Optomate Virtual Assistant: recalls run, spectacle jobs chased, end of day balanced

Nobody searches “optomate virtual assistant” while the practice is quiet. You search it at seven on a Tuesday night, after a full testing day, when the recall run hasn’t been processed since autumn, eleven pairs of finished glasses are sitting in the collection drawer because nobody has rung the patients, and the end-of-day export to Xero is three days behind. Optomate has been running Australian optical practices since 1998; Monkey Software built it in Melbourne, and more optometrists and dispensers across Australia and New Zealand run their day on it than any other system. The software isn’t your gap. The person with time to drive it is, and in most independents that person is the owner, between a refraction and a frame adjustment.

The daily rhythm a VA runs in your Optomate

Morning, before the first consult: the appointment book gets a pass. Unconfirmed patients are chased by SMS or a quick call, gaps near testing slots get backfilled from the collection and recall follow-up lists, and the day your optometrist walks into is the day the book says it is. While you’re in the testing room, the VA can also carry the phone as a virtual receptionist, booking directly into Optomate instead of leaving messages for the dispenser to action between patients.

Underneath the book sits the quieter work that keeps everything else honest: patient records. New patients get entered properly the first time, with the Medicare number, health fund membership and referral details captured before the consult rather than reconstructed after a claim bounces. Duplicate patient files, the ones created when a returning patient gets keyed in fresh at a busy front desk, get flagged and tidied so the recall module isn’t chasing the same person twice under two spellings. It’s plain data entry on paper, but in a claiming system it’s the difference between rejections you never see and rejections you chase every week.

Then the job board, which in optical is where the money and the goodwill both live. Every spectacle and contact lens job gets its status checked daily. New jobs are confirmed as actually ordered with the lab, not just entered. Anything past its expected date gets chased with the supplier before the patient rings you first. And every job that lands back from the lab is marked ready and followed by a collection call the same day, because a patient who waits nine days to hear their glasses are in remembers the nine days, not the lenses.

Contact lens wearers get their own pass. Optomate holds each patient’s supply history, so the VA contacts wearers coming to the end of their lenses before they run out, places the reorder with the supplier, and books the aftercare review when the optometrist has flagged one as due. That’s retention work no independent has time to do manually, and it’s exactly the revenue the online CL retailers are quietly taking.

Then claiming. Bulk-billed consults are lodged through Optomate’s Medicare claiming, health fund claim statuses are tracked, and rejections come back to you with the patient, date and item detail already attached, so the fix takes two minutes instead of an archaeology session. The full shape of that work is on the Medicare and health fund billing page.

Stock rounds out the week. Supplier orders raised, deliveries receipted against the order using Optomate’s barcoded stock control, new frames entered with the right RRP and supplier codes, and slow movers flagged before the rep’s next visit so you’re negotiating from your numbers, not their samples.

And at close: Optomate’s end-of-day figures reconciled against the till and the EFTPOS settlement, then the export pushed across to Xero, MYOB, QuickBooks or Reckon. Discrepancies get flagged the same day. Your bookkeeper stops finding surprises at BAS time.

The recall run, worked like it matters

Recalls are the cheapest revenue in optometry and the first thing that stops happening when the practice gets busy. Optomate’s recall module does the hard part of remembering: it builds the due list from whatever intervals your optometrists set, commonly two years for standard reviews, shorter for children, over-65s, contact lens wearers and the patients your optometrist has flagged for closer watching.

What the module doesn’t do is act. Your VA processes the run on a fixed weekly cycle: SMS and email batches sent, letters printed for the patients with no mobile on file, responses booked straight into the appointment book, and, the step software will never do, non-responders rung a fortnight later by a person with the patient’s history open in front of them. A recall list generated is a report. A recall list worked is a full book. Most practices that hand this to a VA see the difference inside two cycles.

The cycle only compounds if it runs every week, which is exactly why it dies in owner-operated practices: recalls are important but never urgent, so they lose to whatever is standing at the counter. A VA doesn’t have a counter. The run happens on Tuesday because Tuesday is when the run happens, the responses get booked the same day, and the fortnight-later call list is worked before the next batch goes out. Consistency, not cleverness, is the whole trick, and it’s the one thing a busy practice can’t supply from inside.

Touch or .Net: how a remote VA actually gets in

Optomate comes in two editions, and it changes the setup, not the work. Optomate.Net is the cloud edition: browser sign-in, hosted on Microsoft Azure with ISO 27001 certification, so the VA logs in from Manila exactly the way your dispenser logs in from the front desk. Optomate Touch is on-premises, with the database on a machine in your practice, so a remote VA works through a remote desktop session into a practice PC. That’s a one-time setup job for whoever does your IT, and it’s a well-solved problem, but it’s worth naming on the discovery call so access is sorted before day one rather than during it.

The honest bit

Three things Optomate won’t do, whoever you hire. The recall module doesn’t send anything by itself: it builds the list, and then it waits for a human. If nobody processes the run, your recalls are a report nobody reads, which is precisely how most practices arrive at this page.

Second, job tracking is only as truthful as the last person who updated a status. If deliveries aren’t receipted and statuses aren’t moved, “at lab” stops meaning anything, and a VA’s first fortnight in a busy practice usually includes cleaning up the job board so it tells the truth again. Budget for that; it’s worth it once and painful never again.

Third, the accounting link is an end-of-day export, not a live two-way sync. Figures go across to Xero or MYOB when someone sends them, and reconciliation against the till and EFTPOS is still a human job. The same honesty applies to stock: barcoding helps enormously, but frame counts drift without periodic stocktakes, because Optomate reports what was entered, not what’s actually on the shelf after a busy Saturday.

What stays with you

Optometry is health care, so this line is firm and it’s built into the setup, not left to good intentions. Everything clinical stays with the optometrist: refraction results, prescriptions, therapeutic decisions, consult notes, referral judgements, and the choice of Medicare item number on every claim. The VA lodges and tracks claims that already carry the item your optometrist selected; they never choose an item number, ever.

Anything a patient raises that sounds clinical escalates the same day under a written rule you approve before the placement starts: flashes and floaters in a voicemail, a red eye, a contact lens that suddenly hurts, a child’s second failed school screening. The VA books urgently and hands over; they never triage, reassure or advise.

Inside the software, the boundary is a permission, not a promise. Optomate’s per-user security settings let you switch clinical records and sensitive reports off for the VA’s individual login, so the account they use covers bookings, jobs, stock, contact details and billing and physically stops there.

What it costs and where to start

Optomate work sits on our admin tier at $12-17 AUD an hour excl GST, and most optical practices run 10-15 hours a week, roughly $500-1,100 a month, which covers the book, the recall cycle, the job board, claiming follow-up and end of day. Placement takes 7-10 business days from the discovery call, and the first 5-7 days are supervised inside your Optomate before any solo work, starting on the appointment book and job statuses, with claiming and the accounting export added once the basics are clean. The $500 deposit is refundable and credits to your first month, there’s a 30-day recalibrate-or-replace guarantee, and nothing locks you in beyond 14 days notice.

If you want the wider picture for your practice, the optometrists page covers the vertical beyond the software, and the VA cost guide sets out the full pricing model with the on-cost comparison against hiring locally. Otherwise, book a discovery call with Jenn, mention whether you’re on Touch or .Net, and she’ll tell you straight whether an Optomate-experienced candidate is findable for your setup right now.