My name is Caren Schwartz and my business is called Time & Cents Consultants. I started my career at IBM working with big computers. Those machines took up large rooms and required a lot of air conditioning and water, and special languages like Assembler and Cobol. I was working part time following the birth of my 2nd child when IBM reorganized. I was offered a full time job with travel and decided my children were more important so I took a nice package. I had wonderful child care and wanted to keep working. I was good with numbers and computers and understood accounting, although I wasn’t an accountant – I have an MBA in marketing and finance from the Johnson Business School at Cornell University - so I started a business providing bookkeeping to small businesses.
I was using Timeslips for tracking my time and billing and started doing some consulting work. I liked consulting so I became a Timeslips certified consultant. As soon as QuickBooks offered a certification program I became certified on that as well.
Over time I reduced the bookkeeping, learned new products and expanded the consulting side of the business. I found myself working with law firms and professional services firms so started to focus on those products. I think I was born to this as my father was a lawyer and accountant and my mother was a bookkeeper. I became certified on Amicus Attorney then Sage 50, Time Matters, PCLaw and Tabs3/Practice Master and related products.
I am honored to be one of the top 10 ProAdvisors this year. I’m a believer in giving back to the community and love to work with other consultants. I have taught about working with professional services firms at Scaling New Heights and the Sleeter conference. I am a co-leader of the Greater Fairfield County National Advisor Network Group. I write a blog, sometimes, and try to write for the Intuitive Accountant once a month. I will be publishing an e-book on QuickBooks for Law Firms shortly.
While I am located in Fairfield, Connecticut, I have clients all over the United States and the world, including Hawaii, Alaska, Jamaica and England. There are times when I wish it wasn’t quite so easy to work remotely as I would love to visit them.
In addition to being the owner of Time & Cents Consultants I am also part of a national consulting group called 35*45 Consulting-Global. This gives me the ability to work with clients on large projects that require more people or skill sets than I have, it gives me backup when I travel, and provides me with a great group of colleagues and friends to call on for help, ideas and everything else.
When I am not working I like to read detective/mystery stories and play at golf. I play in a 9-hole par 3 league in town. It is fun, gets me out in the fresh air and has introduced me to new people. It’s also helped me feel young as most of the people are older than I am. I also play mah jongg for fun and have taught the game to others. I help to run a tournament each year to benefit our local ORT chapter of which I am currently the treasurer. Over the years I have been on the board of numerous non-profits, often serving as treasurer where my QuickBooks skills do come in handy.
My husband and I have a 23 year old daughter and a 25 year old son. We also share our home with a rescue greyhound and a rescue cat.
Caren
Editor’s Note: Caren Schwartz is an Advanced Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor in Fairfield, Connecticut. She is a member of Intuitive Accountant’s Top 100 ProAdvisors for 2014, and recipient of Intuitive Accountant’s 2014 Niche Practice Award recognizing the ProAdvisor who has built their business around a specific customer segment (in Caren’s case a recognized expert in law firm system integrations).