BQE CORE vs. Harpoon

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
BQE CORE
Score 8.6 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
Harpoon
Score 9.0 out of 10
N/A
Harpoon is a web-hosted accounting and finance app that helps freelancers and consultants set and meet their financial goals. In addition, Harpoon provides useful tools to help users collect revenue and manage finances. Features include time tracking, invoicing, expense tracking, project scheduling and more.  The vendor’s value proposition is that their solution that helps users boost their freelancing career.
$19
per month
Pricing
BQE COREHarpoon
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Single User - Unlimited Everything
$19
per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
BQE COREHarpoon
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Features
BQE COREHarpoon
Project Management
Comparison of Project Management features of Product A and Product B
BQE CORE
7.8
72 Ratings
2% above category average
Harpoon
-
Ratings
Task Management8.554 Ratings00 Ratings
Resource Management8.853 Ratings00 Ratings
Gantt Charts8.126 Ratings00 Ratings
Scheduling8.234 Ratings00 Ratings
Workflow Automation7.237 Ratings00 Ratings
Team Collaboration6.844 Ratings00 Ratings
Support for Agile Methodology8.220 Ratings00 Ratings
Support for Waterfall Methodology7.217 Ratings00 Ratings
Document Management7.738 Ratings00 Ratings
Email integration6.532 Ratings00 Ratings
Mobile Access7.845 Ratings00 Ratings
Timesheet Tracking9.372 Ratings00 Ratings
Change request and Case Management7.831 Ratings00 Ratings
Budget and Expense Management7.557 Ratings00 Ratings
Professional Services Automation
Comparison of Professional Services Automation features of Product A and Product B
BQE CORE
8.2
53 Ratings
9% above category average
Harpoon
-
Ratings
Quotes/estimates7.528 Ratings00 Ratings
Invoicing8.846 Ratings00 Ratings
Project & financial reporting8.452 Ratings00 Ratings
Integration with accounting software7.934 Ratings00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
BQE COREHarpoon
Small Businesses
Stackby
Stackby
Score 9.3 out of 10
Traqq
Traqq
Score 9.1 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Planview AgilePlace
Planview AgilePlace
Score 9.5 out of 10
TimeClock Plus
TimeClock Plus
Score 9.4 out of 10
Enterprises
Planview AgilePlace
Planview AgilePlace
Score 9.5 out of 10
TimeCamp
TimeCamp
Score 8.3 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
BQE COREHarpoon
Likelihood to Recommend
8.7
(164 ratings)
9.0
(2 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
7.0
(8 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
8.2
(114 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Availability
8.2
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
7.3
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
7.3
(90 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Online Training
6.4
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
2.4
(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 COREHarpoon
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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Harpoon
I think Harpoon works best for freelancers, consultants, self employed people and smaller companies with less client to bill. For larger enterprises with hundreds or thousands of clients, there are larger, more intricate platforms in the market that are better suited for those needs.
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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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Harpoon
  • Makes Sending Invoices & Collecting Payment Easy, for Freelancers
  • Tracking Financial Goals (Monthly & Annual) & Projecting Future Results
  • Provides Insights On AR, Earned Income, Top Clients, and other helpful but highly relevant data points.
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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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Harpoon
  • Sometimes expense reporting bring up duplicate transactions, which may be more of a fault of the API that connects my account, which is Plaid
  • Would be nice if in the future, they can offer ACH as one of the payment options for invoices
  • There are some redundancies that pop up when setting time frames for client work and the projects attached to them. If they aren't aligned, it can cause inaccurate reporting. If it just sent it once and it took care of both functions, it would be easier
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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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Harpoon
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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Harpoon
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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Harpoon
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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Harpoon
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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Harpoon
The few times I've needed help or had questions about the platform, the founder got back to me. And fairly fast. The extra effort resonated well with me
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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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Harpoon
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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Harpoon
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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Harpoon
I've used Less Accounting and & Quickbooks Online. After Less Accounting was acquired, its development was mostly stopped. While the tool was a simple way to manage invoices and expenses, its directional philosophy changed with the new owners. Quickbooks Online was a solid tool, but the company support was unhelpful and hard to work with at times. Harpoon provides a great tool, with a company that cares about its users.
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Scalability
BQE Software Inc.
This software works on a small and large scale.
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Harpoon
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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Harpoon
  • Clear and precise visibility of my financial status.
  • Projections of how I'm doing today, this month, and this year.
  • Clarity on what needs to happen with client development to reach my goals.
  • It shrinks the amount of time I spend on getting clients to pay my invoices.
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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

Harpoon Screenshots

Screenshot of Harpoon's Dashboard showcases over a dozen crucial metrics to help you understand the health of your business. Enjoy the big picture view of your freelancing finances.Screenshot of Every business has expenses and Harpoon is the perfect place to track them. Assign expenses to your projects and easily add those expenses to invoices for reimbursement.Screenshot of You'll appreciate how simple it is to create invoices, and your clients will appreciate the one-click ease of making payments online. Harpoon's invoices are clean and beautiful, a perfect complement to the professional services and products you provide.Screenshot of All of a project's invoices, expenses, and recorded hours are grouped and organized in one convenient place ready for you to take action, or simply there for historical reference. Handy!Screenshot of Harpoon gives you powerful tools to track and organize your time. Simple one-click timers combined with flexible reporting puts you in total control of your business's tracked time.