BQE CORE: New Features & Enhancements!

BQE believes in constantly evolving and improving our product for the sake of our clients, which is why there’s a CORE software platform update almost every month. In development terms, these updates are aptly defined as “sprints” because of the way they enhance a significant number of features in a relatively brief period of time. 

BQEs most recent CORE update, Sprint 23, was completed in January of 2021 and provided a significant and extensive achievement, the upgrades implemented through CORE Sprint 23 required a change log that spanned a total of 140 pages.  

Now, with Sprint 24, here’s a look at the exciting changes you can expect. 

How Sprint 24 Will Build on Past BQE CORE Successes  

CORE Sprint 24 will incorporate a number of key upgrade items and enhancements. For example, the development update will improve the CORE CRM system, which BQE began offering in August of 2020 to help with maintenance of consumer leads, the delivery of campaign results, and the management of sales teams. 

To further these efforts, Sprint 24 will enable CORE users to sync email communications with their CRM contacts thanks to a seamless integration with Office 365. After the Sprint 24 update goes live on Saturday, March 6th, users will also be able to create time entries from CRM to-dos and follow-ups, as well as add “name” and “company” columns to their CRM Leads and Prospects lists.  

Major Updates to BQE CORE in Sprint 24 

CRM upgrades are just a few of the exciting new improvements you will see.  Other large-scale development items provided by Saturday’s update include the following:  

• ePayments: In the new update, CORE users will be able to send clients detailed statements that connect to an improved payment portal so that multiple invoices can be paid with a single credit card or ACH payment.  

• Budgets: Among other improvements to CORE Project Budgets, the platform is now directly accessible from any project's details and enables Phased Project users to review and update all Phase Budgets from a single screen.  

• Benefits: Human resources administrators will now have more control over employee benefit parameters such as maximum accrual amount, maximum carry amount, reset dates, and earning requirements.   

• Home Screen Widget: New Timer iOS widgets will enable users to monitor and control (start, pause, continue, or stop) CORE timers directly from the home screen of any Apple device without actually opening the app. 

• A Referral Program: To support its new CORE Referral Program, BQE has created a referral link that is easily accessible from CORE’s online platform and mobile applications.  

Specific Sprint 24 Enhancements  

In addition to these major development items, Sprint 24 will institute dozens of detailed BQE CORE enhancements in virtually all areas of operation and use. While these changes might not be as eye-catching, they will enhance CORE to make it more efficient, ergonomic, and useful.   

Some of the post-Sprint 24 impacted areas include: 

• Platform-Wide: Optional columns have been added to list view screens throughout CORE, all of which are customizable according to each user’s needs. 

• Reports: To make reporting more exact, the subtotals on the AR Aging with Retainage report have been updated to include more column subtotals. The Unpaid Vendor Bills screen will also give users the option to show only those records linked to a particular invoice.  

• Report Center: A convenient “select all” option has been added to the filter drop-downs in the Report Center.  

• Timecard: After the Sprint 24 update, users will be able to expand the text box field when adding a memo to a timer entry from the Time Card.  

• QuickBooks Integration: Users can download sync logs directly from QuickBooks.  

• Assignments: CORE users can easily copy assignments from a project's associated budget on the platform’s Assignments screen. This update also simplified the process of copying assignments from parent projects to any sub-phase.  

• Expense Entries: Expense Entry charge amounts can now be calculated directly within the entry cell using basic addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division operations. The new Expense Entries screen also adds “Paid Date” as an optional data column.  

• Projects: Users can now launch budget and contract analysis reports from the Structure tab of a Project's details.  

• Project Templates: After creating a new Project with a Project Template, users can copy the Project Groups directly from the Template.  

• Invoice Templates: Users can batch update invoice templates from the Projects list view.  

• Retainers: Law professional users can denote trust funds when creating a retainer.  

• Checks: The post-Sprint 24 CORE platform contains a template to print checks in the stub-check format. 

See more about the major and minor changes and updates to BQE CORE in our change log.