Lately, support requests have been all across the board. Topics have covered everything that can be done in each of our supported applications…..and some things that can't.
The good news is that we have a large and experienced team to cover the entire realm of support requests we receive. We support our CORE platform and our original applications, BillQuick and ArchiOffice.
CORE Support: Common and Advanced Issues
Since we try to serve as many customers as possible, we focus on quick resolutions to common issues. Common issues revolve around time and expense entries, billing, and reporting. More advanced issues get escalated to 2nd-level engineers (like me!) who can either resolve the problem or get other teams in our company involved, such as training and consulting, custom reports, sales, or development. Many of the escalated issues are data-related, for example an account balance or a reimbursable expense amount has a discrepancy.
We work closely with the development team in reporting issues to be fixed in upcoming patches. And we have an automated ticketing system which notifies customers about when they can expect their issue to be resolved. In the meantime, support provides workarounds and sometimes queries through the back-end to make immediate corrections.
Legacy Application Support: BQE Consulting
With legacy applications like BillQuick and ArchiOffice, many issues are environment-related. Due to the apps being hosted on local servers, they need to be set up and configured properly. There are many more variances in providing support for these applications as customers have different hosted environments, and some have custom programming that we have to identify first. Support cannot always assist with those types of issues. However, BQE Consulting services are available (for a fee) for issues like SQL connectivity and website and VPN configurations.
Common Support Issues in CORE
CORE is now in its third year, and support has seen it grow into the strong platform it is today. Although it's easier to support because everyone is hosted on the same online platform, it keeps us on our toes because of the rapid rate of new features being added. Talk about continuous on-the-job training!
As for some of the common issues we encounter on a daily basis:
Billing
We often try to find the missing step in a user's process that prevents them from creating the invoice or getting the correct amount to tie out. Many of these calls are at the beginning and end of the month as these are the times most invoices get created and sent out. All our products have joint project and phase invoicing, and users have many different ways of creating these, making them the most challenging to troubleshoot.
QuickBooks Integration
Although integration can be very smooth if set up and run properly, this is another area where we often look for the step in the process that was missed, preventing a record or transaction from syncing properly.
Time and Expense Entries
These are often related to other components of the application, and we help customers identify the source of the conflict if one exists. Time and expenses can be related to project management features like allocation and forecasting, budgets, fee schedules, and project assignments. Or they can be related to accounts payable transactions like credit card charges, vendor bills, and checks.
Security
Our applications have many levels of security. Adjusting or understanding who can see and do what is a common request. There are so many customizable options, which help the customer tailor their experience. We often help troubleshoot situations where permission may not have been granted.
Accounting
Accounting issues often deal with retainers, credit payments, memos, reconciliations, and cloud feeds. For example, some of the smaller banks have cloud feed limitations, so we work with the provider in troubleshooting those. Reconciliation is the final step in the process of clearing a transaction so it can no longer permanently be changed.
CORE Support Is Here to Help You!
In summary, BQE Support is here to help our customers use their products to their best potential. We regularly identify trends and review our processes in order to provide both great customer service and technical knowledge for all requests. On behalf of the entire team, I want to thank our customers for their support as well.