Cost per Page Calculator - Great Response

There has been a great deal of interest in this tool including quite a few questions directed to me.

Due to this high level of activity I am going to expand on its access and usage:

• To access this tool you need to follow the link below, go to the Sign Up page and fill in the required data completely but ignore the credit card information, it is not necessary
  
• I have intentionally kept the registration process manual at this point so you will not have immediate access, we will inform you by e-mail. Due to the overwhelming response we are running a bit behind here at the outset
  
• I am still editing the data base to enable the automated price calculations so not all devices are ready to go but all of the HP LaserJets and Color LaserJets should be
  
• All supply prices are for OEM supplies and obtained from the manufacturers web store or in a few cases from an alternate web store such as CDW
  
• Cartridge yields have been obtained from manufacturer web sites
  
• The default page coverage assumption is 9% per color channel
  
• You have the ability to customize all three of these fields to accomodate your personal needs, cartridge cost, cartridge page yield and coverage assumption
  
• You can also select an alternate toner/ink cartridge by clicking on the file folder icon to the left of the cartridge description. This is especially important when you are customizing the report for the cartridge types your client is actually using. In the case of Lexmark printers there may be as many as eight toner cartridges available for a monochrome laser printer
  

Now that we have this tool up and running we hope you use it and provide us with your valuable, constructive feedback. There are several folks who have been testing it and it does appear to work well for those devices currently supported.

Please provide your feedback directly to me at pagecost@buscomgroup.com.

Once again, here is the temporary link to the tool; I will eventually be moving it to a permanent URL.

Page Cost Calculator

Cost per Page Calculator

I cannot tell you how many times I heard loud groans emanating from an analyst or sales professional within the copier, printer or fleet management market space as they struggled to research and calculate cost models for cartridge based printers to use in assessments and competitive proposals.

I too had experienced the same frustration and early on began to develop a database of printer models with compatible supplies, manufacturer yields and pricing so I did not keep starting from scratch. Over the years it grew from a simple spreadsheet, to a rather unwieldy spreadsheet and then into a database.

Now before some of you jump in here and tell me how your process is better than calculating cost models let me tell you that discussion is for another day! Some of us less sophisticated folks out here still need to know what supplies go with which devices, what are their page yields and yes even estimated cost models.

A few weeks ago I posted a query in a couple of Linkedin groups about cost per page tools available on the web to simplify the life of analysts and sales professionals – I was surprised to find no one could identify one?

This led me to approach much smarter friends and solicit their expertise to turn my personal database into a web application so I could share it with hard working analysts and sales professionals.

To automate this tool has been slightly more involved than I expected; I have to manually edit each device to enable functionality but am well on the way of doing so. I decided to begin with Hewlett Packard laser technology since it represents some seventy percent plus of the existing installed base.

For those of you who would like to take this for a test drive it is now available for you to do so. I just completed a test where I created cost models for about four hundred different Hewlett Packard laser printers in less than an hour. I think it is safe to say that is significantly quicker than doing the research manually?

I encourage you to register for free access to this tool but in return I request that you provide me with feedback so I can continue to punish my friends with requests for any bug fixes and improved functionality. In the meantime I will continue to bring more device models online, let me know if you would like Lexmark laser printers next or Hewlett Packard inkjets.

If you do choose to use this tool there is a Help menu at the top right of the Search page that explains its functionality. Now if you are prone to complaining, just remember this is just getting off the desktop and will continue to improve based on constructive feedback.

Here is the temporary link to the tool; I will eventually be moving it to a permanent URL.

Page Cost Calculator