Optometry Practice Bookkeeping & Accounting
Fairlight CPA runs the books, payroll, and tax for optometry practices — half clinic, half optical retail. Vision-plan exams, medical eye care, and a frame board full of inventory each need their own numbers, and we keep all three straight monthly.
✓ Books closed by the 15th ✓ Fixed monthly fees ✓ CPA-led team
The numbers problems optometry practices actually have
The optical is a retail store with retail problems
Frames and lenses are inventory: aging boards, shrinkage, vendor terms, and markup discipline. Most practices can't state their true optical margin after remakes and discounts.
Vision plans and medical billing are different worlds
VSP-style vision plans and medical eye-care claims (glaucoma, diabetic exams) pay differently and lag differently; mixing them muddies both the clinic and the optical.
Lab costs and remakes eat quietly
Lens lab invoices, remakes, and warranty work land after the sale — optical profit is only real once they're matched back.
Contact-lens revenue is thin and fast
High volume, low margin, heavy online competition: contacts deserve their own line so they don't dilute how the rest of the optical reads.
What Fairlight takes off your plate
The core engagement is the same discipline we run for every client — monthly close by the 15th, payroll, tax, and CFO-level reporting — built around how optometry practices actually make and spend money.
- Optical inventory accounting — frames, lenses, and contacts with margin by category
- Vision-plan and medical-billing revenue lanes reconciled separately
- Lab-cost and remake matching against optical sales
- Monthly close by the 15th; payroll for ODs and opticians
- Sales tax on retail where applicable, plus business and personal tax prep
The three numbers we keep in front of you
No fabricated benchmarks — your own numbers, measured the same way every month, so trends are real and decisions have a floor under them.
Optical gross margin
frames/lenses/contacts after lab costs, remakes, and discounts
Revenue per exam
exam plus capture — how much each patient visit turns into
Capture rate
exams that convert to optical purchases — the retail engine's pulse
Revenue cycle & tax notes
Revenue & reconciliation
Vision-plan remittances, medical ERAs, and POS retail settle in their own lanes against exams and sales; plan chargebacks and lab credits get matched rather than lost.
Tax & entity
Optical inventory valuation at year-end and equipment cycles (OCT, edgers) create timing decisions; retail sales tax stays filed cleanly apart from exempt exam revenue.
Simple, published pricing
Bookkeeping from $310/mo · All-In-One (books + tax + advisory) from $800/mo. Every fee is quoted and fixed in writing before any work begins.
Optometry accounting FAQs
Can you tell us our real optical margin?
Yes — after lab invoices, remakes, warranty redos, and plan discounts are matched to sales. It's routinely lower than owners assume, which is exactly why it's worth measuring.
We sell online and in-store — does that complicate things?
It adds a channel, not confusion: e-commerce contact sales get their own line and their own fees, reconciled like any platform payout.
What does it cost?
Bookkeeping from $310/month; All-In-One (books + tax + advisory) from $800/month. Exact fee fixed in writing after a short call.
Related healthcare specialties
Get the financial side handled
A free 15-minute call — bring your current setup, leave knowing exactly what clean, specialty-aware books look like for optometry practices.
The content on this page is for informational purposes only and does not constitute professional tax advice. Accounting and tax considerations for healthcare practices depend on individual facts and circumstances and are subject to change. See our full legal disclaimer.