BQE CORE vs. Contractor Foreman

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.

If we are working with an architect on a highly complex, custom-built home that requires 50 versions of a floor plan. The Limitation: While Contractor Foreman handles documents well, it isn't a dedicated "Blueprinting" or CAD-markup tool like Procore or specialized architectural software. If the job is more "design" than "construction," the tool's document versioning can feel a bit basic. The Scenario: A crew leader identifies $1,200 in structural repairs needed before the new siding can go up. The Contractor Foreman Solution: Instead of "calling the office" and waiting, the lead creates a Change Order on their tablet, attaches a photo of the rot, and has the homeowner sign it on the spot. The project doesn't stop, and the billing is updated automatically.

• 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.

Incentivized

• The service is top notch. You would be hard pressed to find other options with this kind of service.
• The ability to have your project flow through the modules makes it a breeze to use.
• Being able to track time as well is a key feature.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• In the CDB, I'd like to be able to create a line item with a specified percentage, and when I pull that line item into an estimate or proposal, I'd like the system to automatically calculate it based on that contract value. (Example, Contingency line is always going to be 15% of the contract value).
• I'd like to be able to rearrange "blocks" on a page when I'm getting ready to send or print it. Lots of dead space on pages. Estimates 4 pages in total when it could be 2.
• I'd like to be able to create budget summaries. Where the line items are grouped into their respective master format categories, and the category has the sum of all the line items in that category.

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.

Incentivized

We have compiled so much information on CF it would be counterproductive to move to another software. We have also sold a lot of clients on the client portal feature. It is crucial for our communication between customers. The only reason we wouldn't renew the service is if somewhere offered the exact same service but at a lower cost

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

Overall, Contractor Foreman is a great product, and I’m sure we’ve only scratched the surface of everything it has to offer. It can be a little quirky at times, occasionally displaying a 'Bad Gateway' message, but we haven’t experienced any timeout issues in the past few months. As we continue to use it, I’m confident we’ll uncover even more ways to streamline our workflow

Incentivized

I can only remember a couple of times in 4 years that Core has been unavailable.

Availability was good, FUNCTIONAL availability was more spotty

Incentivized

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.

Many times we had issues that turned out to be errors and bugs. At first, we would be told forcefully that there were no bugs, then we would document them, and we would get an acknowledgement but no apology for essentially either gaslighting us or being ignorant of their system

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

We have only had one issue the entire time we have had Contractor Foreman and that was that we had the hardest time getting the platform to allow us to log in, but we called our support and within 5 mins we able to log back in

Incentivized

Make sure you have someone training you that fits your style of learning.

It does take some time to understand the options and to find the best invoice template.

Incentivized

The team that does your implementation is amazing. They're skillful, kind, they will take as much time as you need, and they have a sense of urgency

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

Contractor Foreman’s pricing is much more cost-effective for small to mid-sized construction businesses, making it a better fit for my company’s budget. It offers an intuitive interface with pre-built construction templates, minimizing setup time and making it easier at least for my team to adopt and start using. The platform’s focus on project tracking, financial management, and nice integrations that makes it highly efficient for tracking project progress, staying on budget, and managing subcontractors/bills. These factors combined made it the ideal choice for meeting my company's specific needs efficiently and cost-effectively.

Incentivized

This software works on a small and large scale.

We had just 2 users

Incentivized

• 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

• Positive return for invoice/change order tracking
• Great price
• Prior to using Contractor Foreman we had to wait until the end to capture all change orders in one summary. Now, with the client portal, we can capture in real time and the client has visibility.
• We have been trying to reduce administration time in tracking field expenses and with Contractor Foreman our field crew can uplaod reciepts and track expenses right from their mobile phones.
• Punchlist - the punch list and To Do features are so robust we have drastically improved getting punchlists and small tasks completed in single trips without the wasted time and travel of multiple trips due to missed/forgotten items.

Incentivized