What’s Included in Managed Print Services?

What’s Included in a Novatech Managed Print Agreement (vs. What Costs Extra)

Most managed print agreements are written in language that’s technically accurate and practically useless. You sign it, your printers start working better, and you have no idea what you’d actually be on the hook for if something went wrong.

We’d rather just tell you.

Here’s what’s covered under a Novatech managed print agreement, what isn’t, and the gray areas where the answer depends on a couple of details. No surprises six months in.

What’s Included: Everything That Wears Out from Daily Use

If a part is consumed, worn down, or replaced as a normal function of running a printer or copier, it’s covered. That’s the simple version.

The specific list:

• Toner. All of it. Replacements ship to you automatically based on usage data we monitor. You don’t order, you don’t reorder, you don’t keep cabinet inventory.
• Drums. Replaced as part of normal wear.
• Fusers. Same.
• Rollers. Pickup rollers, transfer rollers, all the small parts that touch paper and eventually wear out.
• Developer units. Covered.
• Imaging boards and main boards. If a board fails during normal operation, we replace it.
• Waste toner cartridges. Replaced as needed.
• Service labor. A tech comes out, troubleshoots, and fixes the device when it’s not working right. No per-visit fee.
• Remote support. Most issues we can resolve without a truck roll. That’s included too.
• Monitoring and reporting. We watch the fleet, track usage, flag issues before they become problems, and provide reporting on print volumes.
• Driver and queue support for the printer itself. If something on the device side is misbehaving, we handle it.

The principle is straightforward: anything that’s part of the device working the way it’s supposed to is covered. You shouldn’t be calling us with your credit card out for a fuser that wore down at 200,000 pages. That’s the whole point of the agreement.

What’s Not Included: Things That Aren’t About the Device Working Properly

The exclusions fall into a few clean categories.

Paper

We don’t supply paper. Never have, never will. It’s a commodity, your office has a vendor for it already, and if we bundled it the price would just go up to cover what you’re already paying somewhere else.

Damage from Misuse or Accidents

Equipment damage that happens because of something other than normal operation isn’t covered. The classic examples:

• Liquid spills. Someone sets a coffee on the copier, knocks it over, and now the inside of the device is full of latte. That’s a damage claim, not a service call.
• Physical abuse. A disgruntled employee slams the printer to the floor on their way out the door. We’ve seen it. It’s billable.
• Improper supplies. Someone forces a non-compatible toner cartridge into the device and breaks the contacts. Damage from incompatible consumables isn’t covered.
• Power events without protection. If a surge fries the main board and the device wasn’t on a surge protector or UPS, that’s outside the agreement.

These don’t come up often, but when they do, the answer is the same: insurance, not the service contract.

Toner You Bought On Your Own

Our system automatically ships toner when you need it. You don’t have to order, you don’t have to track levels, and you definitely don’t have to buy any from Amazon, Staples, or a “deal” some sales rep called you about.

Sometimes a well-meaning employee thinks the auto-ship is broken, or thinks they can save money by buying it themselves, and orders a few cartridges. We can’t reimburse those. The auto-ship system is part of how we keep the agreement priced the way it is, and parallel purchasing breaks the math.

If you ever think the auto-ship isn’t working, call us before you buy. Nine times out of ten the toner is already on its way.

Network Changes That Require Reconfiguring Devices

This is where it gets nuanced, and it’s the question we get asked most often, so let’s spell it out clearly.

Covered: A user calls because they need help understanding how to point a print driver at the right device. Their IP changed and they need to update their settings. They got a new laptop and need the print queue installed. We help. No charge.

Not covered: Your IT team (or your other IT vendor) replaces a server, restructures the network, changes IP schemes, swaps out the print server, or rolls out a new domain. The printers all need to be redeployed, drivers rebuilt, queues recreated, and the entire fleet reconfigured. That’s a project, not a service call. It’s billable.

The dividing line: are we helping users connect to printers that are already working, or are we re-deploying printers because the environment around them changed? The first is included. The second is a project.

The IT Crossover (Important)

If you have a managed IT agreement with us in addition to managed print, the network-change scenario above changes completely. Because we’re already the ones managing your environment, network changes that affect printers get handled as part of normal IT work. There’s no separate billable project, because we planned the change with the printers in mind from the start.

This is one of the real cost advantages of bundling managed IT and managed print with the same provider. The handoffs that get billable in a split-vendor setup just don’t happen when one team owns both.

Other Things That Aren’t Included

• Moving printers between locations. A relocation is a project.
• Major upgrades or new installs. Adding a device to the fleet, swapping in a new model, or expanding to a new office is a separate engagement.
• Custom workflow development. If you want us to build out custom scan-to-folder routing, integrate with a document management system, or develop scripts for specific business processes, that’s beyond standard MPS scope.

These aren’t surprises. They’re scoped at the time you ask for them, you get a quote, and you decide whether to do the work.

The Short Version

If your printer is being a printer, we handle it. If something happens to your printer that isn’t about the printer being a printer, that’s a separate conversation.

The agreement is designed to make print costs predictable, not to cover every possible scenario in which a printer could be involved. The scenarios it doesn’t cover are the ones you can budget for separately, or insure against, or avoid entirely with reasonable care.

Want to See What Your Specific Fleet Would Cost?

Pricing on a managed print agreement depends on the devices you have, your monthly volumes, and how your environment is set up. The only way to give you a real number is to look at it.

If you’d like to see what your fleet would cost under a Novatech agreement, start with a free print assessment. We’ll pull meter reads, walk through what you’re currently spending, and put together a proposal so you can compare it to your existing setup.

No pressure to switch. Just real numbers, clearly broken out, with the included-versus-extra question already answered before you sign anything.