Does the device pay for itself, or does it pay for the rep?
Buy against lease on the same screen: contribution per treatment after consumables, labour, processing and patient acquisition; the treatments a month that cover the payment; cash-on-cash payback; and the 36-month net. Bring the quote, not the brochure.
Nothing you type leaves your browser. The arithmetic runs on this page. There is no form, no account, no sign-up and no record of what you entered.
The short answer: a device pays for itself when contribution per treatment × treatments per month exceeds the monthly payment plus service. Contribution is the treatment price minus consumables, clinical labour, card processing and the marketing that booked the chair: not the price alone. Enter your quote below to see break-even volume, payback and the 36-month net.
What the device has to earn
How you would acquire it
What one treatment earns
Use your own price list and your own consumable cost per tip, cartridge or vial.
Volume
The verdict
Then run it again at half the volume. The question is never whether it works at the number in the pitch deck.
Where device pitches usually go wrong
The brochure multiplies price by volume. That is revenue, not contribution. A $750 treatment with an $85 tip, 20 minutes of provider time, 3% processing and $60 of marketing contributes about $583, and the payment is due whether or not the chair is full.
Consumables are the quiet line. Ask for the per-treatment cost of every disposable, in writing, with the price break schedule. A platform with cheap capital and expensive tips can lose to a more expensive platform with none.
Service contracts start when the warranty ends. Find out the year it starts and what it costs then: not what it costs during the promotional period.
Volume is an assumption, not a spec. The one discipline that protects you: run the sheet at the volume you believe, then at half. If the payment is survivable in the second case, the decision is about upside. If it is not, the decision is about risk.
Buy or lease
Buying lowers the monthly obligation and raises day-one cash. Leasing preserves working capital and locks a fixed monthly commitment for the full term regardless of utilisation. Toggle between the two above on identical treatment economics; the longer treatment of the terms is in buy vs. lease your first laser, and the platforms we place are on the devices page.
Answers before you even ask
How do I calculate ROI on an aesthetic device?
Start with contribution per treatment: price minus consumables, clinical labour, card processing and the marketing it took to book the chair. Multiply by treatments per month, subtract the monthly obligation (finance or lease payment plus service contract), and you have monthly net. Break-even volume is the obligation divided by contribution per treatment; payback is your day-one cash out divided by monthly net.
Is it better to buy or lease a laser?
Buying lowers your monthly obligation and raises day-one cash; leasing preserves cash and commits you to a volume you must hold every month for the whole term. This calculator shows both on the same inputs. The longer guide, buy vs. lease your first laser, covers the terms that decide it beyond the payment.
What is a realistic number of treatments per month?
That depends on your patient base, your marketing and your provider capacity: it is not something a calculator can tell you, and any vendor projecting it for you should be asked what happens if it is half. The useful discipline is to run this at the volume you are confident in, then run it again at half that, and decide whether you can carry the payment in the second case.
Should the marketing cost per treatment really come out of the device?
If the treatment would not have been booked without spend, yes. Leaving it out is the most common way a device pitch shows a payback that never arrives. Set it to zero only for treatments genuinely sold into existing patient demand.
Does this account for the tax treatment of the purchase?
No. Depreciation, Section 179 elections and lease-versus-purchase tax treatment can meaningfully change the after-tax picture, and they depend on your entity and your year. Run the operating math here, then take it to your accountant.
The rest of the toolkit
Clinic Startup Calculator
Everything it takes to open, including the runway most first-time owners forget to bank.
Run your numbers →GLP-1 Revenue Calculator
Per-patient margin and the panel size your program settles at once churn balances enrollment.
Model the program →State Compliance Map
Ownership, delegation and good-faith-exam rules by state, each linked to the governing board.
Open the map →Send us the quote before you sign it.
We place capital equipment for clinics and we have seen the same platforms quoted three different ways in a month. A 15-20 minute call covers the consumable schedule, the service terms, the residual, and whether the volume in the pitch is one anybody actually holds.
Book a strategy call
Pick a time →Prefer to talk now? 813-544-7131 · justin@eventideaw.com
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Educational tool for licensed medical providers and practice owners. This calculator performs arithmetic on figures you supply; the placeholder values are illustrative only and are not industry benchmarks, quotes, or estimates of what anything costs in your market. Nothing here is financial, tax, legal, or medical advice, and no revenue, income, payback period, or patient outcome is claimed or guaranteed. Your figures are processed in your browser and are not transmitted to or stored by Eventide.