined process for entering expense entries than Concur. You are able to select which project you would like to charge to and where expense entries are sent for approval, whether that be your manager or the project manager. BQE CORE also is very …
Chose BQE CORE
I have only really used this product.
Chose BQE CORE
BQE CORE is much more in-depth at time tracking than Harvest. Harvest is easier to use out of the gate but BQE CORE is worth the learning curve. I haven't had a chance to use BQE CORE on a mobile device so I can't speak to how it stacks up there against Harvest.
Chose BQE CORE
I don't recall the previous program we used as this was years ago, but we had to put in time manually each week and this was very time consuming. BQE CORE keeps your projects in the timesheet from week to week to you don't have to reinput the project number.
Coda
Chose Coda
Coda is a more complete package that is very robust and will meet the needs of almost any organization who wants to track project and meet desired timelines. By implementing project trackers the team can easily collaborate together and get the work done. Coda is much easier to …
Chose Coda
We previously used airtable, and I'm not sure why we switched, but it seems like Coda has more flexibility and is a little more user friendly for generic users and not power users.
Chose Coda
Coda is not as great as ClickUp or Notion in many ways, but it surely has a better user interface and pricing in my view and allows good collaboration. However, integrations work much better with other competitors as compared with Coda, and would prefer others if pricing was …
Chose Coda
Trello seems to be more focused on IT oriented projects where as Coda has wide scale applications across all departments. Coda was selected because of the perception it was more dynamic and I believe it has proven to be more dynamic. Coda is a very easy to use and understand …
Chose Coda
I was not using anything similar to Coda.
Chose Coda
I don't know why leadership choose Coda over Google, but I do see the value in the organization as well as diversity of what you can do with pages designs and integrations
Chose Coda
We used Airtable for a while and looked at Notion briefly. Airtable is good, yet a bit technical and doesn't come with rich text and formatting capabilities--so less suitable for publishing/sharing with the rest of the organization. We haven't used Notion for real; I did look …
Chose Coda
Coda is very aesthetically appealing and fun to create docs. The benefit of Coda is that it makes a lot automated, but what is sacrificed is the flexibility that other tools can offer.
Chose Coda
For general use cases, Google Docs or Airtable are often a better starting place. But if things get complex or you're constantly pairing the two together, consider graduating to Coda to save yourself long-term headaches.

Notion is great for personal use, but the powerful …
Chose Coda
The tables within Coda are similar to lists in SharePoint or Google Tables, but the document portion of Coda is what sets it apart. Having the ability to summarize that table data in a document is unique to Coda.
Chose Coda
Coda is the only tool with the ability to fully customize your views and the behavior within a given data table. They've put a LOT of thought into this and are miles above and beyond Smartsheet, Airtable, and Notion (I've evaluated all three extensively).
Chose Coda
We were looking for many different things to improve our internal processes before we came across Coda. A large part of my work involves marketing, project management, service management and data analytics.
For a company like ours, we find Coda the most cost-effective and …
Chose Coda
I first tried Notion and, although it can be easier to work with for some simple tasks, when it comes to tables and linked data, Coda is more versatile and comprehensive.
Chose Coda
For the use we needed in the company, Coda was a way easier and simpler solution. Jira and the Atlassian suite is more complete and structured, but it is was way too complicated.
Chose Coda
Coda's automation and flexibility makes it much easier and more interactive than other tools like Airtable. With Airtable, we couldn't get as much traction or flexibility, so we stopped using it after a few months. Jira, on the other hand, has proven to be more helpful for task …
Chose Coda
I primarily use Mavenlink for scheduling purposes but with Coda, I'm able to do that, plus have an open way to communicate with the rest of my team when we want to add certain artists to a specific job. Instead of using another software for communicating across all of our …
Chose Coda
They are similar but I like that Coda has more templates that are suited for marketing (GTM timelines, pulse updates, etc). One pain point for us is getting the engineering team on Coda but they seem to prefer Jira and Aha!
Chose Coda
While all of the products listed have great features and platforms, there was always one thing missing from them that I would need to get from another application. Coda was the first one we used that really combined some of the best parts of those products and allowed us to use …
Chose Coda
The price point is most attractive, they have a dedicated team of support agents/doc makers that provide valuable templates, and it really was the best option to fit our current needs as a startup team who will be scaling and the product can scale with us in the long run.
Features
BQE CORECoda
Project Management
Comparison of Project Management features of Product A and Product B
BQE CORE
8.1
Ratings
5% above category average
Coda
-
Ratings
Task Management9.40 Ratings00 Ratings
Resource Management9.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Gantt Charts9.20 Ratings00 Ratings
Scheduling9.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Workflow Automation8.10 Ratings00 Ratings
Team Collaboration6.90 Ratings00 Ratings
Support for Agile Methodology7.40 Ratings00 Ratings
Support for Waterfall Methodology4.60 Ratings00 Ratings
Document Management8.70 Ratings00 Ratings
Email integration6.30 Ratings00 Ratings
Mobile Access7.80 Ratings00 Ratings
Timesheet Tracking9.70 Ratings00 Ratings
Change request and Case Management8.40 Ratings00 Ratings
Budget and Expense Management9.10 Ratings00 Ratings
Professional Services Automation
Comparison of Professional Services Automation features of Product A and Product B
BQE CORE
8.6
Ratings
11% above category average
Coda
-
Ratings
Quotes/estimates8.40 Ratings00 Ratings
Invoicing8.90 Ratings00 Ratings
Project & financial reporting9.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Integration with accounting software8.40 Ratings00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
BQE CORECoda
Small Businesses
Stackby
Stackby
Score 8.9 out of 10
Stackby
Stackby
Score 8.9 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
InEight
InEight
Score 8.2 out of 10
Troop Messenger
Troop Messenger
Score 9.8 out of 10
Enterprises
InEight
InEight
Score 8.2 out of 10
HCL Connections
HCL Connections
Score 9.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
BQE CORECoda
Likelihood to Recommend
9.3
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
7.0
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
Usability
9.5
(0 ratings)
7.9
(0 ratings)
Availability
8.2
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
Performance
7.3
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
7.4
(0 ratings)
7.8
(0 ratings)
Online Training
6.4
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
2.3
(0 ratings)
8.2
(0 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
8.2
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
4.5
(0 ratings)
4.5
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
8.2
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
8.2
(0 ratings)
7.3
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
8.2
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
BQE CORECoda
Likelihood to Recommend
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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Coda is great to build a place for your users to go to and see information. It is easy to navigate through and the variety of content creation is great. However, it is not always easy to create what you want and there is a lot of playing around and learning. Coda also sometimes misses some functionality which is expected. For example, downloading a list of users that have access to the platform. Being able to send push notifications when a new page has been created etc. Overall it is a good tool to use just be prepared to invest time!
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Pros
  • 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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  • One source of truth: It's incredibly easy to keep everything organized and easy to find.
  • Being able to show different views of the same information throughout your doc makes it really easy to customize the information.
  • In general, I love the "coding" aspect of it, and being able to do advanced functions has helped us create some really interesting automation and streamline our process.
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Cons
  • 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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  • "Barrier of entry" is a little high for those who do not have any database experience.
  • More out-of-the-box integrations with other applications would be nice.
  • Performance for very heavy loaded/traffic documents could be improved.
  • Scalability for enterprise level customers and doc loads could be improved.
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Likelihood to Renew
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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Coda is definitely something that has been proven to drive positive impact in our organization. We have many divisions that can benefit from this that we have yet to explore. It would definitely be worth renewing.
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Usability
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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There is a little bit of a learning curve on where to point and click to add in different elements and make edits. But it is still very manageable once you get the hang of it. I do still have some issues with some of my connected pages updating each other when I don't want them to sync. So I'll end up editing one page, and it will make the same edits on another page.
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Reliability and Availability
I can only remember a couple of times in 4 years that Core has been unavailable.
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So far in the past year, we haven't had situations that Coda has gone down for us which is great.
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Performance
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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We haven't done any integrations - the initial part of our experience we found that for docs with complex formulas, the page tends to load slowly but in recent months, Coda has improved and optimized the loading times in general and we generally don't find any problems in terms of speed anymore.
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Support Rating
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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Mainly due to timezone differences. I think Coda's support in general is well implemented and executed. They know their stuff and are helpful. But since I'm not in the same timezone, solution rates are slower for me, and that's not something I prefer. I work in customer service, too, and more often than not, time is important. Shortening the solution time would be a much greater experience.
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Online Training
Make sure you have someone training you that fits your style of learning.
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No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
wont let me skip
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I'm relatively inexperienced but this experience is meaningful. It would have been nice to have some guidance from Coda so that we understood more on Coda's purpose and potential.
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Alternatives Considered
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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For general use cases, Google Docs or Airtable are often a better starting place. But if things get complex or you're constantly pairing the two together, consider graduating to Coda to save yourself long-term headaches. Notion is great for personal use, but the powerful automation and collaboration features in Coda make it a better fit for teams in my experience so far.
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Scalability
This software works on a small and large scale.
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I think scalability is definitely good here since it's based on number of doc makers. Implementation into each dept becomes simpler. That being said, due to the nature of our work, we find it easier that we have a "super user" and then a team of other doc makers. This would make the doc creation and management more efficient.
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Return on Investment
  • 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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  • Increased insight for all stakeholders involved--both in terms of overview and details
  • Better grip on issues and escalations--reduced friction, confusion, and higher clarity on status, next actions, and ownership.
  • Reduced time required by those who need to maintain all information. Record (a detail) once and use multiple times.
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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

Coda Screenshots

Screenshot of One unified surface means ideas aren’t limited to a file type. A project doesn’t have to be split across tabs of documents, spreadsheets, and apps.Screenshot of Packs are a version of integrations or plug-ins. They connect the  doc to the apps in use every day, so as to pull live data in or push updates out automatically.Screenshot of Drag-and-drop templates provide a quick-start shortcut to commonly used templates like Upvote/Downvote, To-Do List, and Team Sentiment Tracker.Screenshot of Slice, dice, and chop data using Views. A View is a mirror of data that can be tailored to unique needs, all while staying connected to the source.Screenshot of When accessing the doc from a mobile device, it should feel like an app. Doc pages become tabs, buttons become swipe actions and doc notifications become push notifications.Screenshot of The Doc Gallery contains docs self-published by the Coda community. These published docs have a webpage-like interface and have varying levels of interactivity like view, play or edit. Find and share tools, templates, tiny apps, interactive handbooks, and anything else that can be built in Coda.