If you’re considering the option to lease a copier for your business, you may be surprised by the things you need to know before doing so. For one, there’s no easy answer to knowing how much leasing a copier will cost. Secondly, there are various factors involved when it comes to knowing the cost to lease a copier.
This article will help to shed some light to let you know what it is you need to know to determine if you should lease a copier and what it would cost if you did so.
What are the Advantages of Leasing a Copier?
As businesses grow, so do their needs. There’s more to print, more to copy, just more workflow and more work overall. No growing business can survive without having the options that come with having a good, functioning copier. So, knowing you need a copier, here are some of the top reasons to consider leasing a copier.
- Leasing a copier will keep you from having to spend so much on copier repairs, which means more money in your business.
- When you lease a copier, you also have the opportunity to stay up to date with your equipment. Most leases allow you the opportunity to exchange old equipment for new equipment after a period of time. That keeps you from having to expend your hard-earned revenue on more office equipment.
- You also have a little more flexibility with your equipment when you lease. For instance, you may have the option after a period, to purchase the copier at fair market value.
Factors To Consider When Leasing a Copier
Did you know that depending on the type of copier you need for your business, it could cost as much as $100,000 or more? That’s a lot. Thankfully, lease programs are available for many. That consists of paying a monthly charge to use their copier. So, if leasing is an option for you, it will be important to ensure you’re getting a copier that will meet your business needs. Here are some of the important factors to consider when leasing a copier to know you’re making a good business decision.
Equipment/Hardware
The equipment you decide to use for your business needs should be one that will be able to keep up with the growing demands of your business. Not all copiers can handle the same load of work. You may need to run 500,000 pages each month but have a copier that can only do about half of that. That means, you may spend a lot of money on service or repairs. In addition, think of the time wasted not being able to work because of copier maintenance issues.
Features
It’s not only important to have a copier that can keep up with the volume of work your business demands, but you’ll also need it to do more. Most copiers today are multi-functional, meaning they cannot only make copies. Today, they can scan, send emails, edit copies, fax, and more. Some copiers can even sort scanned receipts. Today’s copiers are much more than copiers, and no doubt, you’ll be needing most of that, if not all of it.
Features to consider for your copier:
- Booklet Making: Depending on the type of work your business does, this could be a necessity. Or, if you handle a lot of marketing products in-house, this would also be a nice-to-have feature for your business. The booklet making feature allows small booklets to be made. It also handles the folding, hole punching, and stapling.
- Card Readers: This is good for security purposes. This will help users to gain access to the machine or help to know who’s using the machine and what’s being copied or printed in the event spending needs to be tracked.
- Document Feeder: Some users would find this a necessary feature. Document feeders can be configured to include single pass and reversing options.
- Faxing: While it seems like faxing may be as old as the hills, some businesses still rely on this feature to transfer information. Your business may be among them.
- Fiery: This is an especially good feature for a marketing business that’s in need of high-level color matching, or not.
- Finishing: Having a finishing feature just makes everything so much easier. Having a machine to do some of the minute work for you: stapling and folding.
- Hole Punching: This is great to have if your business is in the habit of creating manuals or doing presentations with creative handouts.
- Large Capacity Paper Tray: If your business has a volume of work, then the larger the tray capacity, the better. This will only help increase efficiency in the office.
- Letter Folding: This gives your staff the ability to do this task without having to take additional time from their work to do it.
- Scanning: When we’re not faxing or emailing, we’re scanning a document to prepare it for email. This feature is extremely beneficial especially to a business that wants to convert their files to paperless.
- Software Upgrades: Machines are upgraded yearly it seems. You want to be able to handle the cost and demand of being able to upgrade your machine when needed.
- Wireless Printing: This is a great feature for any business, especially busy offices where hard-wire connection is limited for most users’ computers. Wireless printing gives the user the ability to print from any device and release the job from any machine connected within an organization’s network.
Color Options
You probably already know there’s a huge noticeable difference in price between the cost of color copies and black and white. That’s because color copies require more variations of toner to make the variety of colors required. Color toner also isn’t sold in as large of quantities as black and white, so it’s more expensive for manufacturers to produce. Black and white copies cost much less in comparison. So carefully evaluate whether or not color is what your business requires. Maybe a combination of mono (black and white) and color copiers is the better solution.
Final Thoughts
As stated earlier, the cost to buy a copier could be as much as $100,000, even higher depending on how sophisticated it is. So, is it better to lease a copier vs. buying? The cost to lease a copier on a monthly basis could be anywhere from $50 to $1,000 per month, if not more. Copier leasing can seem like the better deal at first glance. But in the end, after the math is done and all the costs are tallied, you want to make sure you’ve gotten the most bang for your buck; the machine that’s going to meet the growing demands of your business.
Should you decide to buy a copier, Docutrend is able to meet the major demands businesses deal with daily with our line of Canon and Kyocera copiers. Contact us so we can discuss your business needs.