At BQE, we understand that accurate accounting and financial data is the backbone of smart, strategic decision-making. Christy Barton, a seasoned solution engineer with deep experience consulting architecture and engineering firms, recently walked through BQE CORE’s accounting module, showcasing how it’s designed to simplify financial workflows, improve accuracy, and save time across your firm.
Whether you’re coming from Excel and QuickBooks, or legacy ERP tools like Deltek Vision or Vantagepoint, Christy makes one thing clear: BQE CORE was purpose-built for A&E firms, and it shows.
“You’ll find CORE balances ease of use and efficiency better than anything you’ve seen before,” Christy explains. “And it was designed specifically with A&E firms in mind.”
CORE’s accounting dashboard is a standout from the moment you log in. It’s built with user roles and permissions in mind, ensuring that sensitive financial data is only accessible to those who need it, while still allowing teams like project managers, department leads, or even the design staff to see relevant, role-specific dashboards.
Customizable widgets, intuitive navigation, and quick access to the tools that matter most make the dashboard more than just a homepage. These dashboards become a launchpad for productivity and the command center for the business.
At the heart of CORE’s accounting system is its flexible chart of accounts. Unlike rigid systems that require workarounds, CORE allows firms to easily create parent-child relationships between accounts, modify naming and numbering conventions, and even group accounts using cost pools for cleaner, more meaningful reporting.
One major differentiator? The ability to merge accounts without journal entries. “If you’ve outgrown a chart structure or want to consolidate accounts, you can do it in just a few clicks—no manual adjustments required,” Christy notes.
Looking for a specific transaction? CORE makes it easy with a global search function. Type in an amount or keyword, and the system will instantly surface relevant results. This eliminates the need to manually sift through reports and screens, saving time and improving accuracy.
Better yet, every account in your chart links directly to its register, and every register connects to transaction details, creating a fluid experience where you’re never more than a click away from the information you need.
Manual data entry is one of the most time-consuming parts of accounting and a process that is prone to errors. With CORE’s Cloud Feeds, you can connect your bank and credit card accounts directly to the platform. Transactions flow in automatically, and CORE intelligently matches them with existing records to prevent duplication.
Recurring entries, like monthly insurance payments, can even be automated with smart rules that learn how to categorize expenses over time. This is a game-changer for firms looking to streamline overhead reconciliation.
Reconciliations in CORE are simple and intuitive. You can auto-clear all transactions and manually adjust only the exceptions, or clear items one by one based on your statement. Once complete, the reconciliation report is instantly available and can be saved or attached to your records for compliance and audit purposes.
Many firms struggle with ERP systems that make reporting feel like an afterthought. Not so with CORE. From anywhere in the platform, including the chart of accounts, you can run detailed reports, drill into transactions, and make adjustments without switching screens.
The Report Center includes over 200 templates, covering everything from profit and loss to general ledger and balance sheets. Favorites can be saved, filters customized, and reports scheduled for automatic delivery to key stakeholders, making it easy to keep everyone aligned.
“If you need to send WIP reports to project managers every Monday, you can automate that. CORE will email the report and notify them in-app,” Christy says.
Unlike generic accounting platforms, CORE was built by architects and engineers for the A&E industry. That means the tools, terminology, and workflows reflect the way your firm actually operates. Project teams and accounting teams alike can get what they need from the same system—no more jumping between tools or asking others to pull data.
With a modern interface, intuitive navigation, and powerful automation, CORE helps your team stay focused on delivering great work, not fighting with outdated software.
“If your team is struggling to get all of their day-to-day work into a single location, CORE can help streamline a lot of different areas across your organization,” Christy concludes.
Ready to see CORE’s accounting tools in action? Schedule a demo today and discover how BQE CORE can simplify your financial workflows and give your entire firm a smarter way to manage the business.
0:03
Hi, my name is Christy and I'm one of the solution Engineers here at BQE.
0:08
Before joining BQE, I helped manage the books and consulted quite a few AE firms on various products.
0:15
And today we'll be taking a look at BQE course accounting module.
0:19
I think what you'll find is whether you're coming from another BQE product or Excel in QuickBooks or one of the Deltech products like Azure and Vantage Point or really any other solution, you'll find Coors accounting module is uniquely designed to balance both ease of use and improve efficiencies, and it does this better than anything you've seen before.
0:40
Best of all, Corp was built specifically for a in firms, so if you're on QuickBooks and Excel, you'll see the complex space structures you need will really help out in a number of different areas.
0:52
If you're using a Deltek product, I think you'll find the data connectivity between projects and the various accounting workflows will help users more easily get the information they need without spending so much time sifting through various reports.
1:06
And really, no matter what system you're using today, you'll find Core can help save your accounting teams a ton of time.
1:13
So let's dive in and take a look.
1:15
I'll cover some of the basics relatively quickly.
1:18
We'll highlight some of the areas that tend to be big differentiators and a big value add for customers regardless of what system they're using today.
1:27
So let's go ahead and take a look.
1:33
First, you'll see we're starting with our accounting dashboard.
1:37
Now this dashboard has security permissions in mind, so you don't have to worry about folks getting access to sensitive information.
1:45
Only the people at your firm that needs to see financial data will be able to see these specific dashboards.
1:53
You'll still have the ability to set up other dashboards for folks, so if you do have employees that need access to their own dashboard, you can set those up.
2:02
If you have project managers that need to see a specific dashboard, you'll have the ability to set those up as well.
2:08
And you'll be able to define the various widgets that are displayed and easily move things around as you need to.
2:16
Now when we take a look over on the left hand side, the project's time and billing is where a lot of our clients get the most value from using an all in one solution.
2:27
But for our purposes today, we're really going to focus on accounting.
2:36
So let's go ahead and start with the chart of accounts.
2:39
The chart of accounts, as everyone knows, really is the basis for all of the financial reports that you see in really any system.
2:47
And you'll notice in our chart of accounts, we have the flexibility that you need to have both parent groups and child groups like what we're seeing here with cash checking and savings tucked nicely underneath that over to the right.
3:02
We can also do things like modify the details of these accounts.
3:07
So if you wanted to, you could of course go in and modify the name, You can modify the number, you can set up those parent and child relationships like what we talked about, and you can also even set up cost pools to help you segregate certain GL accounts and easily get the reporting that you need.
3:28
In addition to the chart of accounts, we also have the ability to do things like merge accounts, so this was always a big thing for clients I worked with.
3:37
Sometimes you want to take accounts that you're really not using.
3:40
Maybe it seemed like a good idea in the beginning to have seven or eight different accounts under a parent account.
3:47
As you change your mind about how you want your chart of account structured, it's really easy to merge those accounts into one without having to do journal entries to move balances back and forth.
3:58
Another thing I really love about for is the ability to just search for transactions.
4:03
So if you know the name, if you know the amount of a transaction, you can come here in the search bar and just search for that amount or it's going to come back and give you all of the results of every transaction that matches that amount.
4:17
And so that's really nice if you need to do things like research on and out of balance or, you know, you entered something and, and maybe you made a mistake and you're looking to find that specific transaction or also has the ability, of course, directly from the chart of accounts to see the register.
4:37
So this is part of that data connectivity that I mentioned at the beginning.
4:41
Notice that I didn't have to leave my screen to get access to the registers.
4:45
It's all at my fingertips.
4:47
And so if you need to add a new transaction as you're doing your bank reconciliations, you can certainly do that here.
4:54
You'll just choose the date, the type, the number, etcetera.
4:59
You'll enter in all the relevant information and then as soon as you press done, that will be added into your GL.
5:08
Now when thinking about adding transactions, sometimes that can be a bit of a manual process.
5:13
So what a lot of our customers really like is the ability to connect directly to their bank accounts and their credit cards.
5:20
And in court we call that cloud feeds.
5:23
So when we take a look at cloud feeds, you can see here whether it's a checking or savings or an Amex, all of those can be connected seamlessly.
5:32
And all of this data comes through so that you can review it and verify what you would like to bring into the system and maybe what you would like to ignore.
5:43
So if we think about things like vendor invoices that may already be in the system, or maybe you have expense entries that are already connected to projects, what Core will do is it will actually indicate if there's a transaction that matches something already in Core.
5:59
You can see down below, we do have one match for $183.54 and it matches the payment that that Core is recognizing in the actual sync files.
6:12
So in this case, we could just ignore this transaction and tell Core to keep the transaction that's already in the system and that will help to prevent duplications.
6:23
However, if this entry was not already made, so if we take a look at something like the insurance company transaction here, this could be some type of automatic withdrawal that comes out every single month and every time this account hits your bank.
6:37
If you want that to be coded to a specific account, Core can start setting up rules to remember that transaction and automatically know how to code that.
6:48
So if I want this to go to insurance or some other GL account, I can do that here.
6:54
I can go ahead and put pick the actual insurance company, and then I can tell Core to remember that.
7:00
As a rule, they're really easy to help automate some of those overhead transactions that happen every single month.
7:09
What's also nice is you can actually connect these directly to projects.
7:14
So if you know that something is project related and maybe someone just forgot to enter that expense report, you can certainly go ahead and connect us to projects as well.
7:28
Some other features that clients typically like to see when thinking about using a core's accounting module would be the reconciliation section.
7:38
So reconciliations are really easy to do here in Core.
7:41
Essentially, when you're ready to start a reconciliation, it will look something like this.
7:46
I'll just click on the top right here.
7:48
You'll see a list of all of the transactions that happened through your statement date.
7:53
And then what you can do is as you're getting ready to, to do that reconciliation, you'll go ahead and enter in your ending balance along with any service charges or interest.
8:04
And then you'll begin clearing off those transactions.
8:08
Now, if you want, of course, you can automatically clear all of them and then find the ones that don't belong and exclude those.
8:15
Whatever way you want to manage this is, is perfectly fine and up to you.
8:19
In this case, you can see I'm out of balance just a little bit here.
8:22
I can come through and once I get this balance, I can go ahead and finalize that reconciliation.
8:29
I'll have access right on my screen to the reconciliation report and then I could attach that to to my files to keep for my own review later.
8:44
Another thing that clients really like is the ability to use reports.
8:50
You'll notice this is actually available in the chart of accounts.
8:53
So I want to actually hop back here.
8:55
Let's talk about that whole idea of data connectivity, this whole idea of reports being at my fingertips and not having to sift through lots of different reports and a lot of the different screens within core.
9:07
The page that you're working on typically has access to the reports you need.
9:12
So if I come to the top right and maybe I have some questions about office supplies, I can search here and then I can view a report that will show me all of the transactions for office supplies.
9:26
What's even better is within this report, if there's still things that I'm not sure about, if I notice something that looks suspicious, I can click here, drill into the detail or will take me directly to the transaction that created that GL entry.
9:43
So if there are changes to make, you can actually do that directly on the screen, assuming of course, this.
9:49
Isn't closed or maybe the transaction isn't closed.
9:55
Moving along, thinking about other reports that are important to to firms.
10:01
When we look in the report center, what we'll see is that Core has the ability to give you lots of different types of reports and you'll be able to, as we mentioned earlier, drill into those reports.
10:17
So if I go down and look at the reports area, you'll notice first of all, I have a list of recent reports.
10:24
So if I want to avoid that reports area altogether, I can certainly do that and just access my recent reports.
10:31
Otherwise, when I go into the report center, I even have my favorites saved over here to the left hand side.
10:37
So if you want to store the reports that you use the most, you can do that within Core.
10:42
If you want to start a new report, this is easy to do too.
10:46
We give you a list of different templates in each of these different categories.
10:52
You'll notice under the financial section, for instance, we have several different balance sheet previews that you can look at.
11:01
We have general Ledger reports.
11:03
We have several different profit and loss reports.
11:06
When I click on these reports, I'll get a nice preview over to the right hand side.
11:12
If I like what I see, I can configure that report, choose different options.
11:19
I can also schedule reports.
11:21
So if you do have reports that you'd like to send to your accountant maybe on a quarterly basis, this is one thing that you could do, you know, you could call this, you know, quarterly reports for instance.
11:35
And then you could also set up several different filters.
11:41
So if you want to set up separate filters based on date ranges, you can do that as well.
11:48
You can also set up different columns that you would like to see.
11:53
OK, so when I run this report or it's going to go ahead and give me that drill down capability that that so many customers like, if I do notice something here again that looks out of the ordinary, I can come in, click on that number, it'll take me directly to the details that type that.
12:12
OK, So these are things that anyone with access to core, if you wanted to give them access, you could certainly do that and then they would be able to easily see the transactions that impacted the GL.
12:24
As mentioned before, you can also schedule these.
12:27
So instead of running these reports for other people, we can go back to the report center here.
12:36
And you'll notice notice in a lot of the ones that I've already saved, if I did want to, for instance, maybe send out WIPP reports to project managers, or maybe I want to give them a comparison of their budget versus spent, I can come here and schedule those reports to go out every Monday morning.
12:54
And then Core will automatically deliver those to the e-mail and also notify them directly in the app.
13:04
So that's a high level overview of some of the features in course accounting module.
13:12
If your team is struggling to get all of their day-to-day work into a single location, I think Core will really help streamline a lot of different areas across your organization.
13:23
Even better, with its intuitive and modern, modern interface, it means users don't dread logging in every morning to use the system.
13:32
And of course, with also a focus on A and EA lot of that functionality that A&E firms need, it's already built into course functionality.
13:40
So both project teams and accounting teams, they can get the power they need, yet also still actually enjoy using the system.
13:48
So thank you for taking the time to watch this demonstration today, and I hope you found it valuable.