How many pages will be produced in an average month?

You need to have an idea of how many A4 and A3 pages you are likely to produce in a month, because this will be an important factor in choosing the right photocopier or printer for the job. It will also determine how much a printed page will cost you to produce.

A small A4 desktop copier will be fine if you only wish to produce up-to 2000 pages a month in black and white (colour will be much less, say 500 pages). But you will have to careful which machine you choose, especially if you want to be in the upper end of that value. A general rule of thumb is that a cheaper machine will cope with smaller monthly volumes, and cost you more to run. This applies all the way up to the largest photocopiers and printers, whether colour or black and white, as running costs are generally always inversely proportional to how many pages the machine is designed to produce in a month.

Other terms that are used for this monthly volume are duty or cycle. Basically speaking the bigger and faster the machine, the cheaper it is to run.

Important note: monthly maximums stated in a lot of brochures and specs are usually the maximum that can be achieved on an occasional month, and not on a regular basis. A regular monthly figure will be approximately a third to a half of the maximum. This is worth checking.

Is A3 page size required?

Will you need to copy or print onto A3 size paper? A3 machines are generally more expensive to buy but cheaper to run.