View Poll Results: What grade would you give to OfficeMate by Marchon?

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Thread: What grade would you give to OfficeMate by Marchon?

  1. #1
    OptiBoardaholic
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    What grade would you give to OfficeMate by Marchon?

    I am considering purchasing OfficeMate to replace our existing practice management software. Any feedback from those of you who have used OfficeMate (or from those who’ve simply heard good or bad things about it) would be most appreciated. (Specific comments about its scheduler, inventory/prescription tracking capabilities, or fee slip/accounting capabilities would be a bonus!)

    Thanks!

  2. #2
    Ophthalmic Optician
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    I used it a few years ago, so maybe its not fair to vote. When I put a new system in, I called them and they hadn't added much to the system that I could see, plus the support cost was too high for our tastes.

  3. #3
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    I am using the latest version and have used it for the last 4 years; I find it to be great for tracking inventory and fee slips. I also use it to generate lab orders and it does an excellent job with that. I do not use it to make appointments.

  4. #4
    Ophthalmic Optician
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    I think that one of the biggest problems with the programs (I've trialed 18 in the last 4 years) is that I didn't fiind one that did everything well. Some were great on point of sale, others were great with scheduling, still others tracked inventory better. None of them had the financial reports that compared to the $99 Quickbooks program.

    We ended up with Q-books along with a basic optical pkg. It works good enough, and I really like being able to seperate the financals from the pt data.

  5. #5
    OptiBoard Professional fletch's Avatar
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    I'm with Johns!
    Marchon wacks you every year for upgrades that you don't need! Quickbooks is great!

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    Would anyone advise buying a software package and not paying the yearly support/maintenance/upgrade fee?

    If it was good enough to buy to begin with, why is a yearly upgrade necessary?

    Do any of you really need to call the company for support often enough to make the support fee worth it -- and if you did need to call often, maybe the package wasn't worth buying after all?

  7. #7
    OptiBoard Professional fletch's Avatar
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    PAW
    many of these optical programs have bugs! If you don't buy the support and you have a problem your screwed!
    With quickbooks you just call the company! Or get a patch on line!

  8. #8
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    Isn't that funny how the software industry works? We pay them to fix their errors.

    Imagine this scenario: We sell the patient a pair of glasses by telling them the features and benefits the glasses offer them. And yet, the glasses aren't quite right. Then, imagine us handing the patient their glasses, and saying, "Oh by the way, we found problem with your glasses, and the charge will be $xxx to fix the problem."

  9. #9
    Ophthalmic Optician
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    The problem with many of the programs is that they should be much user friendlier than they are. W/ Q-books, you open the box, and off you go. Most programs charge you for training, and you have to go to them. After that, if you get stuck in a module and have to call support, they ding you for every call.


    I've used the Q-books program in other businesses I've had, and didn't think it would do what we needed for the optical-it does. We invoice, send statements and all the other financials. It was cheap enough to network on to all 5 of our workstations simply by buying the kits. Some programs wanted up to $15,000 plus $2500 per work station, PLUS a yearly licensing fee, plus traing charges, PLUS support fees. As I mentioned, I use another optical program to maintain all of our patient records/ schedule/ and recall. It is supposed to do financials, but that part of it was a joke. The good part is the program was dirt cheap (around $1500) and the OD that owns it has helped me a of a few jams when it went down due to no fault of theirs.

    Another problem with the programs we tried (we even bought one we thought we like for $3800) is that the people who write them don't know how we are going to use the reports, or how we invoice and bill, or many other facets of our office. The $3800 program was constantly locking up, and could not figure sales tax when it was not and even percentage, such as 6.55%. The company was out of Canada, and they kept blaming our hardware (Dell) for the problems. After another $1300 of support charges, we went to quickbooks and never looked back.

  10. #10
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    paw said:
    If it was good enough to buy to begin with, why is a yearly upgrade necessary?
    Upgrades are needed to ADD additional information that became available throughout the year. This may include new lense styles or frame styles, etc. Upgrades also take advantage of advances in computer hardware and operating software.
    If you upgrade yearly, we upgrade more often, you can save yourself money and time.
    Joseph Felker
    AllentownOptical.com

  11. #11
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    dependent on your situation (more than one store, inventory needs, recall needs) that there are other programs which have been created in the industry to help you. Give me some more details and I will be happy to recommend some systems to you, that my clients are working with.
    Last edited by ctoale; 02-02-2004 at 12:33 PM.

  12. #12
    Master OptiBoarder optigrrl's Avatar
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    I used to do a *little bit* of database administration. Having looked at Office Mate for the optical department of an ophthalmological practice I found that it was well executed for the front office but mediocre for optical.

    Certainly not worth the price for the optical applications, IMHO.

    If you are experienced in Quickbooks and/or Excel you can take the HOURS to build your own. In the meantime I am going to try out My Vision Express. It's cheap enough to play with - I will post my results later...

  13. #13
    Optiwizard making films Audiyoda's Avatar
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    One thing that should be cleared up here is licensing versus updates. Licensing is a software vendor's way of spreading the cost of their product out over time. Rather than have you pay a flat fee for the software, you license it's use from them - in turn they generally give you support and required updates (bug fixes, upgrades and so on).

    Updates generally fall into two different classes for software vendors - fixes and technical updates. Fixes should be comps because you did pay for or license software that should be usable. Technical updates can include upgrades, new information based on changes in the industry and the like. Generally, those updates are on you - meaning at the time you purchases or licensed your software it was working and up-to-date within the scope of your business.

    I have problems with companies that charge you for what should be free. I also have problems with companies that do not provide you with a usable package out the door - don't sell something that then requires additional modules or programming to work properly. I'm not classifying OfficeMate into this category - but there are packages on the market that fit that profile perfectly.

    I've only used OfficeMate sparingly - but I'm very computer savvy and I'll simply second what others have said. Clinically, OfficeMate is a good product out of the box. For retail optical, it's very lacking.

    I have yet to find a product that does both well - I've played with My Vision Express and honestly, I found the interface very lacking and not well thought out. Having a background in design research, I can see a software package that did no usability or playtesting a mile away. The designers need to revisit a lot of the interface for continuity, for ease of use and for common usability issues. But the program has potential.

    I've made no excuses here how much I loath Complink's Eyecare Advantage. It's a horrid program who's designers couldn't even write new code for a old DOS based program. Instead, they wrote a terrible GUI to overlay the DOS shell. So of course the GUI doesn't respond to a user like any other Window's based system. Not to mention the program is not ready to go out of the box. And there in no specific training they offer for the meat and potato's of the program - and there's a reason for that. They don't want you to know the meat and potato's - they want to handle programming the tables for you - at a considerable fee of course. Once you learn how to properly create the tables, you're amazed at how time consuming yet simple they are. But then there's no easy way to update them - so for any price change you literally need to create a new table.

    So far the best program I've played with - at least the program that for me felt like the most user friendly as well as usable was the new PMS from Williams Consulting, Practice Director.
    • It's open-source SQL database written in Java
    • It has a testing mode (something I've not seen in other packages) so new users can practice on it before going live.
    • It does to standard Demographics, Scheduling, offers a very flexible and customizable ledger, fully EMR, planned integration with Eyefinity/VSP and it's optical module is actually pretty powerful.
    Of course I'm most happy with the open-source database - since it's written in Java technically that gives you a ton of customizable options - hire a computer science major from your local college and you've got all sorts of customized reports you can pull from that database. But I've not played with the program enough to really sink my teeth into it.

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