Split the statement before reading it
The first deliverable is a contribution view that separates clinical from dispensary economics. Clinical revenue is partly price-controlled: OHIP sets the fee for insured exams, you set the private fee, so the levers are throughput, fee design and what happens in the pre-test flow. The dispensary is a retail business wearing a clinic's rent, with frames, lenses, lab costs and optician time against every sale. Once shared costs are allocated on a defensible basis, the statement starts answering questions: which side funded the quarter, which side is drifting against the online sellers your patients compare you to, and whether the dispensary is earning its floor space or just occupying it.
The numbers that run an optometry practice
| Number | The question it answers |
|---|---|
| Capture rate | Of the prescriptions written here, how many are filled here? |
| Average dispensary sale | Are lens options and second pairs being offered, or assumed away? |
| Revenue per exam hour | Is the schedule, the fee sheet or the pre-test flow the constraint? |
| Contact-lens reorder retention | Is recurring revenue staying, or migrating to online reorder? |
| Frame inventory turns | How much cash is sitting on the board, and how old is it? |
We do not import industry benchmarks of dubious origin. The useful comparison is your own trendline, by month and by season, with targets set from your data and reviewed on a schedule. A practice that watches capture rate and average sale monthly stops guessing whether the dispensary did fine, because "fine" becomes a number with a date on it.
Optometry also has a season most statements ignore: the year-end benefits rush. Vision-care allowances reset for many patients on December 31, so the dispensary's fourth quarter routinely outruns the rest of the year. A CFO view plans for it deliberately — frame orders and lab capacity ahead of the surge, staffing through it, and a cash plan for the quieter first quarter that follows, when HST and tax instalments still come due on schedule.
Instruments, lanes and second locations
Capital questions are where a fractional CFO earns the fee. An OCT purchase gets a payback model built from privately billed imaging fees, exam-flow gains and the financing and CCA profile, before the demo unit ever arrives. Adding a lane competes against extending hours and bringing on an associate, and the model says which one buys more capacity per dollar. A second location is the biggest swing of all: a cold start against buying an existing practice, each with lease terms, staffing and a realistic ramp modelled in scenarios rather than optimism. Our Fractional CFO engagement runs these as decisions with numbers attached, on a cadence the practice can afford, which is the brand promise in miniature: your accountant files your taxes; we help you decide.
Financing with a former banker at the table
Walla Assaf spent years in banking and corporate finance before founding Tauro, and it shows most in how lenders receive our files. Equipment loans, acquisition financing and operating lines move faster when the package answers the credit questions before they are asked: historical statements, stream-split margins, projections that survive scrutiny. Business Financing Advisory builds that package, and where a lender wants CPA-prepared statements, compilation and review engagements sit alongside it. GTA landlords and bankers respond to preparation, and preparation is a deliverable, not a personality trait.
The rhythm is simple on purpose. Each period closes on stream-split books, the dashboard updates the handful of numbers above, and we meet to make the one or two decisions that are actually live: raise the private exam fee or hold it, reorder the board or cull it, commit to the associate or wait a quarter. Decisions get written down with the reasoning attached, so next year you can see not just what was decided but why, and whether the assumption held.
When the offer letter arrives
Consolidators and national chains are active buyers in Canadian eye care, and unsolicited offers reach good practices eventually. A CFO-grade response starts with knowing your own numbers: what the dispensary earns, what the exam schedule supports, what the lease allows, and what the offer actually values. Sellers who can defend a normalized earnings figure negotiate; sellers who cannot, accept. If a sale is even a distant possibility, structure and the $1.25 million capital gains exemption belong on the agenda years early, while there is still time to fix what needs fixing.
Every engagement is scoped and quoted in writing after a free 15-minute discovery call, with no hourly surprises.
