TIP #1 — Understand the Difference Between CLICK CHARGE and COST PER PRINT

Copier companies in Denver and the Front Range stay in business by having consistent revenue from prints come in each month from hundreds or thousands of different customers. As a printer company, the main mistake we see people making when they purchase their copier is they sign up for way too many pages per month. They treat their copier much like we used to treat our cell phone coverages. “Always be safe an pay for pages so there are no overages.” The problem is that with copiers, the overages are usually fairly consistent with the per click cost. Let me give you an example…

A healthcare company we work with were paying $500 per month to have 80,000 prints per month on their copier (AN AMAZINGLY LOW $.00625 PER COPY). If done consistently, this cost would put a copier company out of business assuming the Healthcare group actually printed 80,000 pages per month. Instead, their average was closer to 35,000 pages per month. So the “amazing” deal they thought they were getting of prints at $.00625 per print actually was costing them $.0142 per page (MORE THAN DOUBLE). When we came in at $.01 per print it appeared higher than the $.0065 they thought they were paying. The mistake they made was that they were paying for 45,000 unused pages per month. The $.01 we were charging would actually save them $1,800 per year compared to the “$.0065” they were paying for their prints. This is by far the most common mistake. Customers look at their per click charge and they don’t look at their actual per print cost. In this case, they were paying about $.008 per actual print more than they thought they were because they were paying 45,000 pages they forgot to consider when analyzing costs.

WHEN LOOKING AT YOUR PER PRINT COSTS, MAKE SURE YOU TAKE THE AMOUNT YOU ARE PAYING AND DIVIDE BY THE ACTUAL NUMBER YOU PRINT, NOT YOUR INFLATED BASE NUMBER OF PRINTS IN THE CONTRACT.