Printing is more costly to your business than you may recognize. According to KSL TV, the average company spends $1,200 per year on print per employee before taking the cost of devices into account. As for the cost of printers, Gadget Review suggests that the average cost of an office printer is somewhere between $500 and $1,300.
Assuming the mid-point of $900 per printer based on Gadget Review’s figures and a user-to-printer ratio of five users to every printer, the costs soon mount up. If your business has 100 employees, you’ll spend $18,000 on buying printers for the whole office, with those printers also requiring maintenance and replacement every few years.
The good news is that there’s a better option – printer lease.
With a printer lease, you get access to the printers you need at a fraction of the cost. But you need to find the right service before moving forward, which is where this article comes in.
Why Choose a Print Lease Service?
Before we dig into what to look for from a print lease supplier, you have a simple question – why lease instead of buy in the first place?
Lower Your Costs
Beyond the upfront costs of buying your own printers mentioned earlier, a print lease solution benefits your bottom line in other ways. Maintenance is often covered, as is replacing out-of-date printers, and you may even find managed services that help you get on top of the $1,200 per year your employees spend on printing.
Simpler Taxes
Buying your own print fleet may put you in line to pay an Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT), which is a secondary tax system that can lead to you paying more tax than your business otherwise would. Leasing keeps things simple. You can claim the cost of a lease as a business expense without having to worry about AMT or the depreciation of your print assets.
Flexibility
Imagine that you’ve just bought a new fleet of printers only to get hit with market changes that force your company to downsize. Now, you’re left with a bunch of expensive printers and no way to use them or recoup your full costs on them. Print lease solutions offer the flexibility needed to confront market growth (or shrinkage) as it happens.
Stay Up-to-Date
An out-of-date printer can do a lot of damage to your business as it struggles to chug along with the demand placed upon it. It’s like trying to drive a car with an old engine – the car sputters, and you’re constantly spending money on repairs. With a print lease, you usually get access to modern printers with options to upgrade (based on the lease conditions).
Three Tips for Choosing a Print Lease Service
We can boil the reasons why a print lease is a good solution down to three things – saving money, more flexibility, and getting access to modern print solutions. But none of that matters if you don’t pick the right service provider.
Tip 1 – Understand the Print Lease on Offer
Not all print leases are made equal, meaning a supplier may not necessarily offer a simple lease agreement where you pay a monthly fee for access to devices. There are three types of print lease that you may get offered:
- Operating Equipment Lease – As the most traditional form of leasing, this option is the most common. You pay to rent your print equipment for a specified amount of time, often with maintenance, repairs, and supplies thrown in, depending on the nature of the lease. When the specified time ends, you return the equipment or renew your print lease.
- Capital Lease – With this agreement, any device you lease is counted as an asset for your company, meaning you must declare it on your taxes. While that can be advantageous (especially when it comes to accessing tax credits), it also means you have to deal with many of the downsides of ownership, such as maintenance and liability insurance.
- Lease-to-Own – Think of this like taking out a financing option on a printer you’ll eventually own, with the downsides of financing attached. You’ll pay a monthly fee to lease your printer, with a portion going toward an eventual purchase while the rest goes into the pockets of the leasing company. It’s a route into ownership if you can’t afford to buy a printer upfront, though you’ll spend more on the printer over time than if you bought it outright.
Always check the nature of your print lease agreement and be wary of any company that tries to shield this information from your eyes.
Tip 2 – Consider Your “Must-Haves”
Your printing needs aren’t the same as the needs of the office down the road, meaning you need a supplier that’s flexible enough to meet your needs. In other words, don’t get roped into a supplier’s standard package if that package doesn’t provide the types of printers you need.
A good supplier offers flexibility and arms themselves with an understanding of how your company uses its print solution. Tell them what you need. Don’t let them dictate what you “have” to pay for in your lease.
Tip 3 – Check Quality of Service
A print lease supplier that shuts up shop and stops communicating once it has your money is a supplier that will be a nightmare to deal with if you have a problem. Test the company for responsiveness, both by timing how long it takes for them to communicate when you send a query and by looking at customer reviews focused on their customer service.
Ideally, you’ll work with a supplier that offers a consumables monitoring service (ensuring you never run out) and has a team of technicians ready to respond to issues in hours rather than days.
Choose Docutrend as Your Printer Lease Partner
Finding the right print lease is all about understanding what the leasing contract offers in terms of the lease type, customer service, and flexibility. Lacking even one of those components can result in your business getting a service that’s more costly than it needs to be.
At Docutrend, we work directly with our clients to provide the best possible printing solutions. If you’d like to discuss a print lease (or have any other print queries), we offer services to companies in New York, Totowa, Pennsauken, Edison, and Ft. Washington. Get in touch today, and let’s work together to ensure print doesn’t have to be a pain for your bottom line.