Practical guide
Operating across multiple locations
Define what belongs to the practice and what belongs to an office
Multi-location software needs to represent two perspectives at the same time. The practice wants a coherent view of its patients and operations. Each office needs the correct schedule, stock, staff access and transaction context for the work taking place there. A useful evaluation starts by naming which information should be shared and which information must remain attached to a working location. Otherwise, a single practice-wide total can conceal an error at one office.
Jelo’s multi-location functionality is available now. It uses shared practice patient records and catalog information together with office membership and role permissions. Staff still need the appropriate access to work at a location. Shared practice access does not mean unrestricted access to another independent practice, and the ability to view an overall report should not be confused with the ability to edit records at every office.
Write a simple office map before configuration. Include the working name of each location, its staff, providers and main responsibilities. Identify people who regularly move between offices and people who support the whole practice. Then mark the information each role needs to view and the actions it needs to perform. This map gives the implementation team a clearer specification than a request to make everything available everywhere.
Design access around actual responsibilities
A person’s job title is only part of an access decision. An optician may need to work with orders and inventory at two offices but not change practice-wide integration settings. A manager may need to review information across locations while performing transactions from one selected office. A clinician may need the patient record for an appointment at a different office. Use specific tasks to decide which role and office membership are appropriate.
Review access with fictional examples. Have a staff member sign in with the intended role and confirm which offices are available. Ask that person to find the information needed for an ordinary task and then attempt an action that should require different permission. The second check matters because a workflow is only correctly configured when it enables necessary work and restricts unrelated work. Testing exclusively with an owner account will not show this distinction.
Document who maintains office membership when staff responsibilities change. Moving a person to a new location is an operational event, not just a line in a staffing spreadsheet. Access should be reviewed when someone joins, transfers or leaves. Include temporary coverage in the process so that a short-term need does not become permanent access by accident. Jelo’s role and office controls provide the configuration; the practice supplies the operating decision.
Make the active location visible in the workflow
When staff work across offices, the same patient or product can appear in different operational contexts. The important question is not only whether the person found the right record, but whether the next action belongs to the correct office. Ask staff to identify the active location before creating an appointment, preparing an order or recording a stock movement. That small habit makes a later discrepancy easier to trace.
A fictional example illustrates the issue. An employee starts the day at Office A, then helps Office B answer a scheduling question. The patient identity is correct, but the employee must still confirm the office and provider associated with the visit. If the next task is an optical order, the office holding the selected item may also matter. This is a training example, not a claim that Jelo automatically infers every intended location from the conversation.
During a demonstration, switch between the working-office view and any supported all-locations view. Have the presenter explain which actions are available in each context. In Jelo, the all-locations view is for supported reporting and review; staff switch to a working office for edits. Confirm the exact screens your practice needs. Do not assume that a location filter behaves identically in every report, integration or operational module.
Coordinate schedules without losing appointment context
Start scheduling configuration with the way providers and staff actually move. A provider who works different days at different offices creates a different planning problem from two providers who remain at their own locations. Write down those patterns and identify which person maintains changes. The software demonstration should use a realistic example of the practice’s arrangement, including the location a patient sees in their appointment information.
Test a normal booking and a location change. Ask how staff confirm the correct patient, provider, office and time before communicating the new arrangement. Include a rescheduled visit that still needs intake review or another preparation step. Your operating checklist should make clear who follows up on those tasks. Moving a calendar entry does not by itself prove that every related conversation or outside dependency has been resolved.
For patient communication, review the actual messaging setup for each office. Multi-location availability does not establish that every location has its own independent number or that all account relationships are configured the same way. Bring the names, phone numbers and sending requirements you need to the demo. Confirm the supported setup and the staff member responsible for reviewing replies, especially when one team supports appointments at more than one office.
Treat shared patient records as a reviewed handoff
A shared record can reduce the difficulty of locating information, but staff still need to understand its context. When a patient visits another office, the receiving team should know which information belongs to the current encounter and which information is historical. The clinician remains responsible for reviewing relevant history and documenting the actual visit. Software access does not replace that review.
Build a handoff exercise around a fictional returning patient. Have staff locate the patient, review the intended appointment and find the information needed for the next step. Ask the receiving clinician to identify the current encounter and explain how they would distinguish it from earlier records. This exercise tests navigation and context without using real patient information in a public demonstration.
Agree on a practice procedure for suspected duplicate or inconsistent records. Staff should know who investigates and how the issue is documented in the approved workspace. Do not solve an uncertain identity match by creating an extra record simply to keep the queue moving. The exact correction workflow should be demonstrated for your configuration. A useful acceptance result includes the normal path and the escalation path when the information does not agree.
Keep inventory quantities attached to physical reality
A shared catalog can describe the same frame variant across the practice, while quantities remain associated with the office that holds the item. That distinction matters when someone promises availability to a patient. A practice-wide total of two units does not establish that two units are available at the office where the patient is standing. Staff need the relevant location and variant before relying on a stock figure.
Jelo supports authorized inventory transfers between configured locations. A transfer should be treated as a coordinated movement with a sending office and a receiving office. Review the exact item, variant and quantity before recording the action. Then reconcile both sides with the physical movement. Changing only an overall quantity makes it harder to understand whether an item was sold, transferred, damaged or simply counted incorrectly.
For a fictional example, Office A sends two units of a particular frame variant to Office B. The team should be able to explain which record identifies the movement, which staff member checks the received items and what happens if only one arrives. This guide recommends those operational checks; it does not promise a particular shipping, barcode or receiving automation. Demonstrate the supported transfer process and document any manual responsibility alongside it.
Build location-aware counts and purchasing decisions
Count inventory at the level where someone can verify it. If the practice compares a physical count at one office with a report that includes every office, a discrepancy is inevitable even when the underlying records are correct. Define the office, item categories and point in time before the count begins. Record whether normal selling and transfers continue during the count, because movements can change the expected quantity.
Use a short exception list rather than correcting every difference immediately. For each discrepancy, review the exact variant, recent transactions and any transfer that is still being investigated. Assign a person to resolve the issue and record the outcome. A count becomes more useful when it explains why the stock differs, rather than merely forcing the system total to match a number written on paper.
Purchasing decisions should also distinguish local demand from shared supply. One office may have an item another office needs, but a transfer is not automatically the right decision. Consider patient commitments, timing and the work involved. The practice can use its own stock information to make that choice. Do not assume automatic inter-office replenishment or purchasing unless the specific workflow has been demonstrated and included in your implementation scope.
Confirm financial scope before comparing offices
An office’s sales, payments and balances answer different questions. An order total is not necessarily a completed collection, and a recorded payment is not necessarily a bank payout. When reviewing several locations, write down which event a report counts and which date it uses. Otherwise, two people can reach different totals while both are looking at accurate records that represent different stages of the work.
Use a fictional order with a partial payment to test this distinction. Ask where the remaining balance appears and which office is associated with the transaction. Then review how an integrated payment is reconciled with processor records. Jelo uses Stripe for payment processing at 3.5% plus $1.30 per transaction. That rate is separate from the platform subscription; settlement timing and other processing terms need their own review.
Insurance and payer services are handled by Taiga at 10% of insurance reimbursement through Jelo’s AI biller service. Confirm how your locations, providers and payer accounts are represented in the service setup. Do not infer account structure, supported payer coverage or a particular reporting allocation from the fact that the platform supports multiple offices. Put the financial questions on the same acceptance sheet as the clinical and optical questions.
Validate integrations office by office
An integration can be correctly configured for one office and still require additional work for another. Review the actual accounts, credentials and supplier relationships needed at each location. For VisionWeb, that means checking the practice’s connected account and the labs and catalog options returned for it. The integration launched in September 2026, but its launch does not establish that every desired supplier relationship is already attached to your account.
For payments, confirm onboarding and account readiness for the intended operating structure. For messaging, confirm the provisioned numbers, registration, consent process and reply handling. For insurance services, review exact payers and enrollment requirements with the team. These are separate setup questions, even when staff experience them through one application. An implementation plan should show the outside dependency and the person responsible for completing it.
A useful test record names the office, account, transaction type and observed result. Avoid writing only “integration works.” That phrase becomes ambiguous when another employee tries a different lab, payment method or payer. Capture the response your staff can inspect and the person who handles an exception. This produces a more useful operational reference than a list of integration logos.
Compare reports using consistent definitions
Choose the purpose of a report before comparing locations. A staffing discussion may need appointment volume and completed visits. An inventory discussion may need quantities and unresolved count differences. A collections discussion may need payments received within a defined period. Combining these into an unlabeled “performance” figure can hide important differences in what the offices do and how their records are organized.
For any comparison, record the date range, office scope, event being counted and exclusions. Ask whether cancelled or rescheduled appointments belong in the selected cohort. For an inventory count, identify whether display stock or items already allocated to orders are included in the practice’s definition. The goal is consistency. There is no meaningful universal benchmark in this guide for what every office should achieve.
Use the practice operations worksheet to document your own aggregate counts. It calculates completed divided by eligible and treats a zero denominator as not applicable. A rate should be read with its underlying volume: eight completed items out of ten and eighty out of one hundred produce the same percentage but represent different workloads. Keep those counts visible when deciding where to investigate.
Roll out in a sequence your team can support
Multi-location availability means the capability is ready; it does not eliminate office setup. Decide whether the practice will configure and validate all offices together or use a sequence. Base that decision on staffing, existing systems, account readiness and the amount of change the team can manage. Record the acceptance requirements for each office so the rollout does not depend on an informal impression that things seem ready.
Start training with the tasks a person performs at their usual office. Then add the cross-office tasks they actually need. Staff who never move inventory do not need the same rehearsal as the person coordinating transfers. A manager who reviews combined information should be able to explain how the view differs from a working-office transaction. This makes training relevant and gives you a practical way to check understanding.
Before opening a new office in the system, rehearse the complete visit with fictional information. Include appointment context, intake review, chart access, an optical order where relevant, payment status and a billing question. Add one deliberate exception involving the wrong office or an unavailable item. The purpose is to confirm that the team notices the context and knows how to correct it before real work depends on the configuration.
Calculate the subscription and preserve exit options
Jelo is priced per location, with unlimited doctors and staff at each paid location. One location costs $300 per month or $3,000 per year, paid upfront. Two locations therefore cost $600 per month or $6,000 per year for the platform. Three locations cost $900 per month or $9,000 per year. These are subscription calculations, not complete operating budgets; processing, insurance services and other applicable charges remain separate.
Review access to your records as part of the same decision. Jelo offers data exports for your own analytics and helps practices move to another system when needed. Cancellation is free. Confirm the export scope and the treatment of prepaid fees in the applicable agreement. Do not assume that a receiving system accepts every format or that a practice-wide export automatically matches the way you want to divide records between locations.
Bring your office map, staff roles and required connections to a demo with Joel or Loreli. Ask the team to demonstrate one ordinary cross-office workflow and one exception. Leave with the supported configuration, commercial scope and unresolved dependencies written down. That gives the practice a basis for expanding its operations while keeping the meaning of each location clear to the people doing the work.
A short acceptance checklist for the second office
Before relying on a new location, have an authorized staff member show the selected office, locate the correct patient and identify the scheduled provider. Have an optician locate a specific variant at that office and explain a transfer example. Have the person reviewing finances identify which office and period a balance or report covers. Record the result and the person who observed each demonstration.
Then review an employee who works across offices. Confirm the intended memberships and verify that changing working location does not cause the person to lose track of the current task. Include an employee who should have access to only one office as a separate permissions check. These examples test different responsibilities and should not be treated as interchangeable simply because both users can sign in.
Finally, review the external dependencies for that office. Name the lab account, payment arrangement, messaging setup and insurance requirements the team will rely on. Identify any unresolved item before the office begins using it for real work. A completed acceptance record gives the practice something concrete to revisit when a new employee joins, an integration changes or a third location is added.