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BQE CORE

BQE CORE

Overview

What is BQE CORE?

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…

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Recent Reviews

Hit and miss

6 out of 10
August 28, 2023
We use BQE Core mainly to track basic project information - clients, project descriptions, due date - and for invoicing. We also use some …
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Awards

Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards

Popular Features

View all 18 features
  • Timesheet Tracking (23)
    8.9
    89%
  • Resource Management (16)
    6.1
    61%
  • Budget and Expense Management (20)
    6.1
    61%
  • Project & financial reporting (16)
    6.1
    61%

Reviewer Pros & Cons

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Video Reviews

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Pricing

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What is BQE CORE?

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…

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee
For the latest information on pricing, visithttp://www.bqe.com/products/core/pricing

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting / Integration Services

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Product Demos

BQE CORE: Shaping the Future of Business

YouTube

BQE CORE - Interactive Demo

Navattic
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Features

Project Management

Project management software provides capabilities to streamline management of complex projects through task management, team collaboration and workflow automation

6.2
Avg 7.6

Professional Services Automation

Features that support professional services organizations

6.9
Avg 7.5
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Product Details

What is BQE CORE?

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.

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

BQE CORE Videos

Customer Testimonial: iT Architecture
BQE Core for Architects

BQE CORE Technical Details

Deployment TypesSoftware as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based
Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationApple iOS, Android, Mobile Web
Supported CountriesUnited States, Australia and EU
Supported LanguagesEnglish

Frequently Asked Questions

Replicon Polaris PSA, QuickBooks Time, and Harvest are common alternatives for BQE CORE.

Reviewers rate Timesheet Tracking highest, with a score of 8.9.

The most common users of BQE CORE are from Small Businesses (1-50 employees).

BQE CORE Customer Size Distribution

Consumers0%
Small Businesses (1-50 employees)60%
Mid-Size Companies (51-500 employees)20%
Enterprises (more than 500 employees)20%
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(133)

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-25 of 115)
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Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
This business management software is overall pretty great, particularly how it integrates timekeeping with project management, invoicing, and accounting all in one place. The user interface is clunky and takes some getting used to. This is a great tool to keep track of billable and non-billable hours that employees are working so that businesses can charge their clients accurately for work performed. Also allows for a good review of the type of work you have been doing for your clients and can easily call out any adhoc work not specified within the contract.
  • User friendly
  • Access to historical data
  • Billing insight
  • Billable tracker seems to glitch
  • Automatic timer would be useful
  • More reporting options
My company uses BQE CORE for keeping track of timesheets and billing. There is a learning curve and it took some getting used to at the beginning, but after a few weeks, everything went smoothly. I haven't experienced any major issues with the software. The support team is very responsive. We are in the Accounting/Finance industry. This is a very appropriate software for companies who pay hourly employees or companies who have contracts with clients to perform work. It allows one to easily view billable hours worked on various projects.
October 02, 2023

Review of My Experience

Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We use it to keep track of projects and how long we spend time on each one. Ability to see who does what.
  • Easy to use interface.
  • Ability to get assistance
  • Ability to customize interface.
  • In App tutorials
  • More templates
  • Ability to add more options to drop-downs
Businesses that need to keep track for workflow. Helps managers see what and where time is spent.
Desirée Weitzenhoffer | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Interior Design firm. Great for tracking time and overview of project budget spent, invoiced, etc. Good customer service and training. Reports are a bit complicated to figure out how to get the data you are looking for. Could be more user-friendly but not too bad once you learn it. Allocations forecasting feature still need work to be useful. Would love to see a procurement and specification functionality added to the program so we can streamline our invoicing process. We currently need to use another program for this portion of our business.
  • Time tracking
  • Project budget tracking
  • Services invoicing
  • Allocation forecasting and tracking don't update with hours spent
  • Reports could be more user friendly
  • Would love to have procurement functionality
Allocations allow me to assign hours to employees but the forecasting aspect does not update with only remaining hours as employees have spent them. In other words - I can see the estimated average hours they should spend per week when I enter it but can't see an updated average hours per week as my employees spend the hours. If they spend 50% of the hours in week one of 4, weeks 2-4 should update to show 16% average per week instead of 25% average for the remaining weeks.
August 29, 2023

Just My Thoughts

Score 2 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use it daily, mainly for time tracking. It works very well for tracking time, allowing us to apply it to certain phases of projects. I am enjoying learning all that Core can offer. I do wish it wasn't so complex, it is very detailed, which is good, but making it more user friendly would be nice.
  • Time Tracking
  • Billing Made Simple
  • Reports
  • Using the back button, takes you all the way back instead of just one step back.
  • More user friendly like Quickbooks
  • Adding the payroll feature without having to pay extra
It is fantastic for time tracking and the reports are great and detailed. I appreciate the way the reporting functions are and how detailed it can be.
August 28, 2023

Hit and miss

Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We use BQE Core mainly to track basic project information - clients, project descriptions, due date - and for invoicing. We also use some of the report features to track employee utilization, project budgets and profitability.
  • Allows for projects to be organized in a hierarchy - projects with multiple phases
  • Simple navigation
  • Reports
  • Overseeing project progress
  • Resource allocation - seeing staff workloads
  • Some reports are lacking
BQE CORE has some missing elements that we have had to supplement with other apps and integrations. We currently use another program for project management and another for more detailed accounting. BQE CORE is the go-between holding our basic client and project information. We have some recurring problems with BQE CORE being slow at times, and support is hit or miss. Sometimes, we get great service an problems are solved quickly. Other times the issue is not properly identified, and a band-aid solution is provided.
Stefan Milojevic | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I mainly use BQE Core for logging the tasks that I set out to complete for the day. In order to receive pay, the accounting department reviews my time entries and deems them an appropriate use of time. So, BQE core serves to to easily verify one's productivity levels in a quantifiable and straight-forward way.
  • logging time entries
  • providing information relating to how many hours of holiday/vacation were utilized in a year
  • providing a breakdown of how one is paid
  • The website doesn't seem to be very optimized at times
  • there doesn't appear to be any implementation of keyboard shortcuts
  • sort-of outdated design
BQE core is good for tracking entries of specific tasks that one does on a daily basis. The availability of multiple parameters allows for a more specific capture of what exactly the time entry refers to, including inputs for how long something took to complete, what day it was completed on, and what kind of service was rendered.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use BQE Core as our Project Management, Time / Expense Tracker, Billing / Invoicing, and for Accounting. Every new project we receive to work on, goes into Core. We have been expanding our uses into dashboard usage to share with our team, Monthly automatically reporting, and KPI tracking. We are able to understand our financial metrics as well as our means of cash with reconciling from our bank as well. The only thing we aren't using or probably don't have a huge interest in yet is the CRM / Sales tools. We have been told multiple times by CORE employees, for a small company, we are pretty robust in our use of CORE and the project management tools. Something incredibly important to a small design studio is making sure we are managing the resources given to us effectively on the said project. Keeping budgets, allocations of hours, and our expenses in line for our projects is so key. Being able to filter through projects and understand how we are doing from a macro scale to a micro scale of a certain phase has been a big focus as of late.
  • Project Management
  • Time and Expense
  • Dashboard Layouts
  • Reporting options
  • Invoicing
  • Payables
  • UI Interface
  • Custom KPIs + Dashboards
  • Project Templates
  • Redundant Information locations
  • Streamline Project Process
BQE CORE is well suited for someone that wants to overpay to keep track of time, invoicing, and standard financial metrics. BQE CORE has the opportunity to be a really robust operating system for an architectural practice that wants to understand how projects are going, how they can improve as a studio, and move forward in providing great impact to their clients, all the while, spending less time in a boring software that no architect wants to use. BQE CORE can feel like a necessary thing for a studio to be managing growth well. But it also can be a lot of fun, intuitive, and exciting for an architect that just wants to be an architect. It can be a learning tool. However, it's too clunky, it isn't flexible, only reactive, and backwards looking for KPIs. To integrate with interesting equations of how a firm can look at project success, turn it into a dashboard for the entire studio, that would be fun. The banking cloud feed is one of the worst I have experienced. The lack of reporting customization is awful. And the amount of redundant information that has to be put into a project that you actually want to have phases in, track your allocations, and manage it, is entirely too cumbersome. BQE Core has an AWESOME foundation. But to build the proverbial house, we gotta care about the craft.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
My company uses BQE CORE to track billable hours to clients as well as non-billable hours (PTO, company events, etc.) that are spent during each work week. We previously did not have a program/system that showed us a breakdown of how our hours were being utilized but the pie charts in this software definitely solve that issue for us and help to visualize how my time is being spent.
  • Inputting PTO requests
  • Creating charts and graphs that breakdown your project/work hours
  • Mobile app user interface
  • User interface could be easier to navigate
  • Speed of program (lags when inputting time)
  • Time sometimes disappears and I have to put the time in again
I love that you are able to submit PTO requests directly to your manager or director for approval. It's also helpful that it keeps track of all the PTO time you have used and unused throughout the year. This definitely eliminates the hassle of having to go to accounting to know the balance of your PTO hours.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use it to track time, expenses, and project management. It has made it much easier for us to keep track of time and to submit our expenses to our employer or current PO.
  • User-friendly
  • Good customer support
  • Quickly improving small bugs or other issues
  • Sometimes can be slow
  • Attachments do not always go through
  • Sorting could be better
It is very good for us because we are always switching between what we are working on and it makes it so much easier to keep track of hours worked
June 05, 2023

BQE CORE Review

Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I am using BQE CORE every week to keep track of time that I have worked on for each project. I think that it is very well organized and I find that it is really easy to use to fill in your weekly time sheet. It simplifies hourly reports for project managers,
  • Time tracking
  • Time entry
  • Organized reports
  • Not intuitive
  • Can not always remove unused rows
  • Lag in loading
I have only used it for time entry and time tracking across multiple projects at a time. I find it well organized for time tracking an reporting. I have not used any other features.
Jeremy Fields | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
BQE CORE has been a great addition for us. I am now able to keep better track of Accounting of the business and per project than with my previous software. Also, CORE has allowed employees to directly input their time sheet into the program rather than double entry as before. The software was brought online way ahead of schedule and that has allowed us to better track project performance. I also love all the training that is available on specific areas of the program.
  • Timekeeping
  • Project Performance
  • Budgeting
  • I wish the dashboard was more functional in that when you click on bar chart, it would produce the report showing how it arrived at that number
  • Task Management
I am a professional engineer by trade. Once I found out that CORE was designed by Arch/Engineer, then I knew it was probably right for me. It definitely makes an engineer able to think like an accountant.
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I use CORE as project tracking tool, specifically to help with resource allocation across all of my company's projects. CORE can break down resource allocation across projects, people, or engineering disciplines, and this allows our discipline leads to track and forecast the utilization of their team members across a selected time frame. This insight is critical in ensuring our teams are not overworked and feeds into business decisions regarding hiring for additional positions.
  • Time Entry and Tracking
  • Project Tracking
  • Reporting
  • Filtering is not intuitive
  • Reports are not customizable
  • System has some bugs which make filtering via groups useless on some screens
CORE is well suited for time entry and reporting across employee groups and projects. CORE can generate many useful reports, however the customization and filtering of these reports isn't exactly intuitive. It can be difficult to get the reports to show the data you want, and there is no way to remove data fields from a report or create a custom report.
May 11, 2023

It's good.

Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
BQE CORE is an excellent tool that helps to simplify project management for me. Its user-friendly interface makes it easy to navigate, and the software's robust features allow businesses to streamline workflows and improve efficiency. Instead of being overwhelmed, I can easily manage their projects, track time and expenses, generate invoices, and gain valuable financial insights.
  • Organization
  • Time Tracking
  • Expense Tracking
  • Expense tracking could use a "approved" and "pending" total on current expenses
  • A way to hide blank columns in time tracking
Using core to track billable hours against individual and unique clients help keep budgeting and tracking consistent. Specifically, the invoicing feature streamlines the billing process, allowing me to easily generate accurate invoices to be sent to clients in a timely manner. This can help improve cash flow and enhance client relationships by providing clear and transparent billing information.
May 10, 2023

Core 4

Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Time & Expense Tracking, Billing, Payment Processing, Data Reporting
  • Customer Service
  • Time Tracking
  • Invoicing
  • Complexity of data retrieval
  • Inconsistent search & retrieval of data
  • Not intuitive
Customer Service is excellent. Invoicing is great. Report function is cumbersome & more complex than it needs to be. Depending on how you search data can be inconsistent. For example, when data is pulled it can be organized by job number, other times by name. But then you can't pull data by just the job numbers (so why have them?). In my opinion, dashboard has inconsistencies with the billing amount vs income vs hours. Fee schedules can't be changed easily.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use BQE for project management as well as time tracking, timekeeping and time entries. Mainly, though, we use it for project management in the accounting department. It's a great program for being able to separate projects into individual tasks and bill accordingly. The interface is easy to use and quite intuitive.
  • The dashboard is clearly laid out and easy to use
  • the interface is customizable based on preference
  • keeping track of projects/tasks easily
  • Searching for a project can be difficult, and times out quickly
  • I'd appreciate more options in terms of how to search
  • There was an update to the platform which made it easier to use and addressed any other concerns
This program is fantastic for keeping track of time spent on projects, time worked overall, and for project management. It's a good tool to use when performing accounting tasks, although I wouldn't recommend it next to anything liker QuickBooks. But as a basic time tracker it's tops. Enjoy using it!
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use BQE CORE for all time and expense tracking, client billing, and general accounting. Migration from another BQE product was a challenge. I feel they could have made this easier on the client by being more organized and arranging an reasonable and transparent timeline to know what to expect during and post-migration. Our training wasn't scheduled until the migration of the data was complete. At which time they had none of their regular trainers available for weeks, and a Senior Staff Member had to step in to get us rolling with the new product. There were several issues discovered during the first 6 months that we are still waiting for a resolution. Their customer service is friendly and available, but the follow through and time to resolution is in need of improvement.
  • Reporting
  • Dashboard
  • Time & Expense Entry
  • Missing functionality in Vendor Bills and Bill Payments
  • Missing functionality in Time Entry
  • Customer Service and Communication
For the general user who does only time and expense entry the system is a great option.
For accounting functions such as A/P - Vendor Bills, Bill Payments and Check printing the product is cumbersome and this could be made more streamlined.
Project Management - specifically Project Details is clunky
May 05, 2023

It works.

Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
BQE CORE is used to manage the "back end" of the business. We use it for scheduling, invoicing, and basically taking care of the business of running a business. It gets the job done.
  • Client billing
  • Invoice payment
  • Scheduling employee time
  • The need to finalize each line by confirming you are done is a bit inconvenient
  • It is not super intuitive they way the filters are structured.
CORE works really well for accounting for consultant hours attributed to a specific client or project.
Melissa Herman | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I was looking for a project management, time management and accounting program for the firm. In our field there aren't a lot of programs that do all of those for a small firm, we were able to choose what modules were needed for our office. They were previously using manual invoices and time tracking, and no general project management. We are now able to not only track time, but use the data to help forecast our business and prepare better proposals. Invoicing is streamlined and easy.
  • Invoicing
  • Time Tracking
  • Project Structure
  • updates can lag loading
Great for a small firm.
Melidee Wregé Hall | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Our highest use and priority are for invoicing. The program allows us to move time round and adjust rates as needed. It's great for record keeping and tracking expenses, payments and invoice history. It has room for improvement, especially the search features, but BQE Core is frequently making improvements. It could be faster. Customer support is always available and helps me with any questions I have and with ways to use the program better. I would recommend this product for any business billing on a timely basis.
  • Time and expenses - tracking and inputting
  • Invoicing and billing - excellent for time based accounting
  • Record keeping - able to look at client history (we have clients that have projects ongoing for years)
  • Speed - needs to be quicker
  • Frustration with having to "re" search after entering an invoice. It would be great if it would complete the invoice on the same screen rather than having to go back to invoices, search for the invoice you just entered and having to "Preview" to send.
  • Complicated
Works well for our needs. BQE Core is always making improvements. Customer support is always helpful and knowledgeable, but wish it was easier to figure things out on my own.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use BQE Core for time and expense tracking, as well as project management services. As many of our projects are billed on an hourly basis, it is imperative that we are able to track our time accurately and quickly. BQE makes this a very easy and simplified process. Being able to assign to-do's is also a good way of ensuring everyone stays on track with a project and that nothing falls through the cracks. BQE Core has been a very valuable tool for our team.
  • Time tracking
  • Expense tracking
  • Assigning project tasks
  • Can run slowly at times
  • Reminders for assigned tasks
  • More intuitive expense tracking
BQE is well suited for time tracking which is a key feature for our business. As it stands right now, I think it's not as effective strictly as a project management tool. I feel that there is room to build out this component of the system. Right now it relies mostly on user updates/check-ins/edits.
April 04, 2023

Core BQE Accountant

Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I use core daily to track time, input projects, time and expenses and vendor bills and to invoice projects. Allows for great workflow and organization, Easy to learn and the live support is priceless. You can find video training on all aspects and articles as well as live support at the click of a button in the main screen. Truly has all features needed to run and monitor your Architecture business.
  • live support
  • accounting
  • project tracking
  • vendor bills
  • employee time
  • moving phases in a project
  • times when it runs slow
All I can speak to is that as an accountant as well as data entry it has ease of workflow and all feature needed.
April 04, 2023

happy customer

Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
At first, like any new software, it was difficult to follow, but then when we figured out how to load all of our information it was much easier. Most of the HR and billing reports are easy but not all the time what we are looking for.
  • Easy for staff to enter their time
  • easy for staff to access dashboard & see info
  • easy for staff to do expense reports and see billable hours
  • Easy for accounting to run weekly reports and there are many of them
  • Accounting sometimes looks for ways to run reports that aren't available
  • takes long time to get set up
  • reports aren't always easy to access
As previously mentioned, easy to use for staff to enter times and expenses, reports not always what we need
April 04, 2023

Tax & Legal Invoicing

Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use BQE Core for employee time tracking via daily time sheets, as well as invoicing clients based on the entered time and expense entries. We also utilize the online payment functions for invoicing.
  • Quick customer service response time
  • Customized invoices: the process was extremely detailed and BQE worked with us to make sure every item we asked for was included.
  • Easy to navigate website, user-friendly design
  • Online payment integrations
  • Server response time can be inconsistent
  • Unexplained errors/glitches from time to time
BQE is well suited for our legal and accounting practice, and although we do not utilize the project management features, the system seems robust and organized enough for a business with more in-depth project management requirements.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use BQE core for time tracking and project management (cost tracking, projects time entries, costing, forecasting, etc)
  • Easy to use
  • Dashboard features
  • Time entry
  • Vacation
  • Reports
  • training materials
it's well suited for project management and contract tracking, time entry, and monitoring. the system is best suited when paired with an HRIS for vacation tracking and personnel management
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use BQE to organize, review, and send invoices to clients, see our productivity with projects with cost rates versus bill rates, and we especially use the reports to get information for clients, townships, and engineers to keep track of their projects. This product addresses our itemized invoice issue that we previously had - we got the software in order to get a more detailed report/invoice than what anything else could offer.
  • Create customized reports
  • Allow for easy invoicing
  • Checking project progress
  • Must fix glitches with the integration tool
  • Stop faulty classifications
BQE is great for people who have time to ensure they creation of their reports and invoicing. The software can be wonderful, but it is timely to learn, to use, to explore, to memorize. This software wouldn't be suited for people without an administration department to figure out glitches.
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