I must start with a confession, in the past when I’ve looked at a school’s printing costs I’ve zeroed in on photocopiers supplied by salesmen wearing suede coats and trilbies. It has therefore come as a bit of a revelation to me to find that by far the biggest costs are incurred in classroom printing and these costs are based on a complete misnomer, i.e. toner yields.

A couple of quick examples illustrate the point: –

HP M451dn A4 Colour Printer running costs

5% coverage      =             3.28 pence

15% coverage    =             9.85 pence

20% coverage    =             13.14 pence

40% coverage    =             26.28 pence

90% coverage    =             59.12 pence

 

HP CP5225dn A3 Colour Printer running costs

5% coverage      =             2.26 pence

15% coverage    =             6.78 pence

20% coverage    =             9.04 pence

40% coverage    =             18.08 pence

90% coverage    =             40.68 pence

 

We’re as guilty as anyone in quoting printer running costs to schools  based on 5% coverage (this only equated to half a page of text) when in actual fact schools are more likely to be printing off a lovely picture from an iPad which would equate to 90%+ coverage costing between 40p and 60p per sheet.

To get an idea of what these percentage figures look like, view our Black and White Coverage PDF and our Colour Coverage PDF.

I certainly feel this is an area that a lot of schools simply pay without being fully armed as to what the real costs are, what they’re made up of and what they can do to drive them down.

 

To help you get your head around this we can do a Print Audit completely free of charge. We’ll identify your true print costs based on page volumes and printer usage and demonstrate where you can save money. In every school where we’ve done this we’ve saved at least 30% from their printing bill with one school saving almost £6,000 per annum!

 

If you’d like to book a completely free of charge Print Audit please contact us on (0191) 386 6222 and we’ll scheduled one in.