BQE CORE Suite

The ability to customize many of its features is great. You can setup and keep track of time associated
with various cases, clients, projects. There are so many reports that you can run to keep track of your spending. Able to export invoices to LEDES format. Able to import time from excel spreadsheet.

It takes some time to learn the software, the tech support team was great in getting me up and running. If you want additional reports they have a custom report group but their cost is a bit high to modify reports. It looks a bit complicated but actually it is easy to use.

BillQuick is a powerful tool in tracking project time and expenses for professional services. We converted from 7 years of Quick Books data. Although the conversion and integration was not a seemless process, and the learning curve was much longer than originally anticipated, we are now tracking project profitability at a much higher level than we ever have before.
BillQuick Tech Support is fantastic. They are patient and knowledgeable, and we have received a lot of added value by having the Gold Care Tech Support package added onto our services. Additionally, we have invested quite a bit of extra money on having Bill Quick Customization Department write customized reports. Although the standard reports section is extensive, we were unable to find reports that gave us exactly the data we wanted to see. It's nice that this additional service is offered, but it would be nice for them to give us a handful of customized reports as part of the conversion process and then charge extra from there on out.

The software is not as user-friendly as it could be. Some things are overly complicated and require detailed use before you understand the functionality of the software. It could not be more different that QuickBooks, and the transition for us was difficult. Personally, I highly underestimated the learning curve.

In the beginning, we were only using BQ for time and expense logging and we maintained our Quick Books file for all other general accounting, which I would strongly discourage. Although the SYNC feature does work to sync data between programs, it is not a clean sync and much of it needed cleanup on either side of the sync. This was very frustrating. We just recently converted all of our general accounting in QB over to the Accounting portal in BillQuick. This has helped to have all of our financial records in one software system and our data is much more consistent. However, the "Accounting" portal is not perfect and there are a number of features that are lacking where QB has it all dialed in. Examples: 1) in looking at a vendor bill, there is no indication or PAID FLAT to see it has been PAID or not. To see if it is paid, I have to look at the previous checks. 2) In a report that lists all AP checks written for a particular time frame, there is no TOTAL at the end of the report. 3) BQ allows duplicate check numbers. (This is not a complete list, but the top 3 things that drive me insane.) These seem like basic accounting features and for them to not be included in an accounting software is frustrating. DISCLAIMER: we have not yet upgraded to BQ2015 and remain on BQ2014 for a while longer. My understanding is that BQ2015 has updated a number of accounting features, so I look forward to seeing if any of those issues are remedied.

Running a practice and staying financially solvent is key with a way to measure progress with tasks, time and fees. CORE does this and in a way architects can understand since it is designed by architects. However, it tries to cover all variations on running a firm and while appreciable, it can be confusing with too many choices to search and select from. The flexibility is a plus once you reach out to customer service (live24/7/365) and they kindly walk you through a solution.

It's a bit complex at the onset of setting up the account and projects. You do it often enough, it does become second nature but it takes time and includes some missteps readily corrected by the help system.

The ability to generate multiple invoices at the same time. The ability to easily send invoices via email. The employee activity reports.

The product takes some art to setup, and the administrator is needed to setup new clients.