A model monthly P&L for a small Vietnamese digital print shop

Most print-shop owners can tell you their revenue to the dong, but far fewer can tell you their true monthly profit after depreciation and interest — and the gap between those two levels of knowledge is where bad machine purchases are made. So let us build a model monthly profit-and-loss statement for a realistic small Vietnamese digital shop: one production press (say an AccurioPress C7100 or a used Ricoh Pro C7500), one backup or mono device, four staff, a rented ground floor in a busy district. Every figure is an example, but each is drawn from typical market conditions.

Revenue first, in four lines. Commercial colour work — flyers, menus, catalogues, documents — at 60,000 A4 impressions averaging US$0.09: US$5,400. Business cards and invitations, 400 boxes and small sets averaging US$3: US$1,200. Photobooks and albums for local studios, 60 units at an average of US$45: US$2,700. Finishing, lamination, design fees and sundries: US$700. Total monthly revenue: US$10,000. That mix — heavy on commercial, seasoned with cards and photo — is what a typical established district shop in Saigon or Hanoi actually looks like.

Now the direct costs of goods. Click charges: roughly 75,000 billable colour impressions across the mix at US$0.035 is about US$2,600. Paper and boards: US$1,400-1,600 for this mix, since card and photo stocks run far above plain 80 gsm. Outsourced finishing you cannot do in-house — die-cutting, foil, heavy binding — say US$400. Total COGS: about US$4,500, leaving a gross profit of US$5,500, or a 55% gross margin. If your gross margin is below 45%, you have a pricing problem before you have any other problem.

Next, people. A lead operator at US$550, a second operator-finisher at US$450, a designer who doubles on customer service at US$500, and a part-time delivery-and-everything person at US$250. Total wages: US$1,750, plus roughly 20% for insurance contributions and Tet bonus accrual — call it US$2,100 all-in. Vietnamese labour costs remain a structural advantage: the same four roles in Singapore or Australia would cost five to eight times more, which is precisely why short-run digital work keeps migrating to shops like yours.

Then occupancy and running costs. Ground-floor rent for 60-90 square metres in a commercially useful district: US$700-900, call it US$800. Electricity — production presses, air-conditioning for the press room, finishing kit — US$250. Internet, software subscriptions, RIP licences, accounting: US$120. Consumable sundries, waste, staples, lamination film outside job costing: US$180. Marketing, mostly Facebook, Zalo and a little Google: US$150. Operating overhead total: roughly US$1,500.

Now the two lines most owners skip. Depreciation: if your press cost US$60,000 and will realistically be worth US$15,000 in five years, you are consuming US$750 of machine every month whether you book it or not; add US$100 for finishing equipment and fit-out, so US$850. Interest: if US$45,000 of the machine is financed at 10.5% over four years, the interest component averages about US$300-400 a month in the early years. These are real costs. A shop that ignores them looks profitable right up until the machine needs replacing and there is no cash to replace it.

Put it together. Revenue US$10,000; COGS US$4,500; wages US$2,100; operating overhead US$1,500; depreciation US$850; interest US$350. Net operating profit: roughly US$700, or 7% of revenue — before the owner pays themselves and before corporate tax. If the owner draws US$800-1,000 as their own salary, this model shop is at break-even. That is not a failure; it is the honest baseline of the industry, and it explains why the difference between a struggling shop and a comfortable one is rarely the machine — it is 10,000 more impressions a month, or one cent more per page.

Because the leverage is exactly there. Push revenue to US$12,000 at the same cost structure — clicks and paper scale, everything else barely moves — and net profit jumps to roughly US$1,900-2,100. Improve average sell price from US$0.09 to US$0.10 on the commercial line and you add US$600 a month at nearly 100% margin. This operating leverage is the single most important fact in the whole P&L: fixed costs mean the last pages of the month are enormously more profitable than the first, and it is why utilisation, not specification, decides which shops thrive.

Use this model as a template, not a verdict — plug in your own volumes, rents and wage rates, and treat every number here as illustrative rather than guaranteed. And when you evaluate your next press, evaluate it against this page: a machine upgrade that does not either raise the revenue lines (new products, faster turnaround, heavier stocks) or cut the COGS lines (lower click, less outsourcing) has no place in the budget, however impressive the demo. A P&L like this one, kept honestly and reviewed monthly, is the cheapest piece of production equipment you will ever own.