BigTime Software vs. BQE CORE

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
BigTime Software
Score 6.7 out of 10
N/A
BigTime IQ is time and expense tracking software from Chicago-based BigTime Software.
$20
User per Month
BQE CORE
Score 9.2 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
Pricing
BigTime SoftwareBQE CORE
Editions & Modules
Essentials
$20
User per Month
Advanced
$35
User per Month
Premier
$45
User per Month
Projector
$60
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
BigTime SoftwareBQE CORE
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
BigTime SoftwareBQE CORE
Features
BigTime SoftwareBQE CORE
Project Management
Comparison of Project Management features of Product A and Product B
BigTime Software
-
Ratings
BQE CORE
7.5
Ratings
2% below category average
Task Management00 Ratings8.90 Ratings
Resource Management00 Ratings8.50 Ratings
Gantt Charts00 Ratings8.70 Ratings
Scheduling00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Workflow Automation00 Ratings7.00 Ratings
Team Collaboration00 Ratings5.20 Ratings
Support for Agile Methodology00 Ratings7.50 Ratings
Support for Waterfall Methodology00 Ratings4.70 Ratings
Document Management00 Ratings7.90 Ratings
Email integration00 Ratings6.30 Ratings
Mobile Access00 Ratings7.70 Ratings
Timesheet Tracking00 Ratings9.50 Ratings
Change request and Case Management00 Ratings7.20 Ratings
Budget and Expense Management00 Ratings8.50 Ratings
Professional Services Automation
Comparison of Professional Services Automation features of Product A and Product B
BigTime Software
-
Ratings
BQE CORE
7.5
Ratings
1% below category average
Quotes/estimates00 Ratings6.30 Ratings
Invoicing00 Ratings8.20 Ratings
Project & financial reporting00 Ratings8.30 Ratings
Integration with accounting software00 Ratings7.30 Ratings
User Ratings
BigTime SoftwareBQE CORE
Likelihood to Recommend
10.0
(0 ratings)
9.3
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
10.0
(0 ratings)
7.0
(0 ratings)
Usability
8.0
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
Availability
8.2
(0 ratings)
8.2
(0 ratings)
Performance
9.1
(0 ratings)
7.3
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
9.0
(0 ratings)
7.4
(0 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
6.4
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
10.0
(0 ratings)
2.3
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
-
(0 ratings)
4.5
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
8.2
(0 ratings)
8.2
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
-
(0 ratings)
8.2
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
-
(0 ratings)
8.2
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
BigTime SoftwareBQE CORE
Likelihood to Recommend
I believe it is well suited for our industry! We are professional services consulting firm and we need this! However if there is a smaller company who does not need to track these items, then they should not use this big of a platform
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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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Pros
  • Invoice Style and detail..Bigtime allows the user the ability to choose more of what you need to appear on your invoice with its window options.
  • Phase/Percentage Billing; ease of adding additional phases to a project mid-project; clearly identifying Retainers
  • Support Team- In particular Melissa D and Lina Z...Par Excellent on the Teams
  • WHIP/Reports/Review of Invoices just make the entire billing process a BREEZE has cut my time frame in half, a Incredible help in this Season of Remote Work Environment that we are adapting to.
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  • 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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Cons
  • For some types of projects, we are unable to use BigTime's invoicing feature. It would be nice if we could further customize invoices to fit our needs. We still have to use Quickbooks to complete certain invoices.
  • Being able to create Purchase Orders in BigTime would be extremely useful to us. We currently use Quickbooks for this.
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  • 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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Likelihood to Renew
Its been a huge help in saving time and making billing more efficient. Would like to see the product grow and be able to continue to use it.
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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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Usability
Overall most areas of the software are easy to use. I tend to spend a lot of time in analytics and reports. Those are not as user friendly, in my opinion, and could use some improvements. I think it just takes time to get familiar with where items are stored in the program and what changes affect what.
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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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Reliability and Availability
BigTime is available 99% of the time. At times there are bugs, but most are resolved quickly
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I can only remember a couple of times in 4 years that Core has been unavailable.
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Performance
have not noticed a slow integration issue using QBO
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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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Support Rating
The support is amazing! They are always available through the chat interface in the program. Each support person has fully answered my questions the first time. I have had a positive experience with each inquiry. It is very important to me that I am able to get instant access to help so that I can make the most of the software and all of its capabilities.
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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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Online Training
No answers on this topic
Make sure you have someone training you that fits your style of learning.
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Implementation Rating
I touched on this briefly, in another survey section, but my implementation manager, Kevin, was exceptional. The actual implementation process took 3 months, not 1 before I was comfortable rolling it out to staff. We also had to wait/schedule time and coordinate for our custom xml. invoice to be generated and in a place we felt comfortable sending it out to clients. In the end I was very satisfied, but during the first few months it was challenging.
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wont let me skip
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Alternatives Considered
The main reason why we have decided to change services [...] is because we have carried out an internal analysis to determine which tool [is the best], with the [most] appropriate functionalities to fulfill our labor proposal. [We] came to the conclusion that BigTime [Software] is much more complete in terms of functionalities and even [at a] lower price.
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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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Scalability
The product is useful for faster billing and efficient timesheet logs. I do like the report features however there are many options and can be overwhelming for the user. It is most helpful to set up reports speaking to an agent to ensure the right fields are set, etc.
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This software works on a small and large scale.
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Return on Investment
  • Before BigTime, we were using Excel to track everything, creating invoices, and run reports. Getting on BigTime has saved us tons of time and effort which equates to dollars saved on labor.
  • From a legal standpoint, BigTime has allowed us to be organized and prepared in the event we would need to present financial details to anyone.
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  • 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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ScreenShots

BigTime Software Screenshots

Screenshot of BigTime Wallet provides clients with a personalized experience to pay on time from anywhere, in one click.Screenshot of A big-picture view into operational insights to make adjustments to how resources are managed.Screenshot of Real-time, actionable insights for professional services firms.Screenshot of The platform is designed to work within existing workflows and software stack, acting as a single source of truth for data.Screenshot of BigTime's invoicing engine supports dozens of industry-standard billing scenarios and enough options to satisfy exacting customer needs.

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