BQE CORE data export for engineering firms

What does BQE CORE store for an engineering firm?#

BQE CORE stores the operating history of a professional services firm: clients, projects and their phases, employees, time entries, expenses, invoices, payments and budgets, depending on which modules your firm uses. For an engineering firm, that history shows how work was scoped, staffed, performed and billed across years of projects.

Most firms think of CORE as a billing system, but the records inside it carry more than amounts. A civil or MEP firm's time entries, coded by phase and activity, show how long design development, permitting support or construction administration actually took on different project types, which is information rarely written down anywhere else.

Which CORE records matter for a licensing review?#

The CORE records a licensing review considers first are those that describe work, not those that describe money. Time entries with memos, project and phase structures, and budget-versus-actual history show how engineering work unfolds; invoices and payments mostly confirm that it was billed.

Financial records are not worthless, but they carry more sensitivity per useful detail. The table below shows how a review typically ranks each record family.

How to export CORE data at the right level of detail#

A useful BQE CORE export is taken at the level of individual entries, with the reference lists that explain the codes. Saved reports are designed for managers and often summarize by month, client or employee, which removes the sequence of work that gives the history meaning.

BQE's help center says CORE data, including reports and invoices, can be exported to Microsoft Excel or CSV, and self-service export needs an active subscription. For a whole-database copy, BQE says a CSV backup is available for a fee; the company owner must request it in writing from the Sales Account Manager or Support, it typically takes 1 to 3 working days, and the download link arrives by secured email. Confirm current terms with BQE before relying on either route.

Write a short data dictionary alongside the files. For each column, note what it means, when the firm started using it and any period when its meaning changed, such as a restructured phase template or a renamed activity code. Years from now, nobody will remember why half the entries before a certain year use a different coding scheme.

• 1Pull the full project list with phases, project type, status, start and end dates and the responsible office or discipline.
• 2Export time entries at entry level with date, project, phase, activity code, hours, billable status and memo.
• 3Export the activity code list and any custom fields, including codes that are now inactive.
• 4Export invoices with line descriptions, expenses and budgets for the same projects.
• 5Record the export date, the user who ran it and the filters used, and keep the raw files unchanged.
• 6Spot-check totals against a known project so you can confirm nothing was truncated.

Privacy transforms for CORE fields#

Privacy transforms for CORE data focus on employees first, because time and expense records are personal records about staff as much as project records. A time entry ties a named person to hours, dates and sometimes reasons for absence.

Apply these transforms to a copy, keep the mapping between real and pseudonymous values in restricted storage, and have someone from finance or HR review a sample before the data goes any further.

Illustrative: a civil engineering firm exports before a migration#

Illustrative: a fictional civil and transportation engineering firm has run BQE CORE for several years and plans to move to a larger ERP after a merger. Its COO wants to keep the full history, not only the balances that will be converted.

Before cutover, the firm exports every project with phases, all time entries with memos, the activity code list including retired codes, and invoices with descriptions. Finance removes rates and non-project time, and the COO stores the raw export, the transformed copy and an export log in a restricted archive. Later, when the firm discusses a possible licensing review, the time entry history is already preserved and documented, and the firm can describe its systems and years of history without opening any file.

Mistakes to avoid#

The most common mistake with a BQE CORE export is relying on a migration partner's conversion, which often carries only open projects and balances into the new system. Closed projects and historical time detail are frequently left behind, and once the old subscription ends they may be hard to retrieve.

Other mistakes include exporting time without the activity code list, losing custom fields the firm added over the years, and sharing raw exports with consultants before rates and leave entries are removed. Treat the export as a records project with an owner, not a side task for whoever has admin access.

Finally, do not assume that everything in CORE belongs to the firm alone. Time memos can quote client instructions, and invoice descriptions can repeat confidential project names, so the export still needs a rights review before anyone outside the firm sees it.

How SourceX looks at CORE records#

SourceX starts with a fit check that uses metadata only: that the firm runs BQE CORE, which modules it uses, roughly how many years of time entries are accessible and which project types they cover. No export is requested at that stage.

If the firm proceeds, CORE records move through the SourceX five-step transaction: Supply, Rights, Preparation, Approval and Delivery. The SourceX Evidence Packet then records provenance, licensing rights, permitted use, the privacy transforms applied and the firm's release authorization.