If you have ever thought that you’re saving in the long run when you purchase copier equipment and run it until it no longer works, you’re not alone. There’s a misconception that because the equipment is paid for, it’s ultimately cheaper. However, you have to look at the whole picture to understand your true costs.

Using old equipment (by old, we mean 5-6 years old) with outdated features that may or may not be paid off, almost always does not trump leasing new equipment with all the latest features. How so?

To truly understand, you have to examine the total cost of ownership, not just take into consideration what a monthly payment may seem to cost. These include…

• Cost of ink/toner – if you are using printers instead of a copier, you have to keep a backup supply of ink for when you run out of ink.

The average cost of printer ink for a business is around $166/month – making that $2,000/year just in ink costs alone.

Important Tip: You can actually lease a new color copier for less than that per month, which includes your toner, service, monthly payment cost – the whole shebang!

• Productivity – newer machines are more efficient and require less time to manage (i.e. instead of paying an employee to work the machine an hour a day, you only pay for 10 minutes of their time).
• Capabilities – newer machines offer additional capabilities such as stapling, scanning and folding, reducing the amount of time you have to pay an employee or another company to do those activities.

Why You Spend Less When Leasing New Copier Equipment – Really!

Leasing a new copier costs less per month than what it costs to provide ink and service to an older machine – easily. You can pretty easily lease a new color copier for less than $100/month, and that includes all your costs.

It’s also important to recognize that the older the copier, the more expensive the service agreement will be because the price of that service agreement goes up each year as the machine gets older. This is because toner keeps going up in cost due to the effect of supply and demand as well as service rates may change each year, causing your costs to quickly skyrocketed with old equipment. On the flip side – when (not just if) something goes wrong with your equipment and you don’t have a service agreement, you’re going to be forking over some major bucks (hundreds, if not thousands) to fix it. Do you have enough in the bank for when this happens?

When you lease copier equipment you have the option to have the most up-to-date, high tech equipment on the market because you can upgrade at the end of your lease (or even sooner). With purchased equipment, that is not an option, unless you have a lot of cash flow.

Not sure if upgrading or leasing if right for your business? Get in touch with us, and we’ll walk you through all your best options!