Scanning and Archiving Job…HELP PLEASE!!

[kyprinter]

I have no clue where this should be posted but I am in desperate need of help in pricing a job that I have been informed is already in process. It seems that a client just dropped off 3,281 pages and needs them scanned to PDF and burned to CD in two days. We have never done anything like this and don't have any idea how to price it. We do have the capability for the job but not the experience. Can anyone give some help with how this should be priced?

 

[kyprinter]

Is there some other place I should post this question or it this something that no one is able or willing to help with?
Thanks

 

[Greg_Firestone]

Hi KYPrinter,

I think it's challenging for someone to help with pricing with the amount of info you provided. You stated that you had the capability for the job; can you provide more details? How fast can the operator scan 3,281 pages and combine them into a PDF? We don't know this as we don't know what equipment you have or the efficiency of the operator. Figure that out first then take into account your overhead (employee costs + extra*). Add your typical markup and then add some gravy to it since they want it rushed.

*One thing to keep in mind - if your equipment is scanning, can it still process other jobs? If this will delay print jobs, you may want to consider this when calculating your scanning costs.

Greg

 

[dabob]

If you have one of the newer digital presses (ours is a xerox 770) my brother told me it could run through 50 or 60 2/sided pages in a minute . . .. would only take about a hour that way . . . burning might be longer

 

[LM_Ike]

I would make several pdfs and merge them when completed. If you are scanning in color and it is graphics heavy these files will be huge. run at a low dpi to cut down on file size. The actual scanning should be fairly quick like dabob mentioned. The problem will be file size.

 

[mattbeals]

Costco charged me 7.5 cents per page to scan using their BizHub Pro's document feeder. My particular job needed to be scanned in batches because of the volume of pages and the capacity of the auto document feeder.

 

[kyprinter]

Thanks guys for all of the help! The job was just finished and billed and thanks to you mattbeals I don't feel like we were way out of line at 3.5 cents per page. This was our first job like this and we just didn't know where to start at pricing it. As always the people here were a great help.

 

[davarino]

Usual pricing that I have seen in copy shops, using their copier to scan, has been standard copy charge for the size of the sheet being scanned. Plus a disk charge and a minimum setup. ($15 seems to be common for the added charge.)

So, in a shop charging 4¢ a copy for 3281 "straight-thru" full service copies, they would charge about $150.

So long as it's not appreciably slower to scan than to copy, this would seem to be a safe starting point for pricing. The lower cost of "no paper" is compensated for by the difficulty of scanning and of writing to disk.

In addition, the convenience and speed of accomplishment have a value. What you want to do about that, of course, is your affair. (On a job like that, I'd consider adding about $20 if the customer is a drop-in, $0 if it's a regular customer or one who has potential.)

 

[michaelejahn]

Thanks guys for all of the help! The job was just finished and billed and thanks to you mattbeals I don't feel like we were way out of line at 3.5 cents per page. This was our first job like this and we just didn't know where to start at pricing it. As always the people here were a great help.

I worked for a company that made software that would drive the scanner, perform OCR on that scan and write the file to a PDF that was searchable. We auto-created an index which made searching through that PDF very very fast ( without an index, it is MUCH slower )

Lawyers often can't remove documents, so they send folks with Fujitsu scanners ( http://scanners.fcpa.fujitsu.com/scansnap11/iX_series.html ) scan onsite then leave.

When we have rooms full of documents ( http://www.fujitsu.com/us/products/computing/peripheral/scanners/fi/production/fi6770/index.html )

when pricing, it is important to know if the documents need to be prepared ( remove from 3 ring binders, remove staples, etc ) if they want one big long document or if we need to add separator sheets, and if they want an index.

SOMETIMES - they want form detection and ICR ( see that second PDF )

http://michaelejahn.blogspot.com/2008/05/i-was-at-us-department-of-state-in-our.html

We would charge 25 cents a sheet for that level.

But there are companies ( like Iron Mountain, or http://archiveit.com/ here in Cali ) that do this sort of 2 to 4 cent scanning same day

 

[kyprinter]

Thanks again for even more good info.