The "bankable hours" service offered by Goss was taken up recently by Highland Web Offset in Inverness and Shropshire Star.

"They can plan their finances for the year," said a spokeswoman. "It's like a dental plan: booking hours in advance to take the shocks out of unknown prices."

Peter Banks, Goss commercial services manager, said: "No two contracts are the same: you can use them for a one-off refurbishment or long-term maintenance plan."

David Tootle, Goss customer services manager, said bankable hours were helpful in a difficult economic environment.

"A budget squeeze is a double negative for printers," he said. "Maintenance budgets are under scrutiny, minor problems can go unfixed and upgrades on the back burner."

The bankable hours' system gave printers the ability to improve management of the problems at a fixed labor cost, he said.

Heidelberg runs a similar service called Quantity Contract, where customers buy so many hours and pay for them by direct debit over 12 months.

"On the print side you can probably save around 10 to 15% on the standard charge and on pre-press 30 to 40%," said Guy Elliott, customer services marketing manager.

The service, used by around 30 customers, was relaunched recently because of software problems, and changed from a daily to hourly service, he said.

Manroland managing director Norman Revill said his firm offered service-level agreements, where customers paid a specific amount for a service over 12 months.