Print Services
Printing costs often spiral because of bad habits. Learn these eight simple ways to reduce printing costs with our checklist.
Checklist
8 minutes
Feb 28, 2023
Businesses often spend a lot more on printing costs than they want or are even aware of. Our checklist is designed to offer you eight simple pieces of information that can help you drastically reduce the amount of money your organization is losing on print.
Is your organization losing a lot of money of printing costs? Do you have any standards or policies to keep costs under control?
Organizations spend approximately 1-3% of annual revenue on printing, and 90% of North American companies are unaware of how much they’re spending on printing. This is a significant expenditure that is too often overlooked, and in times like these, removing unwanted and unnecessary costs is critical to a modern business.
The majority of companies have no policies or tracking for their printing, resulting in it becoming something of a hidden drain on budgets and efficiency. Fortunately, much of this cost can be reduced by implementing simple company-wide print policies for employees to follow.
Not all printers are meant to handle bulk print jobs which are so frequent in office settings. Professional printers use different technology—like lasers and toner—to do their jobs more efficiently.
Printers designed for bigger files and more frequent use extend the life of ink cartridges, jam less often, are more energy efficient, and come with more customization options to reduce printing costs. Personal printers, while cheaper upfront, incur much higher costs over the long run.
Color copies can cost businesses 2-3x more per piece of paper, depending on ink usage. That may not seem like much when the cost of a print is just a few cents, but, when printing in bulk, it adds up and can quickly balloon your printing budget.
Instead, know when to simply use black and white. But don’t leave it up to your employees to decide what should be color or not. Develop company-wide guidelines on when printing in color is appropriate to keep everyone on the same page. These guidelines vary by business, but typically 99% of prints will end up being black and white when you ask the simple question: Does this need to be in color?
A simple solution, but making double-sided printing a company-wide default setting can cut your paper usage in half. This setting can be changed in the printing preferences window of a computer and should be implemented across your entire organization.
Did you know that the Arial font uses 27% more ink than Times New Roman? It’s not something you’d typically think about when drumming up ways to save money but, believe it or not, the size and boldness of your chosen font can end up costing you more.
Thinner fonts like Courier New, Garamond, and Ryman Eco printed more pages before ink began to run dry, each one nearly 100 pages more than Calibri, the default font on Microsoft Word!
Similarly to color printing, questions about an employee’s actual needs can be asked about printing in general. Do you have to print this document? Could this be an email? So much printed material goes unread and unused after being printed.
We all know people who print entire 10-page documents just because they need the first or first few pages. Most poor printing is simply done by habit, so organizations that make a concerted effort to break these habits and implement more eco-friendly printing practices will see bigger savings.
Rather than make dozens or hundreds of copies to share, try scanning documents to share digitally instead. Digital copies are cheaper to send (via email or physical mail) and you can then make unlimited versions of the original document which is stored in a document management system for later use.
But there is a more radical option…
There are ways to reduce printing costs, but there’s only one way to entirely eliminate them and that’s eliminating your need for paper altogether. Going paperless in your business is cost-effective, environmentally friendly, and probably easier than you think.
Applications like PandaDoc make signatures and document editing easy, you can scan papers using your phone, and document management is easier (and more secure) than ever. A document management system gives businesses one place where all of their digital documents are stored together. This makes them easier to find, simple to share with anyone in an organization, secure, and you can even automate processes to notify people when work is done or needs approval.
Related Case Study: Document Management in the Chemical Manufacturing Industry
If you’re not ready for absolute paperless, you can tip your toe into the water by giving your team some recommendations for when to use a digital document over a real one.
No matter which solutions you decide to use to control your printing costs, it helps to get expert advice both on your ongoing printing strategy and on how to get the best machines for your unique needs.
A managed print services partner, like Impact, can provide access to specialists and technicians, a selection of top-of-the-line office machines, and ongoing support to keep things printing effectively.
Businesses spend a lot of cash on printing every year (over $700 per person). Whether it’s wasteful printing habits, too much color printing, or inefficient machines, businesses can take control of this often-overlooked office habit to save more money and materials, and become more eco-friendly.
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