Low Cost Prints? Be Wary….

When talking to customers, we sometimes discover that they look primarily at the cost of copies, but they fail to factor in the price of the copier. We wanted to warn customers about the danger of this thinking.

You have three major different sources that add to the cost of the copier, and a failure to consider each factor could crush your budget. The three factors include:

• Equipment
• Maintenance
• Supplies

A focus on a low cost per print fails to look at the equipment. While the rest of the costs do matter, you want to look at all three factors when deciding. It will paint a fuller picture. Let’s say you have a $9,000 copier that costs $.008 per print or a $3,000 copier for $.018 per print, and you want to own it after four years. How many prints will you need per month to break even?

First, you subtract $9,000 from $3,000, which gives a $6,000 differential. Next, you subtract $.018 from $.008, and that gives you a $.01 differential. In the final step you will divide the $6,000 by the .01 differential. You will need at least 600,000 copies to break even. That equates to 12,500 copies per month, so unless you are doing that many copies, you will lose money with the bigger copier.