Archive
How to Save Money on Color Printing & Copying
Color copying and printing can be a very large expenditure for many companies worldwide today.
The Gartner Group reports that companies spend between 1-3% of total annual revenues on printing.
So if your company’s revenue is $20 million per year your spending between $200,000.00 and $600,000.00 on print output. That’s a lot of money.
Working in the industry myself I suspect that that many companies are over the 3% mark.
Whichever way you slice it, it’s a big expense.
Furthermore, the cost of printing a color page is typically around 10 times the cost of a black page.
For example you may spend a penny to print a black page but 10 cents to print color. The ratio can vary slightly but suffice it to say that color printing can be a real drag on your organizations bottom line.
Over the years I’ve had many customer tell me that they wish there was a better way to do color printing. A way that they could lower the cost of color printing without having to block employees from using color.
In my experience telling employees to print less color just doesn’t work. For many organizations it’s just not an option because color printing is necessary.
Proposals, presentations, brochures, drawings and graphic artwork are things that companies just have to print.
Over the last few decades there has been few technological advances that would allow companies to save on the expense of color printing.
//pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js
(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});
Until now.
Kyocera has developed technology for their multi-function copiers and desktop printers that finally allows companies to pay for the amount of color that is printed on the page as opposed to paying a flat rate for all color prints no matter how much color is put on a page.
It’s called 3 Tier Color Pricing and it’s only available on Kyocera copiers and printers.
As the name implies there are 3 tiers of color pricing depending on how much color is used.
Tier 1- Simple Color (Low Color Coverage)– An example of tier 1 would be a document that is all black except for a color company logo or letterhead.
Tier 2- Business Color (Medium Color Coverage)– A report that is mainly black text but has a few color charts or graphs.
Tier 3- Creative Color (High Color Coverage)– Pages that are printed with a lot of color like a brochure or product collateral.
This is a very big deal. By replacing existing color copiers and printers to Kyocera equipment your company can potentially send thousands of dollars to your companies bottom line.
To take the mystery out of how much you can save by switching you can send samples of color documents that you print regularly to your local Kyocera Direct sales representative (for example, me) and they can run them through a Kyocera copier or printer in order to tell you which tier your documents fall in and how much that print would cost you.
No matter how much color your organization prints you can save money. Sometimes significant money.
If you’d like to find out more or test your documents just call me directly or fill out the simple form below. Contact me, Ed Worthington, directly at 443-570-0414.
My company provides Kyocera copier and printer sales and service in Maryland, Washington DC, Delware and Northern Virginia. If you’re not located in one of those areas contact me anyway and I’ll point you to a Kyocera contact in your area anywhere in the United States.
Why not take a minute to do it now? The savings could be considerable.
Thanks for reading and have a great day!
5 Questions to Ask When Leasing a Copier
When it comes time to lease a new copier for your business things can get a little complicated.
You need tread very carefully when doing your research and getting your proposals together.
Depending on the size of copier you need this could be a significant acquisition for your business.
If you’ve leased a copier before you know that there can be a lot of questions to ask to make sure you don’t get burned.
Believe me when I say that organizations of ALL sizes get burned on a regular basis when leasing a new copier.
I know because they call and email me all the time after reading my cautionary blog posts. Like the one you’re reading right now.
I’ve been contacted by organizations locally here in the in Baltimore, MD & Washington DC area as well as all over the world. Literally.
I’ve helped people in the US, Australia, the UK, South Africa, Kenya and several other countries in Africa.
What I’ve found very interesting is that no matter where they’re from the issues these organizations have with copier companies seem to be the same.
In other words, the tricks and gimmicks used by unethical copier companies seem to be about the same no matter where they’re located.
In order to get treated fairly there are many questions you could ask prospective vendors about their copier lease but I’ll give you 5 really important ones here.
1) What kind of copier lease are you quoting me? Fair Market Value or Dollar Buy Out?
90% of the time when leasing a copier you’ll be offered either a Fair Market Value Lease or a Dollar Buy Out Lease.
The first type of lease is the Fair Market Value Lease. This is the most common of all copier leases. About 99% of the copier leases I write are fair market value leases. The way that this lease works is that at the end of the lease term the leasing company will tell you what the fair market value of that machine is and then you can buy it from them for that amount of money.
Kind of like a Kelly Blue Book valuation for copiers.
If you don’t want to buy the copier for the fair market value than you will be required to send the copier back to the leasing company at your expense. Typically if you lease a new copier from the same copier company they will come pick the machine up from your office and pay the shipping charges to send it back to the leasing company.
Copier companies do this as a thank you for leasing another copier through them. This is a helpful service that copier companies offer because if you had to send the copier back yourself in my experience you’d be looking at any where from $200.00 for a small copier up to $500.00 plus for a larger machine.
We provide this service here at my company and I like the fact that my customers can focus on the core tasks in their business and let me take care of the copiers. We remove the old copier and install and network the new one within an hour or so. My customers literally have to do nothing and I feel that’s how it should be.
The second most common type of lease is the $1 Buyout Lease. Although it’s the second most common it’s only about 1% or less of the leases I see in my day to day work.
The $1 buyout lease means that at at the end of the lease term you can “buyout” the copier from the leasing company for one dollar. Now you may be wondering why you would choose any other type of lease over this one. The answer is that this lease will cost you more than the others in interest and fees during the life of the lease but in the end you will pay less than a fair market value lease.
So should you choose a fair market value or a $1 buyout lease?
It may be helpful to think of the decision in the context of how you buy vehicles.
If you’re the type of person who finances a vehicle, keeps the vehicle over the term of the loan, pays it off and keeps the car as long as they can until it falls apart then you may want to consider a dollar buy out lease.
If you’re the kind of person keeps a vehicle for 2 or 3 years, trades it in because you like to have the newest, most efficient technology and don’t want the hassles that come with an aging vehicle than you may want to consider a fair market value lease.
Again, the Fair Market Value Lease is definitely the most common chosen option for businesses. As I stated earlier about 99% of copier leases these days are Fair Market Value.
2) What happens to the hard drive after the lease ends?
This is a very, very important question.
Virtually every copier that you can buy today will have a hard drive installed.
At the end of the lease when the copier leaves your office you have to make sure that it doesn’t end up in someone else’s hands with your company data on it.
There are a few ways of accomplishing this. You can have the hard drive removed and given to you, removed and destroyed or wiped clean of all data.
This is usually a service that your copier vendor provides but if they don’t you need to find a company that does.
This is not something you want to take lightly. If you do, bad things can happen.
Affinity Health Plan of New York was fined $1.2 Million because they sent copiers back to the leasing company without removing or wiping the hard drives.
2 years ago I wrote a short post on this blog about the incident and others like it.
The short post also included a very interesting CBS undercover video.
Click this link to watch the CBS undercover video.
Remember, in the end the Feds will come after you, not the copier company, if your customer’s data gets out.
Take the necessary steps!
3) Is property tax included in the copier lease payment or am I going to get a separate bill from the county?
This issue is one that has ticked off many business owners and executives.
When you lease a new copier your local county government will asses a property tax.
If the property tax is not paid by the copier leasing company than the organization that leased the copier (that’s you) is responsible.
So that none of my customers get a surprise bill for property tax , ALL of the copier leases that I write in my day to day work include the property tax.
Be sure to ask the copier sales representative if property tax is included in the lease. If they say yes, ask to see it in writing.
It may be uncomfortable to push the issue with the salesperson but remember, you have the right to see everything in writing.
If that’s a problem for them, I’d consider looking at other copier companies. More ethical ones.
4) Is the Copier Maintenance/ Service Agreement Rolled into the Lease?
When you lease a new copier you’ll want to put a service or maintenance agreement on the copier.
Typically copier maintenance plans are either billed as part the lease in which case you’ll only get one bill, or billed separately from your local copier company in which case you’ll get 2 bills.
One from the copier company for the service agreement and one from the leasing company for the lease.
5)If the answer to number 4 is yes than you should have a few follow up questions.
A) Can I adjust the minimum number of pages in the service agreement up or down?
All copier service agreements contain a minimum number of printed pages (copies or prints) as part of the agreement. Usually that number is based on your recent usage history. You have to be careful here because if you pick a number too high you could end up paying for a lot of copies/prints that you didn’t use and if you go too low you may end up with a large overage bill at the end of the quarter or year.
Copier Service Agreement Overage Example: You sign a service agreement with a monthly minimum of 5,000 black pages.
If you only use 4,000 pages that month you will still pay for the 5,000 because that was the minimum that you agreed to and signed off on.
If you were to use 5,500 black pages one month there are a few things that can happen. I’m not sure about other parts of the country but most copier companies in Baltimore, Maryland, which is where I’m located, will accrue those overage pages and bill you for them on a separate bill quarterly. The other option I’ve heard of is to bill the overages annually.
In this example we’ll use quarterly overage billing.
So if you printed/copied 5,500 black pages per month for the first quarter of the year than you would have accrued 1,500 overage pages for that quarter. 500 extra pages (over your 5,000 minimum) times 3 months = 1,500 overage pages. Sometimes copier companies will charge you an increased price per page for overage pages. This is something I’ve never understood because in what business do you penalize customers for buying MORE of our product than initially anticipated? But nonetheless some copier companies do it, so be sure to ask.
In the above example you would get a separate bill at the end of the quarter for 1,500 overage pages.
Here at my company we allow the customer to move their monthly minimums up or down whenever they want during the lease with no questions asked. Obviously this is the best case scenario and you should try and find a company that will allow you that freedom. If they say that they will do that you need to get it in writing.
B) Am I paying interest and/or any type of fees on the copier service/maintenance plan because it’s part of the lease?
Obviously when you lease a copier you will pay interest on the base amount of the copier. This is how the leasing company gets compensated for loaning you the money. If the copier maintenance agreement is included with the equipment in the lease than you may be paying interest and fees on the service agreement as well as the equipment. You want to avoid this if you can.
One way is to have the bill for the service agreement sent to you by your copier company. In other words, you pay the local copier company for the service agreement and the leasing company for the lease. You will get 2 bills but I think that’s better than paying interest on the maintenance agreement when you don’t have to. The interest on the plan can really add up over time.
The second and best way to handle this is when the copier company has a special arrangement with the leasing company to do what is called a pass-through. The way a pass-through works is that the leasing company will collect the money for the service agreement as part of the lease payment and pass it through to the copier company.
As part of this agreement the leasing company agrees to not to charge interest or fees of any kind to you the customer or the copier company your working with. They do this as a convenience for the copier company who is usually sending them a lot of new customers like you. In the case of a pass-through you the customer only gets one bill from the leasing company for once amount per month.
Here are our company we have a pass-through agreement with our leasing company. It’s a great feature.
6) Bonus Question Do I pay the shipping charges to get supplies (toner & other consumables) sent to me?
Even though many copier companies say that their copier service agreements include “everything but paper and staples” what they may not tell you is that you will be responsible for the shipping charges when supplies such as toner are sent to your office. This could be something you want to ask about and negotiate if possible.
Otherwise you may get a surprise invoice for shipping when you need a new toner cartridge.
I hope this list of questions was helpful to you.
As always if you have any questions don’t hesitate to contact me using the easy form below or call me directly at 443-570-0414.
Thanks for stopping by. Please tell anyone you know looking for a copier to check out this site in order to save money and avoid rip-offs.
If you’re in the Baltimore/DC Metropolitan area and are considering purchasing a new copier, printer, scanner. shredder, postage or mailing equipment please let me know. I’ll provide you with a fair, no BS proposal from our line of quality products from Xerox, Konica-Minolta, Lexmark and HP.
We also offer a full suite of document management and mobile capture software.
You can reach me at 443-570-0414 or edworthington@outlook.com.
Should You Include Copier Maintenance Plan Costs into Your Copier Lease? Updated
Back in March of 2014 I wrote a post titled, Should You Include Copier Maintenance Plan Costs in Your Copier Lease?.
At the time I was very against including copier maintenance plan costs (also referred to as a copier service plan) into the lease of the copier.
I noted that in many cases the reason the copier buyer does this is for the convenience of having to write only one check while some copier companies may be motivated by the fact that they can get interest and fees on the maintenance plan costs whereas if the maintenance plan is billed separately they don’t.
Please note that I said “some” copier companies may be motivated by interest and fees on the service plan. I don’t want to paint the whole industry with a broad brush. That really wouldn’t be fair.
While I still feel that it’s generally a bad idea to add the service cost to the lease I have discovered a new way to go about this.
A way that you can combine the lease and the service agreement together without paying ANY interest or fees of any kind on the service. The best of both worlds.
It’s called a pass-through. The reason it’s called a pass-through is that the leasing company will accept their monthly payment from the business who leased the copier and then pass the copier service/copier maintenance agreement portion of the payment back to the local copier company who sold the machine and performs the service/maintenance on the machine.
This is done without you the customer paying any fees whatsoever to the leasing company for passing the payment to the local copier company.
This can be a little confusing so I’ll sum up the whole process for you.
When you lease your new copier you purchase a service agreement on the copier.
A copier service agreement covers toner, repairs (including parts and labor) and preventative maintenance. All you have to do is buy paper. Everything else is covered.
When is comes to billing some copier companies will add the service/maintenance costs to the lease. The problem with this is that you are paying interest and fees on the service plan.
It doesn’t have to happen this way because the copier company who sold you the copier and will service the copier can bill you separately for the copier service agreement.
In other words you pay the leasing company their payment for the copier and write a separate check to the local copier company for the service plan on the copier because they will be performing the service on your copier.
Many copier buyers love the convenience of making only one payment but don’t want to pay interest and fees on the service plan if they don’t have to.
This is where the pass-through comes in.
The leasing company sends the customer one monthly bill which includes the copier and the service agreement and then passes the service plan portion of the payment back to the local copier company.
The copier buyer is happy because they only had to cut one check.
It’s a great service that provides the best of both worlds for the copier buyer.
I now offer this single payment service to my customers here at my copier company in Baltimore so if you are in Maryland, DC, Northern Virginia or Delaware and would like a competitive quote from a copier salesperson who will tell you the truth (even when it hurts), please fill out the quick easy form below and I would be glad to help.
If you are anywhere else in the United States and would like my recommendation for honest copier companies in your local area fill out the form below and I’ll get back to you with the names of some trusted companies.
As always feel free to ask me any copier buying question and I’ll do my best to give you a solid answer.
Thanks for stopping by. Have fun.
Ed Worthington
Ed Worthington's Baltimore Copier Buying 667-228-4130 