A print assessment is a structured look at every printer, copier and scanner in your office: how many there are, how many pages each one produces, what they cost to run and how your staff actually use them. It turns a vague feeling that “printing costs too much” into numbers you can act on. You may also hear it called a print audit or a fleet assessment.
Few offices plan their printer fleet. It grows one purchase at a time. A new office manager buys a desktop inkjet for the front desk, the billing team picks up a color laser during a busy quarter, and a hand-me-down copier ends up in the break room. A few years later nobody can say how many devices are on the network, who orders toner for them, or which ones are worth keeping. We see this in clinics, schools and small firms across Colorado Springs and Pueblo all the time, and an assessment is how we sort it out.
What Does a Print Assessment Measure?
A good assessment looks at four areas. Each one answers a different question, and together they show where your money and time are going.
The devices themselves
The first job is a complete inventory, including the printer hiding under the receptionist’s desk and the old fax machine nobody admits to using. For each device, the assessment records the make and model, approximate age, location, and what it can do: color, two-sided printing, scanning, finishing. Service history goes on the list too. A copier that needs a technician every few weeks tells a very different story from one that has run all year without a call.
How much each device prints
Page counts come from each machine’s meter, and most networked devices track black and white and color pages separately. This is where mismatches show up. You might find a large copier averaging a few hundred pages a month in a quiet hallway, while a small desktop printer in accounting is working well past what it was built for during month-end close.
What printing really costs
Supply spending is usually the biggest surprise. Toner and ink for desktop printers tend to arrive from several directions: an online order here, a store run there, a staff member’s card reimbursed through expenses. An assessment pulls those purchases, plus service bills, lease payments and paper, into one total. It also notes when each existing agreement ends, so you know which decisions are open and which are locked in for now.
How people use the fleet
Numbers do not explain everything. Placement and habits matter. If the shared copier is at the far end of the building, people buy their own printers. If the only scanner sits beside the front desk, patients wait while staff scan insurance cards. A few short conversations with the people who use the equipment every day often explain costs that the meters cannot.
How the Assessment Process Works
The process is low effort for your team. Most offices barely notice it happening.
- Walkthrough. A technician walks the office, finds every device, notes its condition and asks staff which machines give them trouble. Your front desk knows which copier jams on letterhead. Your office manager knows who orders the most toner.
- Paperwork. You gather recent invoices for toner, ink, paper and repairs, along with current lease and service agreements. This step takes a little digging when supply costs are spread across several budgets.
- Monitoring. Meter readings are taken at the start, and lightweight monitoring software can track volumes across the network for a set period. Thirty days is a common window.
- Analysis and report. The data is turned into an inventory, a cost baseline and a ranked list of recommendations.
Pick a monitoring period that reflects real work
Timing matters. A school prints heavily in the first weeks of a term, an accounting office ramps up in tax season, and a property manager peaks when leases renew. If you measure during a slow month, your numbers will understate what you need. If your year has obvious peaks, either extend the monitoring window or make sure the report accounts for them.
Ask what data is collected
Usage monitoring records page counts, device names and job totals. It does not need to read the content of your documents. Before any software runs on your network, your IT lead should confirm what it collects, where that data is stored and who can see it. NIST’s Cybersecurity Framework 2.0 Small Business Quick-Start Guide is a helpful plain-language reference for thinking through vendor tools. Healthcare and legal offices should also run the plan past their compliance advisor.
What Should the Report Include?
The report is what you are really paying attention to. A useful one gives you facts and options. A weak one jumps straight to “buy new equipment.”
An inventory you recognize
Every device should appear in a table with its location, age, monthly volume, color share and service record. If you read through it and think “that is our office,” the data collection was done well.
A cost baseline
This is the total you spend on printing today. It becomes the measuring stick for every later decision, so it should be clear about what is included and what is estimated.
Findings with the reasoning shown
Here is an illustrative example for a 25-person office with 14 devices. The figures are made up, but the pattern is very common.
| Finding | What the data shows | Possible recommendation |
| 9 desktop printers | Low volume, high supply spending | Retire most and route jobs to shared devices |
| 1 aging copier | Frequent service calls | Replace with a right-sized multifunction device |
| 1 color laser | Mostly internal pages printed in color | Make black and white the default |
| 2 devices in one hallway | One barely used | Move it to a busier area |
| Front desk scanner | Constant use, people waiting | Add scanning at a second device |
Notice that the findings depend on each other. Retiring nine desktop printers only works if the shared devices can absorb the extra pages, so the report should show that math rather than leave you to guess.
Recommendations in order, with trade-offs
Good recommendations start with quick, low-cost changes and work up to bigger equipment decisions. Each one should state its assumptions. If the plan assumes your headcount stays flat, it should say so. If removing a desktop printer means the clinic manager walks an extra thirty feet, that trade-off should be named, not hidden.
Curious what your own fleet would show? Our team can walk your office, gather the numbers and give you a clear picture before you change anything. Learn how assessments fit into our managed print services, or call 719.630.8600 to set up a time.
Turning the Findings Into Action
An assessment is only worth what you do with it. These are the steps that tend to deliver results.
Sort every device into keep, move, repair or replace
Keep the machines that fit their workload and run well. Move the ones that work but sit in the wrong place. Repair the ones with fixable problems and plenty of life left. Replace only the devices that cost more to support than they are worth. Many offices find they need fewer new machines than expected, which is a good outcome.
Change the defaults before you change the hardware
Some of the fastest savings cost nothing. Set two-sided, black and white printing as the default on every computer, and let people choose color when a job truly needs it. Send large jobs to the shared copier instead of a desktop unit. Explain the change to staff in a short note so it does not feel like a punishment. Our guide on reducing business printing costs has more ideas you can try right away.
Use the baseline to judge proposals
Your baseline gives you a fair way to compare any managed print or equipment proposal against what you spend today. We are not going to cover service models or pricing structures here because we have dedicated guides for both: see our managed print services comparison and our explainer on how managed print services pricing works.
Measure again
Track the same handful of figures each quarter: total pages, color share, supply spending and service calls. If something creeps back up, you will catch it early instead of discovering it at budget time.
Start With Facts, Then Decide
The point of a print assessment is simple. You get to make printer decisions from evidence rather than from the last vendor who called. Often the payoff goes beyond cost: fewer breakdowns, shorter waits at the copier and confidential pages that no longer sit in a shared tray.
Axis has served offices in Colorado Springs, Pueblo and Southern Colorado since 1978, and we are now in our third generation of family ownership. Our own employee technicians do the walkthroughs and the follow-up service, and our customers rate us 98.8% satisfied. We will give you a report you can understand and the time to decide what makes sense for your office.
Want a clear view of your printing before your next lease or purchase? Call us at 719.630.8600 in Colorado Springs or 719.543.8600 in Pueblo, or request a quote and someone from our local team will reach out.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is a print assessment the same as a print audit?
For most purposes, yes. Both terms describe reviewing your devices, volumes and costs. Some people use “audit” for a lighter check of invoices and meters and “assessment” for the fuller version that includes walkthroughs and monitoring.
Do we need to install anything on staff computers?
Usually not. Most monitoring collects data from the printers themselves or from one machine on the network. Your IT lead can confirm the exact setup before anything is turned on.
Will the assessment interrupt our printing?
No. Staff keep printing as normal during the monitoring period. In fact, normal activity is exactly what you want the data to capture.
How often should we repeat an assessment?
A full assessment makes sense before any major equipment decision, such as a lease ending, an office move or a big change in headcount. In between, the quarterly tracking described above keeps you informed.
Can a small office with only a few printers benefit?
Yes, though the process is much shorter. Even three or four devices can hide surprising supply costs, and a quick review often points to easy changes in defaults or placement.
