Mainstay vs. BQE Core
BQE Core tracks billable time. Mainstay proves billable work was received.
BQE Core is built for the billing cycle — time entry, invoicing, financials. The moment a deliverable legally changes hands sits outside that cycle entirely. That is where Mainstay lives.
The question that changes the conversation
“If a CalGEM inspector questioned whether your idle-well monitoring report was submitted by the deadline — what does BQE give you?”
Let the silence work. Then show them the SHA-256 receipt.
Three rows. Each one verifiable.
Every dimension below is a question a principal can answer tonight with their current vendor.
Different layers of the same stack.
BQE Core sits at Layer 3: Project / Business Management. BQE Core tracks what you bill. It does not track whether the work was received, by whom, at what time, or with what document fingerprint.
BQE Core manages your billing cycle. Mainstay manages the delivery event that justifies the bill — and creates the cryptographic proof that your work changed hands. One system closes the project. The other closes the liability gap.
BQE Core opens an invoice when you tell it to. Mainstay fires the billing trigger the moment delivery is confirmed — a QuickBooks-ready export, cutting the 14–21 day lag between work completed and invoice issued.
Deltek, Unanet, BQE — project accounting, time/expense, CRM
EVX, EnviroCommand (partially) — data management, sampling, monitoring records
SHA-256 tamper-evident receipts · QuickBooks invoice trigger · Chain of custody
Why most firms run both
Environmental consulting firms using BQE Core typically run Mainstay at the delivery step — the SHA-256 receipt triggers billing with a QuickBooks-ready export, closing the gap between 'delivered' and 'invoiced' automatically.
When a client asks “how does this compare to BQE Core?”
- 1
BQE Core is project accounting and billing — it manages your financial cycle. Mainstay is a delivery layer. Different problems.
- 2
If a CalGEM inspector questioned whether your monitoring report was submitted by the deadline — what does BQE give you?
- 3
Mainstay gives you a timestamped, tamper-evident record of exactly what was submitted, when, and in what exact form — down to the SHA-256 fingerprint of the file. BQE doesn't touch that — and wasn't designed to. That's why they run together.
See the SHA-256 receipt for yourself.
45-minute session. Real project. Real receipt in your inbox before the call ends.