Valuable software for billing at a law firm

Bill quick is a perfect solution to create invoices and be able to bill many different attorneys on different projects.

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

BQE provides strong support for customizations

Overall experience has been nothing short of great. The strong support BQE offers for customization has resulted in effective time billing management but also leaves us with satisfied clients seeing their contracts clearly on a custom invoice based on their requirements.

Pros

Our company transitioned many years ago to BQE from a different software which was not as detail oriented as we needed for project budgets as well as client satisfaction on invoicing. Offering services to many different types of agencies - from federal to local government agencies to the private sector, each client requires a different level of detail on invoicing. In the past, we have found it very difficult to track time and transition those hours into a contract based invoice.

Cons

Would like to see more streamlined and simplified process of client credits. Right now the only way is to have it has a retainer.

We like invoicing in Core

Time is good and so is billing

Pros

I like using the invoicing and payments process, quick and easy to follow through with CEO and clients. Reports are also great, just trying to figure out the best reports to use takes time and experience. We also use the Retainer aspect which is helpful for our clients, much better than trying to keep track of in manually in excel or quickbooks. My monthly financial meetings with the CEO and Principal have become extremely efficient when using the AR Aging report with retainage by easily showing what is outstanding including the retainage portion is important for them to understand. The Account Transactions report have been helpful when reconciling with clients or even project managers the balances owing by phase.

Cons

Most times I have to hit enter twice for CORE to respond...not sure if I am keying too fast? Being Canadian I would like to see the verbiage of "Retainage" changed to Holdback. Having Retainer and Retainage on the same report can cause confusion here up North! LOL! We don't use the work retainage; we just call it holdback.

BillQuick - A look at one year post conversion

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

The software is very intuitive and quick to learn.

Pros

Easier way to attach documents to expense entries, quick way to overview and process time card summary reports. It has aided with the collection of receipts for all of our field team members. I am very pleased with the Time subscription, and project management subscription. The software is very intuitive and quick to learn.

Cons

A toggle option to select all employees or deselect all employees will help in the report sections. Also, a way to print all attachments at the same time instead of individually in the expense entry section