Question : Problem: Printer/Toner Break Point

Hi all.

I was wondering if there is some kind of industry norm/rule about calculating or figuring out what the breaking point of a printer/toner is. In other words, we want to know at about how many pages is it more economical to print a job on our Brother printers as opposed to sending it to a printing company or even Kinko's.

We've been keeping a history of page usage and toner changing for about 5 months now, but I don't know how to work with that data to figure out at what point should a department send a print job to Kinko's or send it to our Brother printers.

Any ideas would be great!

Thank you in advance.

Answer : Problem: Printer/Toner Break Point

Based on current usage, estimate the total costs for toner and paper over the life of the printer, and add the cost of the printer.  Estimate how much electricity the printer will use in that time and calculate the electricity cost, than add up all the costs and divide by the estimated number of pages that will be printed.  This will give you the cost per page, which you can compare against Kinko's.  The total life of the printer will depend on how reliable it is and how often your company replaces printers to upgrade to new technology.  For accounting, most office equipment can be written off over three years, but good printers can physically last over 10 years.