Photocopier cost per page — log the counter, get real pages per cartridge and true rupees per page for the machine

ginlekha is for the owner of a family photocopy, DTP or printing counter with one to three machines, a paper register on the wall, and no per-click contract. Everything it needs is a number the machine already shows you and a number already printed on an invoice you already keep.

You touch it twice a month at most: once at month close, and once whenever a toner, drum or service invoice lands.

A worked example — the invented machine in the demo below

Bought second-hand on 2025-01-15 with 128,400 already on the counter, for ₹48,000. Twelve readings later the counter reads 201,050 on 2026-06-30. That is 72,650 measured pages over 531 days, with ₹9,250 of toner, drum, roller and service calls in between.

What the cartridge table shows

The toner was changed on 2025-03-20, 2025-07-18 and 2025-11-26. Only the middle two runs are closed at both ends, so only those two are yields:

Mean yield 17,650 pages, n=2 — and that n=2 prints beside it every single time, because two runs is what it is. That is what this invented machine did; it is not a specification, a benchmark, or what your machine should do.

And the two-window sheet, which is the point

1.82× the lifetime running average. Both figures in that multiple are running cost ÷ measured pages — the purchase price is in neither, and no setting in the app can change which windows feed it. Those 216 trailing days are part of the 531-day lifetime figure, not compared against the rest of it.

The trailing window snaps to real readings. Six months before 2026-06-30 is 2025-12-30, but there is no reading on that date, so the window anchors to the last reading on or before it — 2025-11-26 — and says so: 216 days, not 182. The ₹1,050 of toner dated on that anchor is excluded from the trailing window, so it is never counted twice between the two.

What is in those figures — and what is not. They are what the MACHINE costs: the rupees you entered against it. On this invented machine no paper invoices were logged, so paper is not in them, and electricity, rent and your own time are never in them. That line is printed beside the numbers on screen and on the A4 sheet, and it changes when the data does: log a ream invoice under the paper category and the sheet says instead "Paper IS in these figures: ₹18,150.00 of ₹27,400.00". Elsewhere in the trade "cost per page" usually means paper included — for an Indian counter paper alone is commonly several times the machine figure — so a page you sell costs more than the number above.

There is no verdict here. ginlekha will not tell you to replace the machine, will not estimate a payback, and will not forecast. A rising recent figure has many causes — a heavy job, a one-off drum, a quiet season, a price rise — and two numbers cannot tell them apart.

What it refuses to do

It never interpolates. If you did not take a reading, ginlekha does not guess what the counter was. On this machine one stretch — 91 days, the winter with no reading in it — runs longer than the 70-day setting, and it is shown as a GAP row with its own day count. The threshold is a setting and it is printed with the count; at 45 days seven of these eleven stretches would flag, which is why the shipped default is 70: a shop taking genuine monthly readings runs 28–31 days, so 70 means you missed two months in a row. The pages and the rupees inside a gap are counted — the readings either side of them were real — and the only thing refused is splitting that gap by month. A stretch across a meter reset is different: it is marked NOT MEASURED, its pages enter no denominator, and rupees inside it are listed as not yet divided.

What it will not do at all

No customer credit, udhaar or dues ledger of any kind. No staff attendance, wages or salary register. No customer billing, job cards or quotations. No AMC contract audit. No keep-or-replace recommendation, payback estimate or forecast. No live toner prices, no vendor catalogue and no internet at runtime. No photo-of-the-meter reading. ginlekha ships zero facts: every number on every screen is one you typed.

Two things it prints

A one-page A4 retirement sheet — both cost-per-page figures, the multiple, the cartridge yields, the category breakdown, the gaps, the rupees not yet divided, and the block that qualifies all of them, on the same page. And a blank counter register: 24 ruled rows to clip above the machine and fill in by pen, with the last recorded counter printed at the top so the first paper line is already anchored.

Try it below

The app below is loaded with the invented machine described above. Edit it, add your own readings, print the sheet — nothing you type leaves this page.