What's actually going on
Almost all office copier service is sold per click rather than per visit. You pay a fraction of a cent per black page and a few cents per colour page, and that rate covers labour, parts and toner.
Because the rate is small, nobody checks it. A tenth of a cent on a million pages a year is a thousand dollars.
Minimum monthly volumes and annual escalators are where service agreements quietly get expensive.
What to do in the next 48 hours
- 1Find your click rates on your invoice and separate them from the equipment payment.
- 2Divide your total annual copier spend by your annual page count to get your real all-in cost per page.
- 3Check the contract for an annual escalator. Anything above five percent should be renegotiated or struck.
- 4Check whether you are paying a monthly minimum for pages you do not print.
The honest tradeoffs
- All-inclusive per-click agreements cost more per page than parts-and-labour billing, but they make budgeting predictable and remove the argument over what is covered.
- Time-and-materials service is cheaper on a reliable machine and brutal on an unreliable one.
Your next step
Questions people ask next
- What is a typical copier click charge?
- Black and white clicks on an office copier commonly run between half a cent and one and a half cents per page, and colour clicks between four and eight cents, with all-inclusive agreements covering toner, parts and labour. Rates fall as monthly volume rises.
- Does a copier service contract include toner?
- On most all-inclusive per-click agreements, yes — toner, parts and labour are covered, with staples and paper excluded. Always confirm in writing, because some agreements bill toner separately.
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