BQE CORE vs. Trello

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
BQE CORE
Score 9.4 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
Trello
Score 8.4 out of 10
N/A
Trello from Atlassian is a project management tool based on a Kanban framework. Trello is ideal for task-management in a to-do list format. It supports sharing boards and cards across users or teams. The product offers a free version, and paid versions add greater automation, collaboration, and administrative control.
$6
per month per user
Pricing
BQE CORETrello
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Standard
$6
per month per user
Premium
$12.50
per month per user
Enterprise
$17.50
per month per user
Free
Forever Free
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
BQE CORETrello
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsA discount is offered for annual billing and for larger numbers of users.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
BQE CORETrello
Features
BQE CORETrello
Project Management
Comparison of Project Management features of Product A and Product B
BQE CORE
7.6
Ratings
1% below category average
Trello
9.5
Ratings
22% above category average
Task Management9.10 Ratings9.80 Ratings
Resource Management8.60 Ratings9.60 Ratings
Gantt Charts8.80 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Scheduling8.00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Workflow Automation7.10 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Team Collaboration5.20 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Support for Agile Methodology7.40 Ratings9.40 Ratings
Support for Waterfall Methodology4.50 Ratings6.50 Ratings
Document Management7.90 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Email integration6.40 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Mobile Access7.90 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Timesheet Tracking9.60 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Change request and Case Management7.10 Ratings8.10 Ratings
Budget and Expense Management8.70 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Professional Services Automation
Comparison of Professional Services Automation features of Product A and Product B
BQE CORE
7.5
Ratings
1% below category average
Trello
5.0
Ratings
41% below category average
Quotes/estimates6.30 Ratings5.00 Ratings
Invoicing8.10 Ratings5.00 Ratings
Project & financial reporting8.40 Ratings5.00 Ratings
Integration with accounting software7.30 Ratings5.00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
BQE CORETrello
Small Businesses
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Score 9.0 out of 10
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Score 9.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
InEight
InEight
Score 8.3 out of 10
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InEight
Score 8.3 out of 10
Enterprises
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Score 8.3 out of 10
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Score 8.3 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
BQE CORETrello
Likelihood to Recommend
9.4
(0 ratings)
9.8
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
7.0
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Usability
9.2
(0 ratings)
9.6
(0 ratings)
Availability
8.2
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Performance
7.3
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
7.4
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Online Training
6.4
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
2.3
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
5.0
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
4.5
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
8.2
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
8.2
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
8.2
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
BQE CORETrello
Likelihood to Recommend
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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Trello is great for cross-team communication and intra-team organization. It's simple to get setup, with flexible tools that give businesses control over how to make Trello work the best for them. It is an amazing platform for operations tracking, project management, and even organizing customer service requests for a smaller business.
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Pros
  • 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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  • Helps track employees "to do before hire", "to do after hired," and "to do when employee leaves"
  • Provides important information on each employee like personal information along with data collected during the time of hire and during employment time
  • Allows more than one person to be assigned to a task per employee and will remain open until everyone involved has completed their task
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Cons
  • 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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  • I use colour coding a lot so I would like a wider range of colour options.
  • Also as a visual thinker I would like to be able to easily add images to cards.
  • I would like to be able to attach a wider range of file formats to cards.
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Likelihood to Renew
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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I am very likely to renew Trello, because it doesn't cost anything to do so. I am also very likely to use Trello's upgraded features in the future because a lot of my team's data is stored on there and they have already gotten used to the platform. Trello is very easy for new team members to pick up, making the onboarding and usability very streamlined.
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Usability
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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I am technology illiterate, it's my Achilles heel and this program is so easy to use. I have been utilizing it for a decade now. It makes organizing and prioritizing my life, my work, my business, my kids life, etc so much more manageable and without having to hold on to a bunch of into in my head. I can find it and locate it quickly and easily in Trello.
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Reliability and Availability
I can only remember a couple of times in 4 years that Core has been unavailable.
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yes always support available when I need it!
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Performance
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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Never experienced issues with the above!
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Support Rating
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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I haven't had much need to contact their support because the product is easy to use and pretty bug-free. I did reach out to them about swimlanes and I was able to find the information I needed very quickly and it was thorough and accurate information about current functionality. I love that they use their own product. That's always a good sign.
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In-Person Training
No answers on this topic
It was helpful and informative! It was back before the pandemic in 2019 so I'm not sure if they still do it but I really enjoyed the experience
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Online Training
Make sure you have someone training you that fits your style of learning.
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No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
wont let me skip
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For our small business, getting a few of us started well on Trello was the key, I think. As long as a couple of us were really comfortable with the interface, we could lead others and help them with any questions. From now on, anyone who works with us just naturally uses Trello for information sharing - it's just part of what we do.
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Alternatives Considered
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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Our business ended up using Monday due to the holistic nature of the tool. It allows us to collaborate amongst teams and see the project as a whole easier. Trello is for personal usage and task management. I use Monday to organize my overarching needs, and then put specific tasks into Trello to stay organized.
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Scalability
This software works on a small and large scale.
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Feels like anyone across the org (no matter their location) can use the tool easily!
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Return on Investment
  • 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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  • It's been an essential tool for our onboarding team. We wouldn't be able to operate without it.
  • It's been a very affordable investment for our team as well since we still use the free version.
  • We have had a negative return in the fact that there aren't any reporting tools within the app. We have to spend time tracking certain elements manually.
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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