BQE CORE vs. Kanban Tool

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
Kanban Tool
Score 8.6 out of 10
N/A
Kanban Tool is a visual project management application based on Kanban that helps companies visualize workflow, track project progress, analyze and improve business processes. Some key features include: time tracking and time reports, real-time collaboration and Kaban analytics.
$6
per month per user
Pricing
BQE COREKanban Tool
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Kanban Tool Team
$6
per month per user
Kanban Tool Enterprise
$11
per month per user
Kanban Tool On-Site Team
$720
per year per 10-user pack
Kanban Tool On-Site Enterprise
$1,320
per year per 10-user pack
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
BQE COREKanban Tool
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
BQE COREKanban Tool
Features
BQE COREKanban Tool
Project Management
Comparison of Project Management features of Product A and Product B
BQE CORE
7.8
74 Ratings
1% above category average
Kanban Tool
6.4
13 Ratings
19% below category average
Task Management8.856 Ratings8.613 Ratings
Resource Management8.755 Ratings6.48 Ratings
Gantt Charts8.728 Ratings1.03 Ratings
Scheduling8.736 Ratings6.611 Ratings
Workflow Automation7.639 Ratings7.611 Ratings
Team Collaboration6.446 Ratings6.613 Ratings
Support for Agile Methodology7.721 Ratings7.311 Ratings
Support for Waterfall Methodology5.518 Ratings3.96 Ratings
Document Management8.439 Ratings6.79 Ratings
Email integration6.133 Ratings7.39 Ratings
Mobile Access7.445 Ratings8.610 Ratings
Timesheet Tracking9.474 Ratings8.06 Ratings
Change request and Case Management8.032 Ratings8.28 Ratings
Budget and Expense Management8.358 Ratings3.04 Ratings
Professional Services Automation
Comparison of Professional Services Automation features of Product A and Product B
BQE CORE
8.3
56 Ratings
7% above category average
Kanban Tool
5.7
6 Ratings
30% below category average
Quotes/estimates8.029 Ratings5.55 Ratings
Invoicing8.849 Ratings5.55 Ratings
Project & financial reporting8.554 Ratings3.04 Ratings
Integration with accounting software8.035 Ratings9.01 Ratings
Best Alternatives
BQE COREKanban Tool
Small Businesses
Stackby
Stackby
Score 9.0 out of 10
Stackby
Stackby
Score 9.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
InEight
InEight
Score 8.5 out of 10
InEight
InEight
Score 8.5 out of 10
Enterprises
InEight
InEight
Score 8.5 out of 10
InEight
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Score 8.5 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
BQE COREKanban Tool
Likelihood to Recommend
9.0
(167 ratings)
8.6
(13 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
7.0
(8 ratings)
9.1
(2 ratings)
Usability
9.0
(117 ratings)
9.1
(6 ratings)
Availability
8.2
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
7.3
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
7.4
(90 ratings)
8.3
(4 ratings)
Online Training
6.4
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
2.3
(6 ratings)
8.2
(1 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 COREKanban Tool
Likelihood to Recommend
BQE Software Inc.
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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Shore Labs
Kanban is well suited for a fast-paced working environment for larger teams who want continuous communication with users. Kanban is good for rapid development and daily meetings for updates and statuses. Kanban is less suited for smaller teams or groups who don't require collaboration and constant communication with involved users. Kanban is time-consuming and it takes additional effort outside of your regular work to maintain and manage the tool.
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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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Shore Labs
  • It provides a good basic overview of where tasks are on a timeline (particularly helpful for a pull-based approach).
  • It provides a good collaborative space to have multiple folks commenting on multiple tasks.
  • It does a good job of managing very basic visual elements of an agile development cycle.
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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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Shore Labs
  • Kanban does not show the task or story clearly. You have to open the project separately to view the details of the project.
  • Kanban gives a higher level project management view but it lacks customization and personal settings features.
  • I would like to see Kanban provide mobile access to their tool, data, and board. This would be very useful for all companies and provide an increase in efficiency and productivity.
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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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Shore Labs
We are more likely than not to renew our use of Kanban. Even with its limits, it still is a good product that fulfills our needs.
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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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Shore Labs
The integration with Teams is well suited. This works wonderful for my
company. Our team can easily prioritize tasks based on their importance.
It help our team identify and reduce inefficiencies in workflow. With
great visibility in data our team can make informed decisions. Ensuring
clear accountability and responsibility of team members
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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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Shore Labs
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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Shore Labs
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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Shore Labs
This is the best tool I had a chance to work with- since I started to use it I saved a lot of time and I made my work go smoothly.
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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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Shore Labs
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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Shore Labs
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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Shore Labs
We've only tried JIRA Agile and KanbanFlow before. Kanban Tool was the one that our team actually liked and enjoyed working with. Also - it's been much easier to get started with and to understand than some of the other two (JIRA in particular). Although JIRA has many more features that we would have possibly used, the user feedback on it was so poor we were afraid that the negativity would create time wasted and less "job satisfaction" amongst the team.
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Scalability
BQE Software Inc.
This software works on a small and large scale.
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Shore Labs
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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Shore Labs
  • Better communication and organization of ongoing projects.
  • We are a very small team, with many areas to work on. Having everything in one system gives us a lot of visibility.
  • Greatly reduced costs from using other tools that were much more expensive.
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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

Kanban Tool Screenshots

Screenshot of Visual project management tool - Kanban board from Kanban Tool.Screenshot of The collection of Power-Ups form Kanban ToolScreenshot of Kanban Tool board example, with My Work widget, Recurring and Postponed Tasks visible in the side panel. User's own background selected.Screenshot of Kanban Tool  board example. Default light theme applied.Screenshot of Kanban Tool - an open card view, with comments in the side panel. The choice of what fields show on cards is with the user.Screenshot of Kanban Tool's free Power-Ups  for user's own activation.