BQE CORE vs. Sapling by Kallidus

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.

It's a good space to have a high level overview of the organization (especially Org view). Places for improvement include extra levels of complexity when you need to click on the person and you are navigated to the pop-up that is hard to use and only one pop up can be used at a time. I wish there wasn't so much of clicking in and clicking out.

Incentivized

• 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

• Very customizable. Very easy to create new workflows and tasks to meet the unique needs of your organization.
• The system is easy to navigate, so minimal training is needed for users.

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

• Deeper data management/review - dashboard experience could be better and deeper
• Ability to drill into reports within the tool- right now it takes you out to a sheet to view
• Org planning/org chart sharing

Incentivized

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

It is hard to rip out and replace systems and Sapling is doing what we need

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

To use this system you need to buy several add-ons. If add-ons do not fit your business model you will have to access platforms from different companies. The system is not easy to use for onboarding. Candidates cannot change and update settings. To use the system a person must click in the correct spots. If not it leads you someplace else. Then you have to start clicking all over again.

Incentivized

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

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.

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

Sapling HR helps my HR team keep track of our personal information like contact information or t-shirt sizes (who doesn't like free shirts), as well as helping new hires onboard. I think it's super simple to use and keeps everything pretty nicely organized.

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

If you have someone internally that can run it that definitely helps!

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

Sapling [HR] was our first and only HR automation platform. We ran a trial campaign with them and did not compare them to other vendors.

Incentivized

This software works on a small and large scale.

• 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

• We were able to get the system implemented very quickly, which was of great importance to us as we were undergoing rapid growth.
• The system has helped us keep and stay organized and allowed team members to work collaboratively to get tasks done. Many of these tasks were previously managed with various spreadsheets and other trackers that were quickly becoming unmanageable.
• Sapling has greatly decreased the time we needed to onboard and employee and has prevented many errors.

Incentivized