Printing costs

[synaesthesia]

Hi all,

 

This is a cheeky request but I'll ask never-the-less!

 

We manage our printers on a shoestring. No, not quite a shoestring, those can be quite long. We manage it on dental floss!

 

Would anyone be able to share rough pupil & staff numbers and annual printing consumable costs?

Feel free to PM if you don't want public. We're basically facing a small conundrum in that we manage because we have some stupidly low running-cost printers that are no longer viable (the new versions are unreliable cack) meaning future printer purchases are likely to be twice the cost to run. And some like for like figures might help various people rethink; either more budget (unlikely!) or allowing more control with Papercut!

 

many thanks

[FishCustard]

I can't really help with figures, as we're in the process of standardizing our printers to reduce costs (costings from last year would be abnormal, way more than they should be). However, there's nothing wrong with running old, cheap-to-run printers. If the ones you've got are at the end of their lives, buy 'new' oldies from eBay.

 

I've been replacing toner-eaters like Samsung ML-5510s with HP LaserJet 4250s - less than half the running cost and more reliable to boot. Sure they might not be 'ooh, shiny new' but they work, and that's all that matters.

Edited June 20, 2013 by FishCustard

[Sunnyknight]

Use papercut.

 

Also, we spend in the region of £££££.

[synaesthesia]

We do use papercut but there's only so much we can control without some proper backing from SLT.

 

The printers we use are Xerox Phasers, half the running costs of anything with a HP label on certainly. This is hence the concern.

We can't and won't buy printers from eBay, and new models are crap. The ones we have are very much aging and showing it.

[hallb15]

Install the free version of Papercut which allows you to monitor print usage and identify who is printing what, i.e. documents type, colour or mono, paper size, etc...

 

We don't use desktop printers anymore, we have several multi-function photocopiers around school which we pay a fixed quarterly price for rental and service, then a per page cost for pages printed.

 

This works out cheaper for us (although cheaper is still a lot of money given the amount printed!)

I can PM you more details if you like.

[synaesthesia]

I shall hasten to highlight that in the first post I did say *we do use Papercut*

[RichB]

we spend 40k a year on toner, 5k on printers, 2k maintaining them. We use PCounter to manage the "credits" however this system is useless without SLT backing.

 

1400 pupils, 230 staff.

[hallb15]

I shall hasten to highlight that in the first post I did say *we do use Papercut*

Sorry - I missed that!

PM coming your way...

[synaesthesia]

No worries fella, you weren't the only one

[psydii]

Yes, once your printers are a sunk cost, and you are able to run on recycled/re-manufactured toner it is very very difficult to replace without a substantial jump in costs. That is what happens when an organisation sweats its assets to get the very last drop of value from them.

 

We now charge full cost recovery for our devices (Hardware, 3 year warranty, per page toner, paper) we could tell how much each printer was being used, and worked out that in order for a printer to be able to recover costs without making charges unreasonable each printer needed to do a minimum of 20K pages per year. If a team/individual wanted a printer and the volume was going to be substantially less than 10K we now put a £100 pa service charge against their account (£300 for colour).

 

800 Students

40 printers (including some MFDs/Photocopiers on lease)

1.5M Pages per year

3.5p A4 Mono

7p A4 Colour

7p A3 Mono

 

(A3 Colour is charged outside of this process - art and dt have specialised inkjets, SLT use a MFD on a separate contract) We chose best value printers to match our volumes. Some consolidation was necessary.

 

Over three years we are able to replace all printers and toner through a zero balance account. Departments were initially unimpressed with the increased costs to them, however a perfectly working print system has won them round.

 

We replaced the oldest/most troublesome devices and set the universal charging in year 1, and then replace remaining devices as needed/through a rolling programme over the next few years.

 

While in theory we now replace all printers every three years, the printers look very likely to be good for 5+ years at the current volumes, which will provide a little war chest to fund, say, a few Riso's which will in turn bring costs down again.

 

Again also in theory the increased cost to the departments will encourage them to think carefully about printing and look for alternatives (supporting the VLE and digital learning tools).

Edited June 20, 2013 by psydii

[Novalee]

I agree with Halb - also this way all departments are responsible for paying their own copies as you can bill back to them - all comes from the same pot at the end of the day but if they are using their own departmental budget they will soon start to cut down a bit.

[edutech4schools]

EDIT:

we have several multi-function photocopiers around school which we pay a fixed quarterly price for rental and service, then a per page cost for pages printed.

 

My primary schools are looking at replacing all printers with MFP under contract.

 

Colour print cost of single page on a hp 3600 printer is about 40p per page. MFP = 5p + quarterly cost.

[synaesthesia]

This is where we struggle to understand the pricing of contracts/management. We pay circa 0.6p per page regardless of what's on it

[hallb15]

This is where we struggle to understand the pricing of contracts/management. We pay circa 0.6p per page regardless of what's on it

You won't get anywhere near that per page cost with a managed service. Best I have seen is 1.25p per colour page and that was a big RISO Comcolour (inkjet) printer.

 

What you get with a managed service though is just that - they supply all toner and replacement parts on an 'on demand' basis. The newer models feed back to the supplier via the internet so you automatically get toner supplies or engineers on site without having to ring them.

[psydii]

I'm guessing that 0.6p per page does not include covering lease/capital costs, maintenance plan or paper?

[synaesthesia]

0.6p per pages covers ink and maintenance kits. Colour ink costs the same as black. There's no leasing involved, they're bought outright, and the running costs compared to the next best thing (HP) pays for the printer (which is relatively expensive) within a year's usage. We've not really had to worry about ongoing maintenance as they look after themselves.

I suppose it would be handy to get some costs together at some point for the managed services but I can imagine things would have to be even further controlled for them to become cost effective. Plus we don't particularly want to be hounded by some service suppliers currently! 10k to run the printers (paper isn't our problem!) for a school near identical to @RichB in size isn't much but so far we've survived. We're trying to make sure we're not going to hit trouble in the near future.

 

Rather hoping the troublesome Phaser is a one off and we can continue to use them but still it doesn't hurt to keep other options in mind. Only real problem is Xerox's warranty support is crap.

Edited June 20, 2013 by synaesthesia

[tmcd35]

We have 850 pupils and 120 staff. Currently we budget £12,500 per year for toner and spend £18,000+. We also budget about £4000 for replacing printers each year. I've just sent out tender specs to four suppliers to see if a leased management solution would be better/cheaper for us.

[psydii]

@synaesthesia what volumes per device do you see? If we were up at 30K pages per device per year our running costs (excluding paper) would be similar.

[synaesthesia]

Depending on location, it would be between 30 and 40k.

[psydii]

It sounds very much like you are in the sweet spot. If your question was motivated by needing to select a new workhorse device, have you looked at the Kyocera FS 5350DN? Edited June 20, 2013 by psydii

[synaesthesia]

Not as yet, no. We've got a few of their B&W lasers and have been quite happy with their support and the quality of the machines themselves. May well be worth looking at as a result, many thanks!

[Disease]

We have 900 pupils and 130 staff I have managed to get my toner budget down to £5k pa and £1k on printers, just bought 5 HP X451's to replace more expensive LaserJets. Fast prints lower running costs and TCO.

[Pyroman]

It sounds very much like you are in the sweet spot. If your question was motivated by needing to select a new workhorse device, have you looked at the Kyocera FS 5350DN?

 

We have a pair of FS-C5350DN and the print quality is great, not sure on the costs but because it's on a managed print contract then the money for printing doesn't come out of ICT budget it comes out of "contracts" i think, either way it saves me some cash to buy other more useful things. The wastage though is unreal, people print loads of stuff and it ends up straight in the recycling bin because people don't collect their work. Papercut is great though, now i've watermarked everyones documents i can hand printing to people directly and tell them off at the same time for leaving it to go in the scrap bin

[supawat1]

We pay 0.3p on colour and 0.004 on mono and quarterly fees is about £500 for two Photocopiers

[tekins]

Hi, I work with synaesthesia, our actual print costs for our busiest printer over the last 6 months work out at 2.5 pence per page, this includes the cost of the printer (/8 as 4 year minimum lifespan), and the maintenance kits, but not paper as this isn't my concern. Total cost over 6 months was £680 for nearly 25700 pages, this is for colour prints, including lots (and lots) of full page colour prints.

 

We had a quote a couple of years ago at about 6p per page for a managed deal, so I don't think we'll improve on what we've got. I'll let 'em carry on printing and when the money has gone, well, tough! :-)

@supawat1 - those figures look ok, but the quarterly fees would be more than our total costs, even taking into account maintenance etc.

 

We have had only one of the phasers go wrong, and eventually! they replaced it with a new one. So, better the devil you know and all that.

Edited June 21, 2013 by tekins