The monthly lease payment is the number everyone negotiates. The cost per page is the number that
quietly decides what you spend.

What a Click Charge Is

Most business copier agreements bill a small amount per printed page, usually called a click
charge or cost per page. It covers toner, parts, labor and the service that keeps the machine
running. Mono and color are billed at different rates, and the gap between them is large —
color typically costs several times what mono does.

The rate itself matters less than three things people rarely check.

The Three Things That Actually Cost You Money

Whether color pages are billed as color when they are barely color. A page with
a colored logo in the corner can be billed at the full color rate. Some agreements offer a tiered or
low-coverage color rate. Ask.

What happens above your allowance. Many agreements bundle a page allowance into
the monthly payment, with overage billed on top. A low monthly figure with a tight allowance and a
high overage rate can cost more than a higher payment with realistic volumes.

Whether the rate escalates. Click charges often rise annually by a fixed
percentage. Over a five-year term that compounds into real money, and it is easy to agree to
because it is small at signing.

The Bigger Saving Is Not the Rate

If you want to reduce what printing costs, the click charge is rarely where the money is. The
money is in the fleet.

A desktop printer typically costs several times more per page to run than the department machine
ten feet away. Most offices have accumulated too many small devices and too few of the right ones,
usually because individual printers were bought piecemeal on somebody’s card. Retiring those and
routing volume onto properly sized machines saves more than any negotiation on rate.

Sensible defaults help too. Duplex by default halves paper. Mono by default for internal
documents moves a surprising share of pages off the expensive rate without anyone losing the ability
to print in color when it matters.

That is the core of what a managed print program does:
measure what the estate really prints, then right-size it.

Duty Cycle Is Not Monthly Volume

One specification trips up nearly everybody. Manufacturers publish a duty cycle,
which is the maximum a machine can produce in a peak month, and a recommended monthly
volume, which is what it can sustain over its life. They are very different numbers, and
proposals sometimes quote the first as though it were the second.

An Epson AM-C6000, for example, is rated for a recommended volume of 10,000 to 60,000 pages a
month. If someone quotes you a figure several times that, they are quoting the peak. Run a machine
at its duty cycle routinely and you will meet your service technician often.

What to Ask For

  • Mono and color rates, in writing, with any escalation stated.
  • The page allowance and the overage rate for each.
  • Whether a low-coverage color rate is available.
  • The recommended monthly volume of the machine being proposed, not the duty cycle.

We will quote against your actual page counts and tell you when a smaller machine is the better
answer. Call (888) 242-4242 or
request an assessment.