Printing costs

[cprettyman]

all of a sudden, I have a whole raft of PMs and clients claiming that our printing costs are too high. So, I have been tasked with figuring ouhte going rate for a few things. Yes, of course there are a lot of variables, like volume, weight/quality of media, etc. But the naysayers see nne of that.

So, what do you ppay per square foot for black and white dprint on bond?

8.5x11 B/W print/copy?

8.5x11 Color Print/Copy?

Thanks
If you are in NYC, or another major metropolian areaa, that would be good to know.

[Anonymous]

On Thu, 27 Jul 2006 04:44:58 +0000, c.prettyman <> wrote:

>all of a sudden, I have a whole raft of PMs and clients claiming that our printing costs are too high. So, I have been tasked with figuring ouhte going rate for a few things. Yes, of course there are a lot of variables, like volume, weight/quality of media, etc. But the naysayers see nne of that.

Well, what you charge has nothing to do with them. If they think your
costs are too high, then they should look elsewhere. Do they explain
to their clients why they charge as much as they do?

>So, what do you ppay per square foot for black and white dprint on bond?
>
>8.5x11 B/W print/copy?
>
>8.5x11 Color Print/Copy?

If you want to go into the details of setting printing costs, get your
prices on paper. A3 and A4 sheets are relatively cheap. As soon as you
go to larger sizes the price climbs rapidly. Tracing and film are much
more expensive yet again.

Get an estimate on how many pages you can get out of an ink tank or
toner cartridge. Make sure you have an allowance for failed prints.
Normal linework drawings are not too bad, but large areas of solid
colour can see the ink used up very quickly.

Estimate how long it takes to print a drawing (make sure you account
for the full time).

Get the price of your printer and work out the depreciation on it.

Count all of this and you will get a true idea as to your costs.

I am on the other side of the world, but you can get some idea as to
the cost from my web site.

--

Regards,

Ian A. White, CPEng.

| /| / WAI Engineering
| /_| / Sydney 2000
|/ |/ Australia

www.wai.com.au

mailto:ianwhite@wai.com.au

callto://waiwhite on Skype

[Anonymous]

question... from reading this, I'd just like to clarify...
are you doing the printing in your office?

(just saying from my perspective, I don't do much in-house but send it
out... I occasionally get my castle stormed over the prices, but, I just
call around to half dozen repro houses in the city and show that, yes, the
one i use is among the lowest and with good service.)

good luck.

--
Melanie Perry
***not all who wander are lost***
http://mistressofthedorkness.blogspot.com/


wrote in message news:5249932@discussion.autodesk.com...
all of a sudden, I have a whole raft of PMs and clients claiming that our
printing costs are too high. So, I have been tasked with figuring ouhte
going rate for a few things. Yes, of course there are a lot of variables,
like volume, weight/quality of media, etc. But the naysayers see nne of
that.

So, what do you ppay per square foot for black and white dprint on bond?

8.5x11 B/W print/copy?

8.5x11 Color Print/Copy?

Thanks
If you are in NYC, or another major metropolian areaa, that would be good to
know.

[cprettyman]

We outsource all our printing, but the company that does it provides equipment and staff to do the majority of the printing on site - so we have three Oce TDS600's, Three HP5500PS's, Threee Xerox Doc12 (with fiery RIPS), 7 Canon Image runners, and about a dozen smaller B/W printers scattered around the office, and two staff - and all of that is from our printing company. The prices we negotiated with them when they set this up were way better than the prices of their predecesor, and better than the other bidders for the contract - so I was a bit surprised to get a lot of complaints all fo a sudden.

[Anonymous]

As plain text, this probably won't come out okay, but I pasted a spreadsheet
I use to evaluate our printing. It's based on cost per square foot and only
includes the cost of paper since (in theory) all of our overhead costs
(plotter lease & maintenance) are captured in our billing rate... If you
wanted to include that, add another $0.025 to any of our square foot costs.

I've also included pricing from three alternative vendors. Note that the
vendor pricing is from October 2005 and has probably gone up a bit.

I've you can't read it due to re-formatting, drop me a note directly and
I'll email you the excel file...


Printing Cost Estimates Per Sheet Costs based on 30x42" Sheets


3.5 Mil Mylar Our Cost A&E Pricing ABC Image Fabry

Cost/Roll Feet/Roll Feet/Sht Sht/Roll Cost/Sht Cost/Sht Cost/Sht
Cost/Sht
$119.50 150.00 3.50 42.86 $2.79 $18.00 $30.19 $17.50

Cost/Roll SF/Roll Cost/SF SF/Sht Cost/Sht Cost/SF Cost/SF Cost/SF
$119.50 375.00 $0.32 8.75 $2.79 $2.00 $3.45 $2.00


Erasable Vellum

Cost/Roll Feet/Roll Feet/Sht Sht/Roll Cost/Sht Cost/Sht Cost/Sht
Cost/Sht
$121.00 500 3.50 142.86 $0.85 $4.95 NA $17.50

Cost/Roll SF/Roll Cost/SF SF/Sht Cost/Sht Cost/SF Cost/SF Cost/SF
$121.00 1,250.00 $0.10 8.75 $0.85 $0.55 NA $2.00


20# Bond

Cost/Roll Feet/Roll Feet/Sht Sht/Roll Cost/Sht Cost/Sht Cost/Sht
Cost/Sht
$19.00 500 3.50 142.86 $0.13 $0.72 $2.54 $1.31

Cost/Roll SF/Roll Cost/SF SF/Sht Cost/Sht Cost/SF Cost/SF Cost/SF
$19.00 1,250.00 $0.02 8.75 $0.13 $0.08 $0.29 $0.15




wrote in message news:5249932@discussion.autodesk.com...
all of a sudden, I have a whole raft of PMs and clients claiming that our
printing costs are too high. So, I have been tasked with figuring ouhte
going rate for a few things. Yes, of course there are a lot of variables,
like volume, weight/quality of media, etc. But the naysayers see nne of
that.

So, what do you ppay per square foot for black and white dprint on bond?

8.5x11 B/W print/copy?

8.5x11 Color Print/Copy?

Thanks
If you are in NYC, or another major metropolian areaa, that would be good to
know.

[Anonymous]

I wish you said all of that in your initial post, this is beyond the
implications it setup.

You are in a negotiated situation: your costs are predefined by the
service you use, so all of these calculations will only confirm their
profit margin (which you should have negotiated and have revealed up
front from them). Tap your vendor for all these costs, in detail, and
comapre to outsourced solutions as well as bringing this stuff
in-house using the calculations pkirill provides.

Your choices are limited: shop around for another vendor, or compare
your current cost with the cost of you folks buying all 16-plotters
and a dozen printers and hiring the staff to run and manage it all.

I suspect your bosses are looking at the bottom line, and not the big
picture: are you folks financially strapped or having other funding
issues, or lose big client? Or bring on a new Executive? They are
going to make you run around in circles and do nothing afterwards, so
enjoy the ride 🙂


--
Dean Saadallah
Add-on products for LT
http://www.pendean.com/lt
--

[cprettyman]

You pretty well pegged it. We have a specific issue with pricing that has made the bosses take a new look at the negotiated deal, and they think that we may have negotiated such that a few specific line items are above going rate for list prices. I get to run around and do the research, and then nothing is going to happen - but I still have to run around and do the research, because the boss says so.

[Anonymous]

yep... but, save that research and all
your sources, because in 3 years, you're going to be asked for it and needed
asap. 😉

--
Melanie Perry
***not all who wander are lost***
http://mistressofthedorkness.blogspot.com/


wrote in message news:5253229@discussion.autodesk.com...
You pretty well pegged it. We have a specific issue with pricing that has
made the bosses take a new look at the negotiated deal, and they think that
we may have negotiated such that a few specific line items are above going
rate for list prices. I get to run around and do the research, and then
nothing is going to happen - but I still have to run around and do the
research, because the boss says so.