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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    BQE CORE

    Score9.4 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

    Emburse Chrome River

    Score9.1 out of 10
    N/AChrome River EXPENSE is expense management software, from Chrome River Technologies in Los Angeles, California.N/A
    Pricing
    BQE COREEmburse Chrome River
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    BQE COREEmburse Chrome River
    Free Trial
    YesNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    YesNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details—We offer three cost-effective, subscription-based pricing models: A transaction-based model, priced according to expense report volume A submitter-based model, priced according to an average number of monthly submitters An enterprise-level model that includes unlimited expense reports. Pricing for this model is based on total employee headcount Feel free to contact us to discuss the best one for your organization.
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    BQE COREEmburse Chrome River
    Considered Both Products
    BQE Software Inc.
    No answer on this topic
    Emburse
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    94%
    Would buy again
    142 Answers
    95%
    Would buy again
    18 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    98%
    Delivers good value for the price
    104 Answers
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    14 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    98%
    Happy with the feature set
    148 Answers
    95%
    Happy with the feature set
    18 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    92%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    68 Answers
    82%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    9 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    81%
    Implementation went as expected
    79 Answers
    83%
    Implementation went as expected
    10 Answers
    Features
    BQE COREEmburse Chrome River
    Project Management
    Comparison of Project Management features of BQE CORE and Emburse Chrome River
    Feature
    BQE CORE
    7.6
    73 Ratings
    1% below category average
    Emburse Chrome River
    -
    Ratings
    Task Management9.255 Ratings00 Ratings
    Resource Management8.654 Ratings00 Ratings
    Gantt Charts8.927 Ratings00 Ratings
    Scheduling8.035 Ratings00 Ratings
    Workflow Automation7.138 Ratings00 Ratings
    Team Collaboration5.245 Ratings00 Ratings
    Support for Agile Methodology7.321 Ratings00 Ratings
    Support for Waterfall Methodology4.418 Ratings00 Ratings
    Document Management7.938 Ratings00 Ratings
    Email integration6.533 Ratings00 Ratings
    Mobile Access8.045 Ratings00 Ratings
    Timesheet Tracking9.673 Ratings00 Ratings
    Change request and Case Management7.131 Ratings00 Ratings
    Budget and Expense Management8.957 Ratings00 Ratings
    Professional Services Automation
    Comparison of Professional Services Automation features of BQE CORE and Emburse Chrome River
    Feature
    BQE CORE
    7.5
    54 Ratings
    1% below category average
    Emburse Chrome River
    -
    Ratings
    Quotes/estimates6.228 Ratings00 Ratings
    Invoicing8.147 Ratings00 Ratings
    Project & financial reporting8.553 Ratings00 Ratings
    Integration with accounting software7.334 Ratings00 Ratings
    Expense Management
    Comparison of Expense Management features of BQE CORE and Emburse Chrome River
    Feature
    BQE CORE
    -
    Ratings
    Emburse Chrome River
    8.8
    3 Ratings
    2% above category average
    Employee Expense Reporting00 Ratings8.73 Ratings
    Corporate Card Reconciliation00 Ratings9.03 Ratings
    Payment Management
    Comparison of Payment Management features of BQE CORE and Emburse Chrome River
    Feature
    BQE CORE
    -
    Ratings
    Emburse Chrome River
    8.0
    3 Ratings
    2% below category average
    Customizable Approval Policies00 Ratings8.33 Ratings
    Financial Document Management00 Ratings5.01 Ratings
    Payment Status Tracking00 Ratings9.03 Ratings
    Payment Audit Trail00 Ratings9.02 Ratings
    Duplicate Bill Detection00 Ratings8.33 Ratings
    Advanced OCR00 Ratings8.52 Ratings
    Electronic Funds Transfer00 Ratings8.01 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    BQE COREEmburse Chrome River
    Small Businesses
    Any.do
    Score8 out of 10
    Dext
    Score9.8 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    KanbanFlow
    Score7.3 out of 10
    BILL Spend & Expense
    Score8.9 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Microsoft To Do
    Score9.6 out of 10
    Webexpenses
    Score9.2 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    BQE COREEmburse Chrome River
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.5
    (165 ratings)
    9.9
    (123 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    7.0
    (8 ratings)
    9.8
    (18 ratings)
    Usability
    9.3
    (115 ratings)
    9.0
    (107 ratings)
    Availability
    8.2
    (1 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Performance
    7.3
    (1 ratings)
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    Support Rating
    7.4
    (90 ratings)
    9.0
    (113 ratings)
    Online Training
    6.4
    (1 ratings)
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    2.3
    (6 ratings)
    9.8
    (7 ratings)
    Configurability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    4.5
    (1 ratings)
    6.0
    (1 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    8.2
    (1 ratings)
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    8.2
    (1 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    8.2
    (1 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    BQE COREEmburse Chrome River
    Likelihood to Recommend
    BQE Software Inc.
    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.
    Read full review
    Emburse
    The Emburse Chrome River is well suited for tracking expenses and reimbursement. The compliance part of the software makes the task very easy to ensure all the reports that are being used within the company are updated and easy to verify. The Automating invoice processing makes some redundant task easy to execute.
    Incentivized
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    Pros
    BQE Software Inc.
    • 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
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    Emburse
    • [Emburse] Chrome River listens to its customer's needs and does its best to match current products to those needs, or collaborate internally to determine if an enhancement can be made available that will not only benefit that customer, but will be a good use case for all Chrome River customers.
    • The [Emburse] Chrome River customer service team is great. Unlike most companies, you can speak to a liver person!
    • [Emburse] Chrome River's training offerings are relevant and pertinent to the day to day operations of the software.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    BQE Software Inc.
    • 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
    Read full review
    Emburse
    • Would be great to have pre-saved templates available to apply to line items at the expense report header level rather than having to go into each line.
    • Would be nice to have a mass upload functionality for things like cost codes, allocations, and credit card users.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    BQE Software Inc.
    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
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    Emburse
    Chrome River is easy to use. We needed little training for our users and instead pointed them to Chrome River's Help Guides which are clearly written and easy to understand. With tools SNAP and the ability to email receipts means we can be completely remote when submitting reports.
    Read full review
    Usability
    BQE Software Inc.
    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
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    Emburse
    I would rate Chrome River Expense a 10 because, as I mentioned before, it is very simple and easy to use. This is important from an administrative point-of-view as well as for the field employee. Being a general contractor, it makes it all the better for our employees to use a program that is easy to understand and requires little time and effort. It has made tracking expenses very simple and has been well received by the entire company.
    Incentivized
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    Reliability and Availability
    BQE Software Inc.
    I can only remember a couple of times in 4 years that Core has been unavailable.
    Read full review
    Emburse
    The software is always running effectively. I use many Cloud based systems and never had issues with Chrome River
    Incentivized
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    Performance
    BQE Software Inc.
    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.
    Read full review
    Emburse
    System runs normal pretty much all the time. Does not slow any other systems down.
    Incentivized
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    Support Rating
    BQE Software Inc.
    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
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    Emburse
    This has been easy for me because we have a rep that contacts the supporters for this product to correct any issues we may have with the software or changes needed to help out employees use Chrome River easier. This from my understanding has been a hit or miss kind of interaction with our rep and Chrome River.
    Incentivized
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    Online Training
    BQE Software Inc.
    Make sure you have someone training you that fits your style of learning.
    Read full review
    Emburse
    The software is very user friendly, so the online training was easy to pickup for everyone.
    Incentivized
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    Implementation Rating
    BQE Software Inc.
    It does take some time to understand the options and to find the best invoice template.
    Incentivized
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    Emburse
    Before implementation begins, make sure you have a plan on how you would like your workflow and platform setup for a system like Chrome River. It will speed the process and eliminate the need to make changes when you go live.
    Incentivized
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    Alternatives Considered
    BQE Software Inc.
    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
    Read full review
    Emburse
    It's the [industry-leading] software for Enterprise level organizations with [large-scale] teams and financial responsibilities. The software has the most robust set of tools and pays for itself with the amount of time it saves. Many newer alternatives have sprouted up but I don't know that we would ever trust another software to do our Expense Tracking and Management.
    Incentivized
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    Scalability
    BQE Software Inc.
    This software works on a small and large scale.
    Read full review
    Emburse
    It's very easy software to design to your needs.
    Incentivized
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    Return on Investment
    BQE Software Inc.
    • 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
    Read full review
    Emburse
    • We have seen a return on approver time of nearly 60% meaning our approvers have tripled their output.
    • We have had feedback from our users that time spent creating expenses has gone from an average of 2 hours to perhaps 20 minutes, tops.
    • We have seen in our dashboards that the Emburse Certify Suite of tools has returned an average savings of over $500K a year.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots

    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

    Emburse Chrome River Screenshots

    Screenshot of A consistent experience across any screen size or operating systemScreenshot of Simple, customizable tiles for expense entryScreenshot of Approve expenses directly from your inbox with a single click