Optometrist CFO services: the dispensary, the OCT, and the second-location math

Two margins, one roof

The exam lane and the dispensary are different businesses that happen to share a reception desk, so the first CFO deliverable is a P&L that splits them — professional fees on one side, frames and lenses on the other, with staff, rent, and equipment costs allocated to whichever side actually consumes them. Exam revenue is a mix of insured and private-pay depending on patient age and province, which caps how fast fees can move; dispensary revenue is retail, where you control price, mix, and inventory. Blending them hides which side of the practice funded your year. The split also disciplines staffing: opticians and frame stock are dispensary costs, pretest equipment and chair time belong to the lane, and a shared receptionist gets allocated rather than ignored. We run this monthly, on top of clean books from our bookkeeping team, with fixed fees quoted after a discovery call.

Dispensary strategy against the online frame sellers

You will not out-price an online retailer on commodity frames, and trying converts your best margin into their marketing budget — the dispensary wins on what shipping cannot do. That means accurate measurements and complex lenses fitted properly, adjustments and warranty problems handled the same day, and curated frames a patient can actually wear out of the store. The numbers to manage are capture rate — the share of exam patients who buy their eyewear from you — and revenue per exam, tracked monthly by optician and by frame line. A few points of lost capture cost more than most rent increases, which is why it belongs on a monthly dashboard rather than in an annual guess. Two habits protect the margin:

• Buy inventory like a retailer — fewer lines, faster turns, and a standing rule for aging stock, because a frame board full of two-year-old product is working capital pinned to a wall.
• Coach to capture, not discounting — an optician who saves a sale with 20% off is spending your margin; one who books the second pair is building it.

Equipment ROI: run the OCT math before the demo

An OCT usually clears its financing when the scan volume is real — the discipline is doing that arithmetic before the vendor visit, because the demo is designed to sell the clinical story and skip the schedule math. The questions that decide the purchase:

The same framework prices every device after the OCT — a topographer, a fundus camera, an edger for in-house finishing. Equipment bought on arithmetic compounds; equipment bought at a conference depreciates.

Second-location math: contribution, coverage, cannibalization

A second location only creates wealth if its contribution margin covers an entirely duplicated fixed base — second lease, second fit-out, second frame inventory, second team — and the modelling has to be that blunt. Three questions come before any lease: who covers the lanes, since hiring an associate OD in a tight market is the real constraint, not the real estate; how much of the new location's volume is genuinely new rather than your own patients driving to a closer address; and how long the ramp runs while both locations draw on one cash reserve. We build the model on contribution rather than projected revenue, because rent is paid from margin, and we put the financing inside it from day one — the second fit-out is usually borrowed, so debt service is part of the breakeven, not a footnote. For owners who trained in the US — carrying US student loans or accounts from licensure years — the corporate and personal sides interact, which is covered in our cross-border guide for optometrists.