Top 6 BQE Core Alternatives (Paid & Free) – 2026 Guide

The best options in 2026 are Productive, BigTime, FreshBooks, Zoho Invoice, Deltek (Replicon Time), and Kantata.

Below, you will get a quick overview of these core alternatives with key features, pros, cons, and a clear final verdict for each tool based on repeated review patterns on G2 and Capterra.

Productive is a business management solution for professional services teams that want project management, time entries and approvals, budgeting, resourcing, and reporting in one system. I

t is a strong fit when you want delivery and finance to work from the same data, while keeping accounting in a dedicated tool through integrations.

In many teams, PMs track delivery in one place while finance reviews time and budgets somewhere else. Productive connects tasks, time entries, billing and invoicing, budgets inside the same platform, so you can check project status and budget impact without exporting data.

This is useful when a PM needs to explain progress, scope changes, or budget pressure, because the underlying work and the numbers are tied together.

If time is submitted but not reviewed, reporting and billing conversations get messy fast. Productive supports time approval and time-off management, so budget owners can review time entries before they become official and are reflected in client reporting.

This keeps the time data cleaner earlier in the week, when it is still easy to fix.

Expenses usually cause problems when they arrive without enough detail or when they are assigned to the wrong budget.

Productive supports expense approval on budgets and deals, so budget owners can approve, reject, or edit expense submissions before they impact reporting.

Review happens in the same place where the budgets are, which makes it easier to keep project costs accurate.

PMs and delivery leads need early signals, not a recap weeks later. In Productive, budgets stay tied to delivery workflows, so you can check budget burn and financial performance while work is in motion.

You can review financial performance in context, rather than treating budgeting as a separate, finance-only exercise. This supports practical decisions, like adjusting scope, changing staffing, or resetting priorities before overruns stack up.

Capacity planning breaks down when availability data is split across tools, or when time off gets approved but does not show up in the plan.

Time off approval, and approved absences are reflected in Productive’s Resource Planner before schedules are finalized. This helps lead staff projects based on real availability and helps managers spot scheduling conflicts earlier.

Many services teams want project financial visibility without replacing their accounting system. Productive supports accounting integrations, including QuickBooks, so delivery data can feed downstream finance workflows more cleanly.

The practical benefit is fewer manual handoffs between work logged and finance processing, and fewer mismatches caused by retyping or reconciling the same information across systems.

Different roles need different answers. A PM may need a view that highlights progress and budget risk, while finance needs a view that surfaces unapproved time or missing expenses.

Productive supports flexible reporting across projects, time entries, and budgets, so you can build views that answer those questions without rebuilding the same report every week.

This is especially helpful when leadership asks for a breakdown by client, project, or team and you need an answer you can stand behind.

Teams start looking for alternatives because pages load slowly or require refreshes, time entry and edits take too many steps, the user interface is hard to navigate, mobile use feels unreliable, and onboarding new users takes longer than it should.

In practice, this usually shows up as slower time entry data capture, more follow-up from managers to get timesheets submitted, and extra admin time spent helping people find the right screens.

Choose your replacement by running five checks in order: list the project management and billing workflows you cannot lose, confirm what level of project accounting you need, test reporting with real leadership questions, validate integrations and data flow, then run a two-week pilot with approvers.

If you do this in sequence, you will end up with a shortlist you can defend to finance and delivery leads. We talk a whole lot more about finances in our comprehensive guide on financial management.

Write down the 5 to 7 workflows that must work on day one, using plain tasks instead of feature labels.

For example: weekly status updates, weekly time entry, timesheet approvals, expense submission to the right project and phase, invoicing that matches how you bill, budget tracking by phase, and a utilization view by role.

Mark each item as must-have or nice-to-have. If a tool fails as a must-have in the trial, cut it.

Pick the lightest setup that still answers your finance questions. If you only need basic billing, prioritize a clean timer, simple rates, and fast invoice creation. If you need project budgeting and margin visibility, make sure you can compare actuals vs plan without exporting data.

If you need deeper project accounting, define the exact outputs you rely on, such as phase-level profitability, retainer tracking, or profitability reporting by client and service.

In case you need to go back to the basics, the best starting point is our project accounting guide.

In each trial, answer the same questions using real projects and real-time entries. Start with what leadership actually asks: which projects are at risk this month, which clients are trending over budget, where billable hours are slipping, and what utilization looks like by role.

If you cannot reproduce the same answers twice, with the same steps, reporting will not hold up week to week.

List the systems that must stay in sync with your project management tool, then verify which actually sync and which do not.
For many teams, that includes QuickBooks Online, CRM, and payroll.

In the trial, check field mapping for clients, projects, invoices, and payments, and look for duplicate records caused by naming mismatches.

A pilot only works if it includes the people who approve timesheets and prepare billing. Run a real week of time entry, approvals, and expense submissions in the tool, then review what still needs manual follow-up.

Pick the tool that produces clean data with the least admin work, because that is what keeps timesheets and budgets reliable over the long run.

Migrate by moving your data in a controlled order, then running one full billing cycle in parallel so you can confirm timesheets, approvals, and billing and invoicing are working before you fully switch.

The goal is simple: keep client billing accurate, keep approvals moving, and keep reporting consistent while the team learns the new system.

If your current system is creating friction in weekly time entry, billing, and reporting, switching is usually worth it, as long as you choose a tool that matches how you actually deliver work and invoice clients.

When projects, time entries, budgets, approvals, and resourcing stay connected, you spend less time reconciling data and more time acting on it.

If you want to see what that looks like in practice, book a Productive demo and walk through one real client workflow end to end.