Cost per print.

Cost per print is what a single finished piece actually consumes: ink, film, powder or emulsion, the blank if you supply it, printer and press time, and its share of keeping the machine alive. Most shops quote consumables per square foot and stop there, which is the easy half of the figure. The rest is spending the printer takes whether or not the day was busy, including purge and cleaning cycles, wipers, filters, capping stations, an eventual printhead, and the sheets binned at start-up before the white lays down evenly. Price off the easy half and every job reads as profitable while the machine quietly runs at a loss, which you find out on the day a head fails and nothing has been set aside to replace it.