Seven Steps to Cheaper Office Printing

Despite the increased use of electronic communication, printing is still one of the biggest overheads in modern office environments. If you office’s profit margins are taking a hit from high printing costs, these seven steps could help you economise and save money without compromising the quality of print output.

Font Control

Without appearing to be a fastidious control freak, it is possible to shave off hundreds of pounds of print costs every year with simple font changes. Set the default font type and size on all commonly-used word processing programs on all the machines in the office to ink-saving specifications and reap the rewards. Conservative fonts such as Century Gothic could save a busy office a significant amount of money when used in lieu of more profligate typefaces such as industry-standard Arial. Here is a guide to help you set the default font on different versions of Microsoft Word.

Careful Print Culture

Where possible encourage careful checking and double checking of all documents, files, emails and webpages before committing to print. Utilising Print Preview tools, the office team are able to check exactly what they are committing to print. This is particularly pertinent when printing direct from email or webpages – as these will often print full email dialogues or page after page of web content.

A large office could also benefit from a dedicated copy-editor in charge of spellchecking, formatting and fact-checking all items before printing. This can help reduce the number of misprints and mistakes – and subsequently lower the frequency of replacement prints, further reducing energy costs and material consumption.

Double Down

Halve your paper consumption immediately by utilising the duplex functionality of all office printers. Many standard printers will allow you to select this function which will print on both sides of sheets of paper – reducing paper consumption and energy usage. This option is significantly more environmentally-friendly than one-sided printing.

Increase Cloud Sharing

Cloud sharing tools such as Dropbox and OneDrive allows the team, clients and customers to wirelessly share all documents and files without necessitating costly prints. Encouraging the team to utilise these free (to a limit) tools will instantly cut print costs – reserving the printer for only absolutely necessary print jobs.

Go Green

The ‘green’ and eco functions and options of your printer offer more than just environmentally-friendly functionality – they could also save the office significant amounts in energy costs. Many printers from leading manufacturers include functions such as Deep Sleep modes which will reduce the machine’s energy consumption and subsequent running costs.

Review Ink Suppliers

Costing more than champagne, printer ink can be a huge drain on an office’s resources. This makes it vital that your office sources the most cost effective ink and toner cartridge supplier to help regularly cut costs and keep overheads to a minimum. Finding cost effective cartridges can be tricky with cheaper cartridges often offering a significantly lower yield than more expensive cartridges.

Printer specialists Printerland offer a simple solution to finding cost effective cartridges: “To find the typical cost per page of a cartridge, simply divide the number of pages the cartridge is advertised to support and divide by the unit price. This will help you find the cheapest long-term solution.”

Invest in a Workhorse

If your office requires a range of different jobs from the printer from standard black and white text files to high quality glossy colour prints – it may be tempting to use an industry-leading printer for all these tasks. However the simpler tasks may be a costly drain on the office printer. It may be worthwhile investing in a cost-effective workhorse as a long-term investment to tackle the quantitative, if not qualitative, jobs. This could also extend the life of the printer reserved for higher quality jobs.