BQE CORE vs. Zoho Invoice

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.

Zoho Invoice streamlines invoicing, payments, and customer interactions, improving financial health and saving time, money, and energy. It ensures billing accuracy, reduces errors, and streamlines client billing by tracking goals and streamlining invoice generation. Zoho Invoice focuses on automation and invocation management to efficiently complete multiple tasks. Zoho Invoice has all the features needed for an invoicing system, but it could be better at integrating with other CRM platforms and simplifying taxation.

• 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

• Multiple payment platforms integrated for ease of client payment.
• You can create different hourly rates for various tasks or individuals within an organization.
• You can attach files to your invoices.
• Clients get their very own log-in.
• Ability to create credit notes.

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

• Time tracking, though easy enough, could be simplified. Having the ability to change default settings when entering time could save a few keystrokes.
• The ability to automatically take unbilled hours and pull into a new invoice seems to be there, but it is a bit cumbersome. It also defaults to too much detail. Having the ability to customize would be great.
• The ability to auto-BCC yourself on all invoices sent out would be a nice feature.

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

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

Zoho invoice has changed my expectations of what services like this can be. Providing something as simple as invoicing for small businesses who are struggling to find places to cut costs at such a reasonable rate is life-changing for some businesses. I know it was for mine. We saved so much that we did not have to cut in other areas. That has helped to keep us in business and grow it as well.

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

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

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

Google Drive stored my invoices in one accessible location but required more time and maintenance. I didn't want to invest the time into building out sheet functions to carry over figures across sheets, so I researched invoicing options. I am already a fan of Zoho services, so it was an easy decision to try out their Invoicing site. Same login, the same level of support, free trial. No risk! I was pleased to find the solution on my first try.

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

• Zoho Invoice has created a positive impact by allowing us to successfully organize and track online payments and invoices.
• Zoho Invoice has saved us both time and money by making our invoicing business processes automatic and effortless.
• Zoho Invoice has created a positive return on our investment many times over. It's increased business functions to help generate more profits in shorter periods of time.

Incentivized