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SubClik

Free calculator

Click charge calculator for copier dealers

Set mono and colour click charges that make money. Start from the real cost of a page, add your margin, and see what happens to profit when the customer prints heavier than you expected.

Free, no sign-up. Figures stay in your browser. All amounts ex VAT.

The machine and your costs (ex VAT)

Monthly volume

0 for a mono-only machine.

Black toner

Rated yield is the maker’s figure at ISO 5% coverage. Real coverage is what your customer actually prints; the agent or the page count per cartridge tells you.

Colour toner (each of cyan, magenta, yellow)

A colour page uses black plus all three colours. Enter the coverage of one colour; ISO colour yields are also stated at 5% per colour.

Drums, parts and other consumables

Drums, developer, fuser, transfer belt, waste toner box: the part price divided by its life in pages, added up.

Engineer visits

Breakdowns and preventive maintenance.

Engineer time, travel and van.

Your pricing

Margin on the price, not markup.

The least the customer pays a month.

Recommended click charges

Mono click

1.20p

Break-even 0.90p

Colour click

4.47p

Break-even 3.35p

Revenue a month

£92.70

From clicks

Profit a month

£23.20

£278.40 a year, 25% margin

Black toner per page
0.30p
Toner per colour page (K + C + M + Y)
2.55p
Engineer visits per page
0.50p
Your cost a month
£69.50

If the customer prints heavier or lighter

Your recommended clicks stay the same; only toner use changes with coverage.

Monthly profit at the recommended click charges for different page coverage
Coverage (mono / colour)Mono costColour costProfit a month
3.8% / 3.8%0.75p2.08p£41.95
7.5% / 7.5%(yours)0.90p3.35p£23.20
11.3% / 11.3%1.05p4.63p£4.45
15.0% / 15.0%1.20p5.90p−£14.30
22.5% / 22.5%1.50p8.45p−£51.80

You stop making money above about 12.1% coverage on mono and 12.1% per colour, 1.6 times what you entered.

Check your real coverage per cartridge with the toner cost calculator.

How it’s calculated

A click charge has to cover three things: the toner used on that page, the drums and parts it wears out, and a share of the engineer visits the machine needs. What is left is your margin.

Toner is the cost that moves. Yields are quoted at ISO 5% coverage, so the calculator first works out how many pages a cartridge really gives at your customer’s coverage. A colour page uses black plus cyan, magenta and yellow.

Pages per cartridge at real coverage
rated yield × 5 ÷ real coverage %
Black toner per page
cartridge cost ÷ pages per cartridge at real coverage
Toner per colour page
black toner per page + 3 × (colour cartridge cost ÷ its pages at real coverage)
Engineer visits per page
visits a year × cost per visit ÷ 12 ÷ (mono pages + colour pages)
Break-even cost per page
toner per page + drums, parts and consumables per page + engineer visits per page
Recommended click charge
break-even cost ÷ (1 − target margin %), rounded up to the next 0.01p
Revenue a month
the higher of (mono pages × mono click + colour pages × colour click) and minimum billing
Profit a month
revenue − (mono pages × mono break-even + colour pages × colour break-even)
Break-even coverage
coverage × (revenue − costs other than toner) ÷ toner cost a month

Assumptions

  • All figures are ex VAT.
  • Rated yields are at ISO 5% coverage, and colour yields at 5% per colour. Pages per cartridge scale in proportion to coverage.
  • Cyan, magenta and yellow cost the same and are used at the same coverage. If one colour runs much heavier, enter that colour’s figures.
  • Engineer visits are a cost of the whole machine, so they are shared equally by every page.
  • Click charges are rounded up to the next 0.01p, and revenue and profit use the rounded figures.
  • The lease or sale of the machine itself, finance, delivery and installation are not part of the click charge here.

Worked example

A colour MFP prints 4,000 mono and 1,000 colour pages a month at 7.5% coverage. Black toner costs £40 for 20,000 pages and each colour £75 for 15,000 pages, at ISO 5%. Drums and parts come to 0.1p a mono page and 0.3p a colour page. It needs 4 engineer visits a year at £75 each. The dealer wants a 25% margin, with a £50 minimum. These are the figures the calculator opens with.

  1. Step 1 · Real pages per cartridge

    Black 20,000 × 5 ÷ 7.5 = 13,333. Colour 15,000 × 5 ÷ 7.5 = 10,000

  2. Step 2 · Toner per page

    Black £40 ÷ 13,333 = 0.30p. Colour page 0.30p + 3 × (£75 ÷ 10,000) = 2.55p

  3. Step 3 · Engineer visits per page

    4 × £75 ÷ 12 = £25.00 a month ÷ 5,000 pages = 0.50p

  4. Step 4 · Break-even

    Mono 0.30 + 0.10 + 0.50 = 0.90p. Colour 2.55 + 0.30 + 0.50 = 3.35p

  5. Step 5 · Click charges at 25% margin

    Mono 0.90 ÷ 0.75 = 1.20p. Colour 3.35 ÷ 0.75 = 4.4667p → 4.47p

  6. Step 6 · Monthly profit

    Revenue 4,000 × 1.20p + 1,000 × 4.47p = £92.70. Cost £36.00 + £33.50 = £69.50. Profit £23.20

That is £278.40 a year at a 25.0% margin. But at 15% coverage, double the estimate, the same clicks lose £14.30 a month. Profit runs out at about 12.1% coverage, so it pays to know what each customer really prints. To check the toner side on its own, use the toner cost calculator.

Add this calculator to your website

Dealers, trade bodies and bloggers can put this click charge calculator on their own page for free. Paste the code into your page’s HTML: the calculator keeps its own height, works on phones and keeps the figures in the visitor’s browser.

Free to use. Please keep the credit line.

Questions

How do you calculate a copier click charge?
Add up what a page costs you: toner at the customer’s real coverage, drums, parts and other consumables per page, and your engineer visits spread over the pages the machine prints. That is your break-even cost per page. Divide it by one minus your target margin to get the click charge, for example 0.90p ÷ (1 − 0.25) = 1.20p.
What is the difference between margin and markup?
Margin is profit as a share of the price; markup is profit as a share of the cost. A 25% margin on a 0.90p cost gives a 1.20p click; a 25% markup gives 1.125p. This calculator uses margin, so the profit it shows is the margin you entered.
Why does coverage matter so much?
Toner yields are rated at 5% coverage under ISO/IEC 19752 (mono) and ISO/IEC 19798 (colour). A customer printing at 10% uses toner twice as fast, so the toner cost of every page doubles while your click charge stays the same. The table under the results shows where your profit runs out.
Should I set a minimum monthly billing?
A minimum protects you on low-volume machines, where engineer visits and parts are spread over very few pages. The calculator charges the higher of the clicks and the minimum, so you can see whether the minimum, rather than the clicks, is paying for the contract.
Should engineer visits be in the click charge?
On a typical UK all-inclusive contract, yes: labour, parts and toner are covered by the click. If you charge visits separately, set visits to 0 here and price them on their own. Spread visits evenly over all pages, because a breakdown is not caused by any one page type.
Are the figures ex VAT?
Yes. Enter your costs without VAT; the click charges, revenue and profit are all without VAT.

From the team behind SubClik

SubClik reads the meters and bills the clicks.

The SubClik Agent reads every machine’s meters each day. In SubClik, you set each contract’s click rates and included copies, and the billing run uses those readings to build the invoices. Readings that look wrong are held for you to check first. Only need the readings? SubClik Monitor sends them as a monthly CSV, free for up to 10 printers.

Contracts & billingSubClik Monitor

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