The Datamax Thinking Blog

Educating, collaborating, and sparking ideas for maximizing the technology that matters.


Hidden Costs of Printing Part 2

As we mentioned in a previous post, there are many printing costs that aren’t apparent at first. Only once you've made your purchase and begun using the equipment do these expenses begin to show. Here are just a few more.

Repair costs on a $100 inkjet printer may never be a consideration, but as larger workgroup and departmental printers break, it is not as practical to simply replace those devices. Sometimes the repair is as simple as replacing a feed roller, sometimes it requires more work. You can have someone on staff repair the device, but without proper experience, it could actually cost you more in wages and opportunity costs than you realize. You might outsource that, but if your repair contract is in line, you may be paying far more for that repair than you should.

Perhaps the most misunderstood cost is that of operational inefficiencies. When employees walk too far to retrieve a print or print to a more costly device, this is print cost that you must pay for. If you consider the cost per print, you may not be spending that much. However, if you consider the cost per prints actually used, you may be spending even more.

Chances are, the costs of print reproduction in your organization are much higher than you think. The fact is, when something is not tracked, it cannot be improved. It may seem like a daunting task to try and figure out what you are actually spending, but we can help you with that. By conducting a total print assessment, we can help you identify your hard costs as well as start to understand your soft costs. What’s better is that we can help you track these costs on an ongoing basis to help keep your costs in line with your budgets.