Practical guide
A practical opening plan for your software and team
Build one opening plan with separate workstreams
A practice opening brings several projects together: premises, staffing, clinical readiness, supplier relationships, account enrollment and the software that connects daily work. This guide focuses on the software and operations portion. Put it inside the broader opening plan so the team can see which milestones depend on another workstream. A configured calendar cannot resolve an unfinished office, and an available software account does not prove that an outside service is ready.
Start with a shared list of deliverables. Give each deliverable an owner, an expected result, a dependency and an acceptance check. “Configure intake” is a task description; “the front desk can locate a completed fictional intake and identify its reviewer” is an acceptance check. Use both. The owner needs to know what to do, and the practice needs a clear way to decide whether the result is usable.
Choose a planning cadence that fits the team. At each review, discuss completed evidence, blocked dependencies and the next decision. Keep the conversation about specific work rather than a general percentage complete. A project can be almost finished by task count while still missing one connection that prevents a whole workflow. The unresolved essential items deserve more attention than the volume of small tasks already checked off.
Define the first version of the practice
Write down the operating scope you intend to launch. Include locations, staff roles, providers, appointment types, clinical documentation needs, optical services and insurance requirements. Distinguish what must work for opening from capabilities you would like to add later. This first version gives the team a manageable target and makes it easier to evaluate whether a proposed change belongs before or after opening.
For a fictional example, an owner might plan to begin with one office and a small team while preparing for another provider later. Jelo’s pricing allows unlimited doctors and staff within each paid location, so adding a provider at that same location does not create a separate provider subscription fee. A new paid office would add a location subscription. The staffing decision still has many other implications; this example only explains the platform-price relationship.
Document assumptions that could change the setup. If the practice has not decided which lab or payment arrangement it will use, record that as a decision with an owner. If a payer requirement is still being reviewed, show which workflow depends on it. Keeping those assumptions visible reduces rework because the implementation team can understand which choices are settled and which remain provisional.
Build a useful software budget
The startup budget tool on this page separates the Jelo platform subscription from amounts you enter for other costs. Jelo is $300 per month per location or $3,000 per year per location, paid upfront. A full year of monthly billing is $3,600 per location. The annual option is therefore $600 less over that twelve-month comparison, before considering any other expense. The calculator uses these published subscription figures rather than a promised business return.
Add your own estimates for equipment, connectivity, implementation needs outside the included scope and other services. Use actual quotes when available and label estimates when they are still estimates. A budget becomes misleading when a guessed amount is displayed with the same confidence as a confirmed fee. Record the source and date of each quote so the team knows what needs updating before purchase.
For a fictional one-location plan with $1,500 in one-time costs and $100 in additional monthly costs, the first-year total would be $6,300 with twelve monthly platform payments, or $5,700 with the annual platform subscription. These numbers illustrate the calculation only. They are not suggested hardware prices or an estimate of the total cost to open an optometry practice.
Add variable service costs as their own lines
Jelo’s payment processing through Stripe is 3.5% plus $1.30 per transaction. A processing estimate therefore needs both the expected amount processed and the expected number of transactions. Keep those inputs separate from the platform subscription. If the practice’s volume or payment pattern changes, the processing estimate changes even when the software subscription stays the same.
Insurance and payer services are handled by Taiga, with Jelo charging 10% of insurance reimbursement for the AI biller service. The biller is available in beta without usage caps during beta, but the reimbursement-based fee still applies. Include the service separately if it is part of your plan. Confirm the service scope, payer requirements and applicable agreement before relying on an estimate.
A useful budget contains a short assumptions note. State the number of paid locations, billing frequency, estimated payment volume, estimated transaction count and insurance reimbursement assumption used. Do not present the combined figure as a vendor quote when some inputs come from your own planning. The payment guide explains the arithmetic, and the pricing page collects confirmed Jelo rates and terms.
Set up staff identities and responsibilities
List the people who need access and the work each person will perform. In a small practice, one employee may handle appointments, intake and optical checkout, while another reviews finances or integration settings. Translate those responsibilities into the appropriate role and office access. An owner account is useful for administration, but it does not show whether an employee can perform the intended daily work with their own permissions.
Use a role checklist during setup. Ask each person to sign in through the approved process, find the correct office and complete a fictional example of their main task. Review an action they should not perform as well. This tests whether access is appropriately scoped rather than simply broad enough to make every demonstration succeed. Resolve missing or excessive access before staff depend on the account for real records.
Decide who will maintain access after opening. Hiring, role changes, temporary coverage and departures should have an identified owner. Keep the procedure in the practice’s approved operating materials. Jelo provides role and location controls; the practice decides which responsibilities each person needs. That distinction makes the setup easier to maintain as the team grows.
Prepare appointment types and patient instructions
Appointment setup should reflect the practice’s actual operating decisions. Agree on the names patients and staff will see, the intended providers and the location context. Review how a front-desk employee will book, move and cancel a fictional visit in the supported workflow. Include a change that affects another staff member so the team can see how the handoff is communicated.
Write patient instructions in plain language and review them with the people who answer questions. Separate practical information, such as where to go and how to contact the office, from clinical instructions that require the appropriate professional review. Check how the practice will handle a patient who needs assistance or cannot complete an online step. The goal is an understandable visit path, not a long message containing every possible detail.
Before opening the real schedule, run a small set of fictional scenarios. Use a new patient, a returning patient and an appointment change. Ask staff to identify the correct person, provider, office and next preparation step. Keep the resulting questions on the opening checklist. A realistic rehearsal is more useful than relying on a calendar that merely appears populated correctly.
Configure intake and review ownership
Jelo’s general-intake builder supports configuration of supported questions, including order, visibility, required responses and custom fields. Begin with the information the team has a clear reason to collect. For each group of questions, identify who reviews the answers and what happens if the patient cannot provide them. Patient-entered information and clinically reconciled information are different stages of the process.
Test the form on a phone with fictional responses. Leave an optional field blank and include a response that needs clarification. Then have the appropriate staff member locate the submitted form in the patient workflow. This tests the whole handoff rather than only the appearance of the form. If a question repeatedly causes confusion during the rehearsal, review its wording and relevance before making it required.
Keep an approved version of the operating procedure alongside the configuration. Staff should know which intake types the practice intends to use and who handles changes. Jelo’s general builder does not establish identical customization scope for every specialty form. Demonstrate the specific forms you need and record any constraints before opening.
Review exam templates with clinical leadership
Ask the clinicians to review the documentation structure they will use for the opening scope. Jelo supports customizable exam templates, but the configuration should be guided by the clinician’s workflow and reviewed responsibilities. A template is a structure for recording an encounter. It does not decide which services a patient needs or establish that a particular code is appropriate.
Use fictional information to rehearse finding history, opening the intended encounter, entering the relevant documentation and performing final review. Ask the clinician to explain how they recognize the correct patient and current encounter. Include the supported process for addressing an incomplete record or a correction. Keep any clinical examples within the scope reviewed by the appropriate professional.
Agree on how template changes will be handled after opening. Record the reason for a proposed change, test its effect and tell the affected users. A short change process prevents one employee’s local workaround from becoming an unexplained difference in the records. The exam template guide shows the actual editor with sample data and provides a starting point for the configuration discussion.
Establish the opening inventory position
If the practice will operate an optical, prepare both the product catalog and the physical count. The catalog identifies what an item is; the quantity describes what the office holds. Review frame variants at the level needed to distinguish model, color and size. Similar names or appearances can hide a mismatch that later affects availability or order selection.
Assign responsibility for catalog review, counting and resolving differences. Identify how the practice will treat display items, damaged stock and supplier returns in its own procedures. Record an unresolved difference separately rather than changing a total simply to make a worksheet balance. The opening count should provide a position the team can explain and compare with later activity.
Then rehearse a sample order and a correction. Ask which record shows the selected variant, which action affects stock and how staff review the remaining order balance. If the practice will use VisionWeb, validate the actual connected lab accounts and catalog options as a separate dependency. An internal product list does not establish that a supplier relationship is ready for ordering.
Validate outside accounts before declaring readiness
Create one row for each connection: VisionWeb lab ordering, Stripe payments, Taiga insurance services and the messaging setup the practice intends to use. Add any other required device or prescribing connection as a specific requirement to verify. Record the account, office, required transaction, setup owner and observed acceptance result. A provider name without that context is too broad to serve as an opening checklist item.
Use the practice’s actual requirements and the implementation team’s approved testing process. Keep public demonstrations fictional or de-identified. Ask what happens when a catalog option is missing, a collection remains unresolved or a payer requirement is incomplete. These questions identify the staff action and contact needed when the normal path does not complete as expected.
The integration directory organizes the confirmed connection scope. It does not promise support for every payer, device or supplier. Any unanswered requirement should remain visible until it is demonstrated or addressed in writing. That helps the practice choose an opening sequence based on evidence rather than a general impression that most setup tasks are finished.
Run a complete rehearsal with each staff role
A rehearsal should follow one fictional patient from the first contact to the final relevant handoff. Begin with scheduling, complete intake, review the clinical workflow, prepare an optical example where appropriate and inspect payment or billing status. Ask each person to state what they need from the previous role and what evidence tells them they can proceed.
Let staff operate their own tasks. Watching a presenter move quickly through the system is different from finding the correct record independently. Note where a person hesitates and classify the cause: unfamiliarity, unclear terminology, missing permission, incomplete configuration or an unresolved practice decision. Those causes require different responses, and the classification helps avoid repeating training when the actual problem is an account dependency.
Add one exception to the rehearsal. For example, the fictional patient changes an appointment or the intended frame variant is unavailable. Have the team explain the next action and who owns it. The exception is an exercise, not an assertion that Jelo automates every step. A useful rehearsal produces a short correction list that the practice can close before real work begins.
Define the first-week review before the first week starts
Choose a few operational questions to review after opening. Can staff find completed intake? Are open orders understandable? Do unresolved payment or billing items have an owner? Are inventory differences being recorded and investigated? Keep the review narrow enough to complete. The objective is to identify an obstacle and make a specific improvement, not to create a large reporting project while the team is learning.
Record your own counts with clear definitions if you want a baseline. For example, count eligible visits and those with intake completed at the chosen checkpoint. A zero denominator should be marked not applicable. A completion percentage should be read with the underlying volume and should not be treated as a clinical quality measure. The operations worksheet supports this kind of aggregate review.
Review the questions as a team and assign the next action. Keep configuration issues separate from requests for a new capability. Keep a customer’s reported learning experience separate from your own measured result. Care Optica and Sharp Eye Care offer useful accounts of adoption, but neither supplies a guaranteed benchmark for every new practice. Your first-week observations should describe what actually happened in your own setting.
Preserve a clear data and support handoff
Jelo is HIPAA compliant, offers a BAA, maintains BAAs with its providers, encrypts its database and runs automatic daily backups. Review the applicable agreements and configure staff access before transferring or entering real patient information. If your practice needs a specific hosting region, export format or recovery objective, request that detail explicitly rather than inferring it from a broad security statement.
Jelo offers data exports for the practice’s own analytics and helps customers move to another system when needed. Cancellation is free, while the treatment of prepaid fees and existing charges is governed by the applicable agreement. Include records and exit arrangements in the initial evaluation so the practice understands its options before a future change becomes urgent.
Joel or Loreli leads Jelo demos. Bring the opening checklist, unresolved dependencies and fictional rehearsal scenarios. Use the meeting to convert those items into demonstrated results and named next actions. The strongest opening plan gives the team a shared understanding of what is ready, what remains and how the first real patient will move through the practice.