BQE CORE Reviews

Summary: Horrible product. Too many issues, too slow, not user friendly and you need to pay for everything...

Positive: Robust Software with lots of capabilities. One stop shop for billing payments and project management.

Negative: Slow sluggish performance, downtime, slow support fixes, not user friendly, time consuming to use.

Summary: Overall we are satisfied and the software continues to improve particularly in the accounting side of Core.

Positive: Integrated systems, CRM - Project Management - Billing to Financials. No need to transfer information from various systems to produce financial statements. Good, what I like is that the product continues to improve, especially on the accounting end. Adding the contract balance to time entry screen would be most beneficial to us. Importing data to CRM is another feature that would make things more efficient.

Negative: It would be nice to see amount spent in time card to have a greater visibility in amount spent versus contract amount.

Summary: Overall, we are pleased with Core. It has helped us streamline time and expense tracking and project management.

Positive: The most important thing about Core is it is easy to use and our staff was quick able to adapt to the new software. It is easy to attach documents to expense entries. Also, reviewing time card reports summarized or detailed is pretty straightforward.

Negative: No software is perfect and there are some areas of Core that could use improvement. For example batch printing of expense receipts and some of the filtering options on reports.

Summary: The overall experience is great with Core. The fresh look and feel of Core is definitely well received by our staff.

Positive: Prior to switching to Core we were BillQuick users for 17 years. Core is awesome and very user friendly. Our staff can easily access it from the mobile phone. Also, Reporting in Core is helping us stay informed about project purchase orders.

Negative: The global search in the top left needs improvement/enhancement.

Summary: Overall, we are really excited and Core is helping with easy time tracking and robust billing. We are enjoying the excellent customer service whenever we need it.

Positive: We are excited with BQE Core as it allows our staff to enter time card from anywhere which in-turn results in more structured billing and our it helps management with real-time job costing indicators. Ease of use and options to update the data without going through any hurdles is another great thing about Core.

Negative: In addition to adjust fonts and sizes on invoices it would be nice to add fields and move fields on invoices and reports.

Summary: In the short period of time that we have been on Core, our experience has been mostly positive. We have submitted a few ideas to Core team that will make the experience even better.

Positive: We are a little over four months in Core and the ease of use of Core has helped us understand the software quickly. We are really benefitting from invoicing and CRM features in Core. The customer service team is great and has helped us get acquainted with the product tremendously.

Negative: It is too early to say as we are still trying to learn the software.

Summary: The workflow of approving time and expenses, vendor accounts payable, and invoicing is the smoother process for us now. With accounting now in Core, we have access to real-time data of our entire business, including project financials.

Positive: We were among the first few BQ customers who upgraded to Core, and we like the flexibility of data entry from anywhere using the browser and mobile phone. With Core, we also started using the built-in accounting, and it has helped us tremendously see the connection between project management, billing, and accounts payable. In addition to resources available in the Core help center, we do take full advantage of a quick and always available support team.

Negative: After our switch to Core accounting, we had some issues with bank reconciliation, and as always, BQE's helpful support team listened and solved the problem.

Summary: Core has helped us solve the invoicing time, which used to be two days and now down to 1 day. With smooth accounts receivable, it has helped us built greater transparency with our clients.

Positive: After upgrading from BillQuick to Core our billing department has been extremely happy with the move. We like the easy workflows in Core and this has helped us reduce the billing time greatly. Reporting in Core is easy too and with report scheduler we can now deliver reports through automation to our managers and clients.

Negative: So far so good. Anything we experience that is not desirable is submitted to support staff. Monthly updates from Core have been very helpful.

Summary: Overall our experience with Core has been very positive. We love BQE's wonderful support team and learn a lot from on going webinars.

Positive: We upgraded from ArchiOffice to Core after using AO for more than 10 years. In AO we had to run Accounting and Billing separately which led to an extra step of integrating it with external accounting software. With Core we are enjoying all in one solution and this has enabled us to have a greater visibility in our firms financials. At the same time it has empowered our management team with real-time information. Reporting and dashboards in Core are definitely superior.

Negative: I would not say it is a 'con'. Yes it was hard at first, but definitely worth the effort to learn. It is about getting used to new habits after using AO for more than decade.

Summary: In less than 1 year using Core we are already noticing huge improvements in our billing process and overall it has made our business efficient.

Positive: Previously we were using Excel for project management, timesheets, and AR invoicing. In addition, we were using Word and Excel to generate manual invoices (then converting to PDF). Not only has the billing process been improved, but we have been able to implement Internal Financial Controls. We purchased the HR and Accounting modules a couple of months ago and are in the process of implementing our own HR templates. We are looking forward to automating the HR process.

Negative: There should be ability to hide or delete built-in accounts in the Chart of Accounts.

Summary: Seamless integration across one interface has been a game changer for project management. Collaboration, time and expense entries and accessing overall health of projects is readily available. Key performance indicators and customizable dashboards offers the foodies who eat with their eyes an appetizing experience using Core.

Positive: With Core our firm employees have the ability to login Core remotely from multiple devices and that definitely has increased efficiency in our finance and accounting department. All including project management. Collaboration, time and expense entries and accessing overall health of projects is readily available.

Negative: More collaboration with customers to get their feedback about features they need would be helpful. Most hiccups are sorted instantly with the knowledgeable support team. And with constant feedback, customization and updates, Core has met our firms needs.

Summary: While I am still learning and looking at how our company can best utilize CORE in all areas, we are definitely benefitting from using it. It has made tracking unpaid invoices much easier, thus making it easier to follow up with clients who we need to receive payment from. We now have a payables system to use, instead of a paper file. I could go on...

Positive: The automation with the cloud feed is great for accounting. The ePayment option is something I just set up for our company and am looking forward to having clients take advantage of, the project management module helps us track our time and expenses in the project in ways that we could not before. For the first time in our 45 year company history we have a company budget for this year.

Negative: Cut down on some of the approval steps that may not be necessary for all businesses. That being said, it does force me to look at the data people are entering and perhaps correct it before things get out of hand too far down the line.

Summary: Overall we are happy with time and billing, and reporting features in Core. Prior to using Core we had to figure out retainage and retainer reconciliation manually in Excel.

Positive: With Core the invoicing and payment process has gotten better. Most of our projects do have retainers and thank goodness we do not have to keep track of it manually in Excel. At the time of billing we know exactly how much retainer is available and the best part is Core can auto apply these retainers. The reporting side of Core is another area we enjoy.

Negative: Some of the terminology related to retainage should be region specific. It would be great to see more added to custom labels.

Summary: Overall, we are very pleased with Core features and the technical support we receive whenever we need any assistance is amazing.

Positive: Our projects have a detailed WBS (work break down structure) and it is important for us to track all time and expenses at the phase level to see how each phase and the overall project is performing. With the ease of use in Core we are able to easily setup clients and projects, and billing. We love the customer service that is part of the software.

Negative: Filtering on our forecasting reports need to be flexible.

Summary: Overall our experience is quite positive. Our company uses the time management and billing features and staff was quick to adapt. The main thing Core has done is save countless hours in the billing process as well as the ability to generate useful reporting that is helpful to staff at the ownership and management levels.

Positive: Core allowed me to streamline our invoicing process from start to finish processing time of a day or two in our old system to a handful of hours. Custom reporting tailored to our company's processes also allows us deeper insight to tracking time against a project and gives us accurate data to easily keep our clients informed about the financial detail and progress of their projects (while simultaneously monitoring employee realization rates and productivity). Technical support is top notch, the phone is answered quickly and the people on the other end of the line are excellent at solving issues or questions that pop up.

Negative: Core sends out one separate invoice per phase to QBO rather than one invoice that includes all phases. This makes verification and checking of accounts receivable a bit tedious